Spike and his dog Mikki were a colorful Bigfork pair

Preface: This collection of vignettes is a chapter from my childhood memoir that spans the period from 1950 to 1964 when my parents, Bill and Anne Haug, owned a bar on Bigfork’s Electric Avenue.

SPIKE BROTON

and MIKKI

Spike lived in a small shack in the woods of Ferndale, and walked into town every day with his cocker spaniel, Mikki.  He was usually waiting by the front door of the bar when Dad unlocked it in the morning.  Dad fixed a pot of coffee for Spike, and then went about cleaning the bar.  Spike sat on a stool by the window, drinking his coffee and working the New York Times crossword puzzle, with Mikki curled up by his feet.  Spike never drank beer or liquor, but he smoked a pack of Kools a day—he called them “coffin nails.”

Years before he’d been a high-ranking accountant with the railroad, and rode the train first class all around the country.  On one of his trips, he was walking from one car to another when his leg got caught between the cars, and was severed at the knee.  The railroad paid for his prosthetic and he went back to work, but soon found his heart was no longer in the work and they let him go with disability pay for the rest of his life.  He moved to Ferndale.

Spike was very much a loner and had long ago given up normal hygiene. But all the dogs in town loved him, and followed him around like his own personal entourage.

One morning Spike came into the bar, clean-shaven and dressed in a suit and tie.  We didn’t even recognize him at first.  

Spike sat down on his usual stool and started to work the crossword.  When Dad finished cleaning up, he walked over to talk to Spike.  “What brings you in here today, all dressed in suit and tie?  Are you going to a funeral?”  

“I’m going back to the railroad, in Seattle. But I can’t take my dog.  Do you think Cathy would like to take care of her for me?  She’s pedigreed….” He stopped to search in his breast pocket.  “Here’s her papers, ‘Lady Dame Margaret.’”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  We had a cat, but I’d never had a dog before.  “Oh, Spike!  I’ll take really good care of her.  Can I keep her, Daddy?”  Now, Dad wasn’t keen on pets.  But he could see how hard it was for Spike to give up this dog, and how much I wanted her, so he said, “Well, I suppose it would be OK.”

He showed me how to ask for her paw to shake hands, and how to ask her to sit or to come when called.  He handed me her leash and bent down to give her one last love. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his wet cheeks.  “I’ll see you in six months when I get a week’s vacation,” and then walked out the door.  Mikki whined and ran to the door.  

She turned her head to look at me with her sad brown eyes, then looked back at the door and whined again.

I loved her from the first moment.  She was 5 years old then, and lived with us another six years, until she died. Spike did come back in six months, but it wasn’t vacation, and he was no longer in his suit.  “I just couldn’t get used to the work again, and quit for good,” he said.  

I was scared that he’d want Mikki back.  He looked into my heart and said, “No, I can tell that she’s happy with you. No, you keep her, but I’ll come visit from time to time.”

One summer evening when Spike came by our house to visit Mikki, he brought a big black case with him. Inside was an old View Master from the 40s, and hundreds of round slide cards. He told me I could “borrow” it and take it to school for show and tell in the fall.  

He never came to claim it back, so I returned it to him when I went away to college, shortly before he died in his sleep in his shack, with Tuffy at his feet.