You Never Forget Best Friends

There were two births that day on January 2, 1951 to our farm.  A seven pound eleven ounce baby girl, who they named Judy Lynne.  The other birth was a little white puppy with a black patch born to Grandma and Grandpa's dog.  He was the runt of a liter of six puppies.  And as a baby gift to my Dad and Mom, my grandparents gave that puppy to them for the baby.  Because...after all...every little girl needs a dog for a friend, don't they?

Daddy and Mama named that tiny little puppy Bobo.  He was just a handful of white fur with a big black spot on his back, another one on his front shoulder, and a perfect black circle around one eye.  Bobo became my best friend.

As soon as I was big enough to walk, Bobo made every step that I made.  We played together, we took walks together, we raced each other, we wrestled together, we waded the creek together, and when I rode my bike, Bobo ran along side never leaving my side.

At the back of our 40 acre farm where we lived was a huge spreading oak tree at the end of the cotton patch a good distance from the house next to a creek on the edge of the woods.  The tree's huge limbs bowed to the earth almost touching the ground.  It made a great place for Bobo and I to play in its cool shade.  Sometimes we took naps under that tree and had a picnic lunch of sausage and biscuit sandwiches left over from breakfast.

For eight years, that little white dog and I were inseparable.  One day when I went out to play, Bobo way laying in the backyard and would not come to me when I called him.  He would barely even look at me.  I threw his favorite ball, but he wouldn't go fetch it.  He just lay there.  When Daddy came in on the tractor that night from plowing the fields, I met him at the barn and told him something was wrong with Bobo.  Daddy tried to feed him some milk, but he wouldn't drink it.

The next morning, I jumped up and dressed quickly to go check on Bobo.  He was gone.  I looked for him most of the day, and finally I decided to go look for him at the big oak tree where we loved to play.  I ran to the tree and pulled the bowing branches back to see inside.  There lying at the base of the tree was the lifeless body of Bobo.  He had made his way back to our favorite place and died.  I remember laying on the cool ground under that tree and crying and crying.  Daddy buried my best friend Bobo under that sprawling oak tree that day, and now some 60 years later, my eyes still fill with tears as I remember Bobo.  Some best friends you never forget.