Performing Your Requests

My Wednesday afternoon preschoolers begged me to "read" the Blue Dog book to them again today. The book is actually Blue Dog Man, by George Rodrigue. I don't really read the book. I show the pictures, the paintings of Blue Dog sitting in different locations or against different backdrops, most often alone, sometimes wearing a necktie. We all brainstorm stories about what's on the mind of Rodrigue's mysterious canine icon. We laugh hysterically at our stories.

I paid full price for Blue Dog Man five years ago, and the book has more than paid me back every year. Three year olds love it. Learning difference elementary students love it. Pre-adolescents with emotional problems relate to Blue Dog, open up, and give me great insights into how they understand the world. I mention this because you can find copies used or at bargain prices now.


The big hits in today's "reading" were paintings with swirling backgrounds. Students told me Blue Dog was beside a weather map, or in a hurricane. They don't know that Blue Dog was "born" in New Orleans, where Rodrigue has lived for sixteen years. Rodrigue has a special Blue Dog silkscreen print, "We Will Rise Again", to benefit the Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the American Red Cross. Check it out.

Imagine Blue Dog, wearing a suit and tie, sitting at the keyboard of a piano bar. The cocktail waitresses whisper the patrons' requests in his ear, and slip a buck or two into the glass on the piano. Imagine Blue Dog being asked to play "Born Free" and "Impossible Dream".

In August of '68 our family went to Estes Park, Colorado, on vacation. This is my neatly written cursive account of a memorable evening at a favorite fancy restaurant:

We left McCook about ten. About twelve we stopped at a rest stop and saw a tiny lizard. [My sister] wanted to take it home...Later we had lunch at the Chicken Inn in Ft. Morgan. CRUMBY! It rained all the way from Loveland to Estes, going up the Big Thompson canyon. It was kind of spooky. We checked in to room 5 (same as last time). After awhile we went to the Coach House. [My brother] had some problems what with the trout and candlelight. Later in the evening Donna Lee from Laurence, Nebraska played for us. She was "juz dalighted" to play Born Free, Love Is Blue, and The Impossible Dream for us. Then we skipped rockes [sic] at Lake Estes.

A year or so earlier I wrote about our first visit to the restaurant, and noted that "we even got buckaroos", the Estes equivalent of a "Shirley Temple" or "Roy Rogers". Apparently my sister was so impressed she, "announced that when she grew up she was going to be a cocktail waitress."

My brother had a notoriously uneasy stomach when we were kids. In '68 he stared at the flickering candlelit eye of the trout reclining on its plate next to the jumbo foil-wrapped baked potato with sour cream. The trout stared back.

The trout and my brother should have sat up to the piano bar and had a few buckaroos. Blue Dog would have played their requests.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go....

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart...

Blue, blue, my world is blue,
blue is my world now I'm without you