Cows Teeth

  My Dad was a Greyhound Trainer. Thus, I was brought up around the Dog Track. More precisely, the Kennels.

 Long before I even went to primary school, I was completely at home around the kennels. 

Funny: To this day, I can remember being there. But, more than that, I can remember how I thought.

  It's amazing, looking back, how clearly and maturely an under five year old's mind functions.

  Ye may not Know shit. But, ye open to it. No preconceived ideas, I s'pose? And ye want to know everything. Probably why little kids ask " Why? " so much.

  Dad had to deal with rats. A fuck ton of rats! I'm not here to relate the conditions, 'Behind the scenes', beyond the actual ranges of kennels where the Dogs were kept.

  But, believe me; There were cow and sheeps heads. Fucking tons of them! That's what the Dogs ate. After they'd been boiled up in these massive boilers.

  Boilers so big that, even when the grown lads (Kennel Boys) warned me to stand well clear of the door, as they cranked the handle that tilted the boiler; 

  Spilling all the boiling water onto the concrete floor of the boiling room. There to flood and rush out. Steaming and streaming down the outside gulleys .....

  Fuck knows what came with it. There must have been some sort of strainer, obviously. But, the idea was that ~ I think ~ the boiled off flesh, and the skulls ~ remained.

  I can smell that smell to this day. Well over half a century ago. But, there we are. The smell of boiled heads. The steam. The hosing out. My childhood.

  The flesh was then wheeled across to the kennels. We mixed it, in long, galvanised tin baths. Bread rusk and what ever. 

  All hands on deck. Ye had to squish what ever ye felt. Squeeze and mulch it. Still hot. Meat or bread, it all felt the same. 

  (I wonder how many fucking eyeballs I've squished, in my formative years?! FFS! I've never before given that a moments thought!)

  I honestly don't remember there being a sink, anywhere, there. Or being told to rinse my hands under a hose pipe. Definitely no soap.

 I do remember the cows teeth though. Front ones.

  Dad had taken us with him, one evening. He had some business to deal with. He left us in the big van while he disappeared into his kennel range.

  We sat, watching the rats scuttling about in the quiet. Up and down the gulley, outside the Boiler Rooms.

  Even then, totally fascinated by the things, I climbed out of the cab to go look about. See what they were up to.

  That's when I saw these cows teeth, laying in the gutter. Front teeth. They actually look pretty much like you, or mines. (If I fucking had any, any more!)

  Just a bit bigger. But, they have these long, straight, tapered roots to them. Probably no where near as long as I remember them now.

  But, to a four or five year old? They were long. Pointy. And, obviously; Vampires fangs!

  What's a man to do? (Remember; One thinks just like a man, at that age. That's how ye perceive ye own thought processes, anyway. Ye never think:  " I'm just a kid. ")

  I pulled a couple of these things out of the gutter. Shoved the teeth under my top lip, so the roots hung down against my chin. Vampire fangs!

  Stop. Let me just reiterate: As a chavvie, I picked boiled out cows teeth from an open air gutter. One I'd just seen rats wandering in.

  I then put said cows teeth straight in my mouth and proceeded to tease my siblings thus. I'm pretty sure they actually followed my example. And we laughed and laughed ....!

  That was a Childhood! We're all ~ us kids ~ now gone sixty. Dad was long dead by the time I managed to contract ~ and suffer the full course of ~ Weil's Disease. Pushing it to 43C.

  Quite independently and through my own fault, that was. Age fifteen. I never have been able to just leave those fucking rats alone! 

  Dogs and rats. Born and raised amongst them, see? Fascinated by them, all my life.

I remember Dad taking me along, on long, work related journeys in his van. Half a dozen Dogs in the back. On a deep bed of clean straw. And me. We'd all pile in, snuggle up and chill out together. 

  All in a pile. Arms and legs tangled. Heads resting on each others bodies. 

  To this day, I sleep with a Dog in my arms. Nose pressed to their hairy little bodies. I love it! I love holding their little feet too. Bulldogs having such tiny little feet.

  And that's, probably, why I now have the constitution of a bull elephant and the immune system of a shit house rat!

  Ours were the days, people.