One Thousand Acres

Just finished reading Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the above name.  Like her fictional Cook family, my ancestors spent generations acquiring and working one thousand acres of rich Iowa farmland only to see it all sold off in the end. It's a very sad novel, but it sure did bring back some memories.

As a kid who ended up spending most of his childhood living on a lovely Missouri lake, nothing ever seemed as long as a summer day spent in rural Iowa. After exhausing all of the usual amusements in a few hours, the afternoons and long evenings would stretch out interminably.

One of the few amusing parts of Smiley's book was when she described an unconventional farmer whose menagerie included a parrot and three well-trained dogs. As she described it, when no one was around and a dog happened to wander into the living room, the parrot would give it commands. And the dog would obey.

I'm not really sure why this strikes me as so funny; perhaps it's not knowing whether the participants were oblivious or that the parrot actually knew it was toying with the dogs' misguided obedience. Either way one imagines it, though, it would look pretty darn silly of the dog.