Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (7 page)

Among the rat-smellers when the Roast Rosa story broke was S.F.’s Robert Reynolds, U.S. representative for the Hong Kong Tourist Association. “That story had so many holes in it we didn’t even bother to issue a denial,” he says. “First of all, that alleged Swiss couple couldn’t have been tourists because pets are quarantined for six months before they’re allowed into Hong Kong. And in the second place, pets are forbidden in Hong Kong restaurants, just as they are here.”

However, I should add that the Roast a la Rosa fable engendered some lively dialogue that day at Harvey Wallbanger’s pub on Sansome. “Now there’s the original Chinese Doggy Diner,” said Jack Geyer, publicist for the L.A. Rams. “Nope,” disagreed P. K. Macker, “it’s chow mein.” “You’re both wrong,” decided Pat Short, owner of Wallbanger’s. “That’s a Swiss charred poodle.”

From Herb Caen’s column in the
San Francisco Chronicle,
September 12, 1971. Caen captured perfectly the typical discussion of “The Dog’s Dinner” legend, although, of course, he may have invented all or part of his report. Quoting one’s cronies in a bar is a traditional device used by newspaper columnists. The actual news item Caen quoted was circulated by Reuters, a frequent source of doubtful stories; their report claimed that Rosa had been served “garnished with pepper sauce and bamboo shoots.” In other versions of the story the couple finish their multi-course meal, then ask about the dog and are told, “Dog was dish number eight.” Or they recognize the dog’s collar on the serving dish. Sometimes the horrified couple drop dead on the spot; more often, they sue the restaurant. The legend is told among the deaf community as an illustration of how sign language may be misunderstood by hearing people. When the legend was alluded to in the comic strip “Zippy” in 1990, the weird clown for whom the strip is titled said the incident happened in Bangkok, but he is told that “It’s an old ‘Urban Myth’…It didn’t really happen.” Zippy laments, “One by one, all my childhood illusions are shattered.”

“Not My Dog”

A
certain shaggy-dog story that’s been circulating for nearly 75 years hounds me, and I’ll be doggoned if I can figure out whether I’m barking up the wrong tree when I call it a legend.

This is the “Lassie Come Home” of animal legends that keeps reappearing after I’ve decided it has gone forever:

The story begins when someone is invited to visit the home of a person who is usually wealthier or socially superior. The uncomfortable visitor is unsure about etiquette, and matters are made worse when a large, lively, dirty beast of a dog follows the caller into the house.

While the caller tries to respect social amenities, the dog tracks mud in, gobbles the snacks, and paws the furniture. The conversation becomes strained.

As the caller rises to leave, the hostess, with one eye on the wreckage, remarks icily, “Don’t forget to take your dog!”

“My dog?” the caller says. “I thought it was yours!”

People telling this story always supply some corroborating details. For example, a version published in 1991 in a Salt Lake City, Utah, newspaper gave the names of newlyweds, “the youngest couple on the block,” who had purchased a “snug old bungalow” and spent heavily to remodel and decorate the place.

When their next-door neighbor, “an ancient eccentric” and former socialite came to call, she was followed into the house by a big, black Labrador.

When the dog chased the newlyweds’ pet Siamese, the room was trashed, and as the aghast visitor rose to leave, the hostess begged, “Please, don’t leave your dog.”

Punch line: “My dog? My dear young woman, I thought that beast was yours.”

But there are too many other versions of the story circulating to credit this as absolutely 100% true and original.

The earliest version of “Not My Dog” I’ve found was in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1924 children’s book,
Emily Climbs.
I suspect Montgomery, author of
Anne of Green Gables,
was adapting a story she’d heard, perhaps on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where she grew up.

Emily, the young heroine, mistakes “a fairly large, fluffy white dog” for her hostess’s pet chow, Chu-Chin, when she calls on Miss Janet Royal, a “brilliant, successful woman.” The dog, covered with mud, and certainly
not
a chow, follows her into the elegant parlor and makes a mess.

As she leaves, Emily is asked, “Hadn’t you better take your dog?”

Punch line: “I—I thought he was yours—your chow.”

Time passes…then the story shows up in
House of Ill Fame,
a 1985 book by Simon Hoggart, a columnist for the
Observer
(London). Hoggart tells it about a Member of Parliament who, while “doing the rounds of his constituency,” is invited into one home for tea. He is followed in by a large dog which, to everyone’s surprise and embarrassment, “suddenly cocked its leg and peed on the floor.”

You guessed it: The dog does not belong to the hosts.

A couple of years pass…and the story shows up again, this time in Ed Regis’s 1987 book
Who Got Einstein’s Office?
In this version, said to have occurred at Princeton in 1946, the famous mathematician Julian Bigelow called on his distinguished colleague John von Neumann and was followed into the house by a Great Dane.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the rest of the story.

And again…this time in
Uncommon Genius,
a 1990 book by Denise G. Shekerjian about winners of the MacArthur “genius awards.” (This story seems to have an attraction for geniuses!) Shekerjian recalls an interview she had with a University of California anthropologist in Berkeley during which a “big old mangy dog…a bearlike creature…a big, smelly animal,” etc., followed her inside.

She concludes, “I asked her if we could let her dog outside for a while, just until we finished.”

“My dog?” she says. “You mean he’s not your dog?”

Could such an incident actually happen? I have no reason to doubt any of these published accounts, but has it also happened to what we might call “ordinary people” who don’t write books or articles about it?

Well, it
did,
in fact, also happen to a man in Ashland, Ohio, who wrote me in 1990 about one time in 1970 when his family was visiting friends in Florida. A beagle hound followed them into the friends’ home, climbed on a chair, and started eating from a plate.

It was not either family’s dog, of course, and so, wrote the man, “The dog got the bum’s rush.”

I need mention also the lady from Middletown, Rhode Island, who wrote me about the time when she lived in California around 1975. Her mother’s supervisor came to visit, followed into the house by a large dog…and so forth.

I have other accounts, but the best variation on the story I have was sent to me in 1991, marked “for your ‘Not My Dog’ file.” It came from Debbi Brennan of Moss Beach, California, who wrote that she kept goats in the 1960s. One time a new neighbor asked to have her female goat bred with Brennan’s male goat.

The neighbor arrived leading the goat and followed by a little girl who closely watched the mating, asking several questions which were answered “truthfully but tactfully.”

Afterwards Debbi invited the neighbor to have a cup of tea, and asked if her little girl would like a cookie. Punch line: “That’s not my little girl. She just followed me in from the gate.”

By then, the child had wandered off. I wonder if she had a big shaggy dog tagging along.

Expanded from my newspaper column “Urban Legends” for the week of July 1, 1991. When I announced in June 1992 that my syndicated column was to be discontinued, I heard from Jacob and Helen Schneider of Westerville, Ohio, who wrote that it seemed like their last chance to report their experience of a dozen years before. Invited to dinner with other members of their daughter’s high school drill team, they were followed into the hosts’ home by “a huge black dog.” The dog sniffed at all the potluck dishes set out on the table, and the host finally asked, “Jake, how long have you had that dog?” It was not, of course, the Schneiders’, nor the hosts’, and the incident spawned a catch phrase still used between the couples: “Remember that dog!?”

My conclusion: this is truly an experience that repeats itself, and it has generated an oft-retold story. So, in my dogged search for the truth, I’ll call it “almost a legend.”

“The Licked Hand”

T
here was a girl who had a dog that would lie under her bed. Whenever she wanted to know if everything was okay, she would put her hand under the bed. If the dog licked her hand, that meant everything was all right.

One night the girl was home all alone, and she was in bed. She heard a noise like a dog panting. She put her hand under the bed and the dog licked it. Later that night she wanted to get something to eat. She went down to the kitchen. When she got to the kitchen she heard, “Drip, drip, drip.” She went over to the sink, but the tap wasn’t dripping. In the sink, though, there was a bloody knife.

After she saw the knife, she backed up and backed into the fridge. Again she heard, “Drip, drip, drip.” She opened the fridge door, and out swung her butchered dog. On the dog there was a note that said, “Humans can lick, too.”

From Simon J. Bronner,
American Children’s Folklore
(1988), pp. 150-51, as told by a fourteen-year-old girl in Logan, Utah, in 1984, who heard the story told at a slumber party. Indeed, often a slumber party is the scene in which the plot occurs as well; all the girls except the hostess of the party are killed, and the killer’s taunting message is found written in blood on the kitchen or bathroom wall. This handwriting-on-the-wall motif recurs in “AIDS Mary,” quoted in Chapter 5. Bronner quotes a second text in which “The Licked Hand” is combined with “The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs,” quoted in Chapter 10.

A further shock occurs in a few versions in which the girl’s
feet
are licked rather than her hand. Sometimes the protagonist is a blind woman whose Seeing Eye dog licks her hand. A college variation of the story is “The Roommate’s Death,” given in Chapter 22.

“The Crushed Dog”

A
young American scholar, fresh from his dissertation, won a prestigious fellowship to do postdoctoral research at an institute (art history, I think) in England. The institute was housed in a famous old castle in the countryside. He arrived at night and, awed by his surroundings, was taken to his room, which looked like something out of a movie about the Tudors.

He decided to get into bed and do some work there, but as he tried to fill his pen (this was some years ago), the ink bottle slipped from his hand. Reaching out to grab it, he splashed ink all over a priceless tapestry that hung over the bed. He was so mortified that he immediately dressed, repacked, and sneaking out of the castle, walked back to the train station, and went back home to America.

Twenty years later, the man, by then a famous scholar, was invited back to the institute. Though he still remembered with pain his earlier exit from that place, he figured that, the English being what they were, the episode would never be mentioned. He accepted.

When he arrived, he was shown into the director’s office and told that the director would be there to greet him in a moment. Tired from his travels, he put down his suitcases and pitched himself into an overstuffed chintz chair, whereupon he heard a little yelp.

He got up and found a small bit of dead fur. He had sat on the director’s little dog and killed it. He picked up his suitcases, snuck out of the castle, walked back to the train station, and went back home to America.

Sent to me in March 1996 by Joan Acocella of New York City, who heard it from a professor, who had heard it from another academic. Other versions of this popular tale of a sleeping dog lying down for good retain the hapless-outsider theme, but may include just one of the embarrassing episodes, or may describe the dog’s death first and the inkspill second. Southern California musicians have attributed the accident to a local bass player, a houseguest of a well-to-do jazz fan. Kingsley Amis elaborated on the ink spilling in a hilarious scene in his 1954 novel,
Lucky Jim.
The crushed-dog portion of the story appeared in Tom Robbins’s 1980 novel,
Still Life with Woodpecker.
Other published versions include S. J. Perelman’s early
New Yorker
story, “Don’t Blench! This Way to the Fantods,” reprinted in his 1975 book,
Vinegar Puss;
William Gaddis’s 1952 book,
The Recognitions;
and Terry Southern’s 1958 book,
Flash and Filigree.
The dog is variously described as a tiny terrier, a Pomeranian, or—as in 1984 in the
Old Farmer’s Almanac—
a Chihuahua. Stephen Pile in his 1979
The Incomplete Book of Failures
attributed the story to England “in the late 1900s”
[sic],
but provided no documentation and titled the chapter in which it appears, “Stories We Failed to Pin Down.”

“The Dog in the High-Rise”

As told by Truman Capote to Lawrence Grobel

D
ogs have figured in two personal incidents in your life and one macabre but humorous story, about a friend of yours you set up on a date with a woman who lived at the Dakota and had a Great Dane…