Puggles on Ruggles

Joy and I went to visit my parents and sister/brother-in-law in Ohio for Memorial Day weekend. We had a wonderful visit, and Joy even sang in church on Sunday! She's threatening to find us more gigs, but I'm trying to keep her back. She does grow a little sad when I inform her that most churches probably don't want her to do solos from the Wicked soundtrack. I'm just not sure "The Wizard and I" will sound the same if she changes is to "The Yahweh and I." Who knows.

One of the highlights of the weekend was when we opened up the local papers in search of some free (or cheap) dogs. Joy and I have been talking over the possibility of becoming parents to a four-legged friend for a while now, and we thought driving around the country roads provided us with ample opportunity to find some poor dog that was seduced by the nearby farmer's tramp. (I have all sorts of semi-inappropriate jokes in my mind at the moment, several of them making reference to how that last phrase doesn't seem all too different from the high school I went to, but I'll refrain.) Needless to say, there were many dogs in the paper, but only a few we were interested in, and I couldn't get anyone to return my calls over the weekend. Then there was this one add that had no phone number. It read: "Six Puggle Puppies. $125 ea. Also sell topsoil. R. Miller, 4124 Ruggles Lane, Fredericktown."

Fredericktown is about half an hour away from my parents house, so after feasting on some of my mom's best lasagna after church on Sunday, we took to the road. Kevie-cakies, my senior-year college roommate (Kevin, for all you grown-ups out there who have mysteriously stopped using nick-names) was with us for the day, which added greatly to the trip's enjoyment. It was a beautiful summer day with manure in the air and the gazetteer at my fingertips. We made our way to Fredericktown, and the proceeded down a few of the main roads while looking for Ruggles Lane. It was somewhere in the midst of our search that we realized that we were looking for puggles on Ruggles, and that's when we began to think that perhaps this whole ad was a fraud. There were many "Puggles on Ruggles" comments, and I even stated that "searching for all these Puggles on Ruggles gave me the Struggles," which at the moment was received with great acclaim.

After about fifteen minutes of driving, we stopped and asked a woman watering her begonias about Ruggles Lane, but she had never heard of the road. Then we found a cop and asked him. He hadn't heard of it either, so we figured this wasn't looking good. He looked at his map in his car, couldn't find it, and then he had us follow him to the trailer-of-a-police-station. And hark! He found Ruggles Lane, also known as Township Highway 178. He said it was out of the town limits, but sent us on our way, and you must certainly know we had a renewed sense of vigor amidst us.

Throughout this whole ordeal, we discovered that Mr. Miller, the man who placed the add, lived in the Amish part of town. This explained the mysteriously missing phone number from the newspaper add. Right after we crossed the county border, we found our road. About a mile down, we lost the pavement and hit the gravel. We were really out in the country now, and then we saw our first Amish buggy. This is not an unusual occurance in those parts, but Joy let out a little squeal and we waved as we passed. (This is when I went into a litle talk about how I had just read in McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy about the Anabaptists and such, but I'll be honest: no one cared. Roger, you might be wondering that same thought in regards to my entire blog, huh?)

And then, there it was: A mailbox that said Mr. Miller with the address we wanted. We pulled in and I lept from the car. As I walked towards the house, we saw two Amish boys come from the barn, so we went to talk with them. Wonderfully kind boys, and while they told us Mr. Miller wasn't home, they said they could show us the puggles. They left and came back with two of the cutest dogs you could ever imagine. These puggles...mix between pug and beagle...are somewhat trendy these days in Chicago where they sell for about $800. This is when the thought occurred to me that we could just buy all six puggles and sell them in Chicago. Perhaps we could even start some sort of business relationship with the Amish? Then I sensed myself becoming a little too Cruela DeVil, and decided one would be enough.

Well, as it turns out, the pups were only five weeks old and not ready to leave mommy yet, and since it was a Sunday, we couldn't make any purchase from the Amish. We loaded back into the car, somewhat gloomy but mostly exhilerated from the search. We didn't return from Ohio with a dog, but Joy and I continue to search, and who knows, perhaps it won't be too long before I introduce a dog to the blog. A dog on my blog. Puggles on Ruggles. It doesn't get any better than this.