Animal Magnetism

Animals Bring Out the Best in Us

You’ve probably driven down a road at least once in your life and noticed a skinny man walking. He’s lost his driver’s license due to drinking. If he’s thirty, he looks fifty. Booze lacerates looks. That was George Harmon, my PopPop.

Born 1888, my grandfather suffered in the trenches of World War I. Those who knew him before the Great War said he wasn’t a drunk. He held a job as a skilled carpenter and he was fun. After the war he retained his skills but not his reliability. Foxhounds saved him.

As long as Big Mimi was alive he managed to bring in a little money. Big Mimi, Mother’s mother, was his wife. She died on February 6, 1948. As I was born November 28, 1944, I remember some of those times firsthand, but not much. I do remember that PopPop fell apart at the funeral. He sobbed so hard it took two men, Dad and PopPop’s brother, Bob Harmon, to hold him up.

He drank nonstop after that. Mother and Aunt Mimi called on him almost daily. They lived in York and Hanover, Pennsylvania, right over the Mason-Dixon Line. PopPop lived on a farm in Spring Grove and Bob Harmon lived in one of the tight little houses at Green Spring Valley Hunt Club in Maryland. Bad roads ate up great chunks of driving time but the family kept visiting. They were afraid PopPop would kill himself. He couldn’t work. No one would hire him, with good reason.

Bob couldn’t get PopPop a job at the hunt club, even though PopPop was a good hand with hounds and not bad with horses. Redmond Stewart, MFH (Master of Foxhounds), founded Green Spring Valley Hunt, which is usually referred to as GVH. He had more money than God and was also a World War I vet but he entered the war as an officer. I think he was a lawyer, and he was already in his forties when war broke out. Mr. Stewart was Over There but he never saw combat. G-uncle Bob said his commanding officer allowed Redmond to lead a line of men up to the front but made him return. Both Bob and PopPop always suspected that Redmond felt both guilt and anger that he didn’t get a chance to fight. After the war, Redmond returned to his lucrative life in Baltimore and single-handedly supported GVH, guiding it toward the enviable reputation it enjoys to this day. If you hunt with GVH, you really hunt.

But while Redmond was cheap when it came to spending or giving away money, according to G-uncle Bob, he could be generous in other ways. He felt particularly close to men who had fought, and he knew PopPop. Redmond and Bob figured that one way to keep PopPop alive would be to retire hounds to him so he could enter contests with them.

PopPop built nice runs and big lodges, and happily took two couples (four hounds—hounds have been measured in couples since the days of the Pharaohs). They wouldn’t give him more because they knew he had little money. He’d starve to feed his hounds. My family’s like that. I’ve gone hungry myself (no one knew) but my horses and hounds gleamed. Learned that from my afflicted grandfather. If you assume the responsibility for a child or an animal, they always come first.

He began competing in hunting contests. A number is painted on a hound’s hip. They are all released at the same time and the first one to put his fox to ground wins. For coon hunters, their hound must tree the coon. Officials judging the competition follow the action on horseback or in a truck, depending on the venue. Pop-Pop’s gift with hounds served him well. He’d win pretty often and get ten dollars. The big hunts had prizes of fifty dollars plus lots of dog food. Fifty dollars back then would be a whole lot of money now.

Redmond died before I was born. I regret not knowing him because those who did spoke highly of him. G-uncle Bob stayed on at GVH and PopPop received hounds whenever he needed them. He got the ones with the best noses who retained some speed but were now a step slow for GVH, which is a blazingly fast hunt.

No booze before a contest. By the time I came into his life he was a wiry man, gray hair in a buzz cut, the face of a confirmed alcoholic. Broken veins, deep creases, and sallow skin made him look a lot older than his sixty-some years. He walked everywhere or rode an old black Schwinn bicycle, so his body looked a lot better than his face. Everyone on the Harmon, Huff, Zepp, Finster, Buckingham side of the family is good with machines, especially the women. For a guy, PopPop did okay. But if something really broke down, Mother and Aunt Mimi would come and fix it. They could fix trucks and tractors, so bicycles were a snap. Back then, riding a bicycle wasn’t necessarily an admission of alcoholism. Even with Ford’s mass production revolution, motor vehicles, whether trucks, cars, or boats, remained out of reach for many. But PopPop needed his bike, swore he wouldn’t pedal it drunk. Usually he kept that promise but sometimes he’d fall over in a ditch only to wake up wet and muddy, hauled home by a friend.

I showed a flair for hounds very early. This thrilled my grandfather. He promised Mother if I stayed with him sometimes, he wouldn’t drink. He didn’t. When I look back I wonder what that cost him. Sometimes he’d shake, his hands just trembling like leaves in the wind, but he never complained and he didn’t cheat on his promise. He had a Marylander’s pride and he never wanted me to see him in that deplorable condition where he’d get so bad he’d mess himself.

Sometimes Mother and Aunt Mimi would find him and need to clean him up. I think even today there are people who care for their blood or friends that way, but most, if they have any money at all, pack them off to rehab. No rehab then. Not that we knew about.

Mother always said that even falling-down drunk, PopPop fed, watered, and cleaned his hounds.

He taught me to put bag balm on their paw pads if they became footsore. He showed me, after a cow or sheep was rendered, how to cook up a meat and barley stew for them. Start with a little flaxseed or corn, toss in a touch of cheap bourbon or whiskey. I’ve never seen hounds since to match PopPop’s hounds.

I’m trying to build an addition onto my kennels so that I can have a block and tackle, a walk-in freezer, and one of those huge iron pots that take four men to move so I can duplicate PopPop’s recipe. Until then, it’s commercial kibble, which is good, but what could be better than warm gruel on a cold day after you’ve run fifty miles?

Conditioning and nutrition are critical. Teaching me gave PopPop a lift to his step. He wasn’t talkative. He’d tell me what I needed to know, like, “Buzz, cook until the meat falls off the bones. Dry the bones out. Save them, let them dry out, and then grind them up.” He’d pour into the gruel the ground bones from, say, last week’s cooking. “Use barley. Don’t use wheat. If you can get rice, that’s good, but we can’t get it here as easily as barley, which is all around. Put in this much flaxseed.” He’d pour in two gallons (the pot could hold two grown men). “Corn oil is good but expensive. If you become a rich woman, use corn oil.” He’d wink. “Course you could marry a rich man, but don’t marry him if he’s not a foxhunter.” A deep breath. “Or at least some kind of hunter. A man that doesn’t hunt isn’t a man.” I never disputed this and don’t much to this day, although I realize for many, hunting opportunities are slipping. Then there are those who demonize all hunters, portraying them as bloodthirsty dolts.

On these lessons would go. Usually I kept my trap shut. Sometimes I’d ask a question. Training fascinated me. He’d go into a run with puppies, eight weeks old. “All they need to know is their name.” He’d call a puppy’s name and if they came, he’d give them a little treat. He played games with them, which encouraged hunting prowess. To this day, I still use some of those games with my own pups.

The most important things he taught me were:

Love your hounds.

Trust your hounds. If you can’t trust a hound, don’t hunt him.

If anyone mistreats your hound, never speak to them again. If they hurt a hound, bide your time but hurt them back.

Now, that might sound ugly, but people are pack animals. Let one misbehave, and the pack begins to disintegrate. If you don’t establish your position, people will walk all over you. If you have to hurt them, hurt them. He never told me how to hurt them, but over the years I learned a variety of ways to get even with anyone who misread my cotillion manners for weakness and to really smash anyone who hurt a hound, a horse, a cat, or a fox.

People that hurt animals will eventually hurt people. You can’t tolerate it. The law allows what honor forbids. Besides, in my experience, the law only belongs to those who can afford it.

I’d go with him to contests. Dad drove. Frost sparkled on cornstalks. What excitement. Men would pay an entry fee per hound, usually two dollars but sometimes as much as five, which was a lot of money. You could eat for a week for five dollars. The hounds got a number painted on each hindquarter. The judges mounted up, usually on quiet horses since some of the judges couldn’t have gotten back on if they fell off. Too much pie. Wives, girlfriends came along but I didn’t see women hunting the hounds. We all knew some of them worked in the kennels, but back then you made the man look good even if he wasn’t. If the ladies resented it, I didn’t know, but I was too little to know. I sure resented it as I grew.

Two incidents from those hunts are vivid and still guide me today. One I wrote about in Rita Will. As PopPop deteriorated further he started to cheat. I unwittingly helped. He’d go to the cast (where you’d first let out your hound or hounds) with a gorgeous hound who ran silent. We’d go in the middle of the night. We’d follow on foot as best we could to learn where the foxes were and where the freshest scent was up to that time. Then we’d come back the next morning and he’d release the hounds that spoke. If the hunt was way far from his little house we couldn’t do this since he couldn’t drive.

I told Mother once I realized what was going on. She said, “Keep it to yourself. Sometimes people have to break the rules to live. He’s suffered in this life.” So I never told until I wrote Rita Will because they’re all gone now.

There are people who break other people for the sake of obeying the rules, and there are people who break the rules to help others. I hope, thanks to Mother and Dad, I fall into the latter category. Not that I’m looking to cheat, but I figure you could throw out ninety percent of all federal, state, and county legislation and we’d all be happier, and far, far more productive.

The other lesson I learned involved a German baker. He’d been successful, eventually selling his store and recipes to a larger company. He’d fled the rise of the Nazis, and he was a decorated World War I vet. He grew up with a different kind of hound than we had, but he enjoyed working with hounds. So he got himself some American foxhounds and started learning about them and vice versa.

I mention American because here there are four kinds of foxhounds: English, American, Crossbred (a combination of the two), and Penn-marydels. Each has its virtues. I prefer the American, most especially Bywaters Blood or Skinker Blood (Orange County) hounds from The Plains, Virginia.

PopPop and Hans (PopPop called him Johnny) met at a hound trial. Typical of hound people, they started trading stories and tips. PopPop helped Hans a lot because Hans wanted a system. American hounds, like Thoroughbred horses, are terribly sensitive, though often very affectionate. Not everyone can or should handle them.

“No system.” PopPop would shake his head. “Each hound is a snowflake.”

Hans struggled with this. He’d been in the German army, after all, and rules and orders were the breath of life. Systems tend to be a German trait. I base this observation on my numerous visits there, and let me be clear: I really adore Germany, and I’m partial to Austria, too. But PopPop kept telling Hans he had to relax, be flexible, let the hound tell him what it would do and how quickly it would learn. He used a horseman’s term: “Don’t run him through the bridle.”

Since these men were born before automobiles, Hans got it. His English, heavily accented, a northern accent, was very good. He was a fine man with a booming sense of humor who always fussed over me. Naturally, I adored him, and his wife, too.

Hans worked tirelessly with his American hounds. He began to win. He won a big one, walking off with fifty dollars. The first person to shake his hand was my grandfather, who really could have used that prize money.

When PopPop, Dad, and our two hounds, Buster and Bromo, loaded up in the car, we found an envelope on the driver’s seat written in the most beautiful script I ever had seen. It was addressed to Herr George Harmon and Buster and Bromo. The paper was watermarked. I noticed signs of elegance like that, even then, because Mother pounded it into me.

The letter simply read, “Corporal Harmon: Thank you. Sergeant Haxthausen.”

PopPop, much as he needed the money, struggled, for the gift was so large. Dad finally stepped in. “George, to return or refuse a gift is an insult pretty much anywhere in the world. Go thank him.”

PopPop’s eyes got glassy. He folded the letter and I watched him walk to where Hans was receiving congratulations, along with his wife. Well, she was so pretty, the men just wanted to touch her, so they shook her hand, too.

I tagged along at a distance but Dad held me back from joining the crowd. PopPop shook Hans’s hand and I heard him say, “Thank you, Johnny.”

Then Hans, happy as he could be, loudly proclaimed, “Taught me how to deal with an American hound. I just got lucky today.” He paused. “To think we nearly killed one another.” Everyone laughed.

“Daddy, why are they laughing?”

He squeezed my hand. “They were within a hundred yards or so of each other in the trenches.”

This troubled me. “Does that mean Johnny is our enemy?”

“No, honey. Old men start wars, young men fight them. It’s ugly.” Dad, in the Civil Air Patrol, escaped combat, not by his choice.

A few years later Hans died in an auto accident. PopPop went to the funeral in his uniform. When they lowered the casket he saluted. He cried, everyone cried. A good man is a good man in any country, any time.

That was an important lesson for me, but just as important was seeing how animals brought people together. What healers they are as well as best friends. Foxhounds truly saved my grandfather.

PopPop finally died in the mid-1950s. There was hardly anything of him left. His friends who competed against him knew the value of his hounds. They gave Mother and Aunt Mimi money for them, which upset me as I swore I could hunt them. No one derided me, but it wasn’t in the cards at that time.

Beauty, the hound who ran silent, came to me and she lived with Chaps, who loved having a friend. What I know of hounds and hunting I credit to PopPop, G-uncle Bob, and Beauty, and to the fact that love never dies. Those hounds I followed, the puppies he taught while I watched, PopPop himself, they each loved me in their way. I’m sending it along.