A St. Bernard To Jog My Memory

I have noticed that lots of people who go to Julius Meinl Café bring their dogs with them. The café keeps a couple of dog dishes outside the door -- one full of dog treats, one full of water. I often leave the café to find a pooch or two tied to the short fence that contains humans inside the outdoor seating area of the café.

When I left the café last week, only one dog was patiently waiting outside for its owner. The dog was sitting and slowly wagging its tail. While sitting, the dog came up to my chin. It was the largest St. Bernard I have ever seen. Ever -- in life or in a picture or in a formula-storyline Disney film.

Now this is saying something. In December of 2001 I thought I had encountered the largest St. Bernard I would ever lay eyes -- and a cautious hand -- on.

I was spending Christmas with David and his German relatives in their hometown, Ostentrop, Germany. I had known David for all of two and a half months and agreed to go with him to a town in Germany that was accessible only after a few trains, a one-car train, a bus, and then a gracious ride home from a relative. Or, one could take a train to Cologne and sit outside the train station and gaze upon one of the most beautiful Catholic churches ever built while waiting for a super-gracious ride home from a relative.

David’s relatives were wonderfully generous. They gave me a glimpse into the life of a German family, welcomed me as a family member, and helped me improve my fledgling German with teaching lessons in the kitchen, on walks through town, and while playing a Simpson’s board game that required me to count out bucks.

One morning I came into the kitchen to find Lisa (the mom of this branch of the family) preparing to go out to run errands. While she worked hard to get me to use my German, her English was great and we often used it as means of easy communication. She told me that the men were out “to steal a Christmas tree,” (I later learned that her use of steal was not a translation error) and asked me if I would like to go with her.

While I was a little envious of the men out tree hunting, I quickly agreed to go along and help with the food errands. As soon as we had pulled out of the driveway, I remembered the trip into Ostentrop. It is such as small town that there were no businesses -- at least not the traditional storefront or modern Try-N-Save businesses that you or I are used to.

Lisa drove past a house that had a small building attached to it. She explained that her cousin lived there (she seemed to have a cousin in every other house in town). Her cousin in this particular house was the town baker. The smaller building attached to the house was full of shelves on which he cooled his bread before packing the loaves up to deliver them.

Our particular mission that morning was milk and eggs. We were headed to a woman’s home where we could do one-stop shopping. We approached a house that had a barn attached to it. Yes, attached to it. I had seen many home-barn combinations like this in that part of Germany. A similar house down the road from this one had a couple of horses tied to a wagon full of hay in front of it. The horses were the size of Clydesdales (the only breed of horse with which I have any familiarity).

As we pulled up to the barn side of the milk and eggs house, it appeared as though a horse was tied in front. It was no horse. Lisa cautioned me before we left the car -- this was a very large and extremely protective St. Bernard.

Lisa told me that the dog was chained to the house because the dog could become overly affectionate or overly aggressive depending on the visitor. She assured me that our caution was in the dog becoming overly affectionate. She was convinced that the dog had learned to recognized license plates since he often started reacting before visitors had exited their car. This was most problematic for the town butcher (one of Lisa’s cousins). The dog was as protective of the farm animals as he was of his owners and consistently pitched a raucous fit each time the butcher came to slaughter some of the dog’s charges.

The dog was indeed chained to the house. He got up from his snoozing position to lumber towards Lisa and me leaving ropes of drool nearly as long as his chain. Lisa offered a hand to the dog and a couple of affection rubs behind the ear. She suggested I let the dog get to know me as well. I successfully left my introduction to the dog (whose name I am sad to admit I cannot recall) with all of my digits and limbs intact, albeit a bit more moist.

While the St. Bernard was the original point of my story, telling the story reminds me of two other things. One, the purveyor of eggs and milk was a lady right out of National Geographic. She was a collection of circles: round knot of hair, round face, round glasses perched in front of smiling round eyes, round figure. She had on what appeared to be about thirty skirts and aprons of various colors and lengths. Her cheeks were rosy and chapped from the wind. She had a pair of very large hands that had clearly seen many years of work.

When we went in the door, we were in a kind of barn foyer. It was a workspace with long benches and stacks of empty egg cartons and various types of milk containers. If you walked straight ahead, you would come upon the kitchen. If you looked to the right, you could see the cows in their stalls through the Dutch door to the barn.

With my minimal German, I could understand as Lisa explained to the woman who I was and where I was from. The lady smiled at me, took two steps closer to me, and screamed in my general direction in German, “DO YOU HAVE SNOW WHERE YOU COME FROM?” Though my German vocabulary at that point in my studies was very limited, I happened to know all of the words she used. I politely answered that we were in fact familiar with snow in my part of the world, “Ja.”

Lisa handed her a couple of egg cartons and two huge containers for milk. The farmhouse lady (whose name I also cannot recollect) left us briefly to go get eggs and milk.

Perhaps my most vivid memory from this experience in Germany of just over twelve years ago revived by a large St. Bernard in Chicago last week, is what happened next. The milk and eggs lady said good bye to Lisa and then thoughtfully shouted a good bye and Merry Christmas in my direction. I got in the car and Lisa asked if I would hold the milk containers so that they wouldn’t spill on the way home.

Now I do not necessarily consider myself to be a city woman, and yet by no means I am a country woman either -- here, my second memory. Being a child of an old bedroom community suburb, I am used to milk being 2%, homogenized, pasteurized, and cold. And though I am intelligent enough to understand that milk does not come out of a cow 2%, homogenized, pasteurized, and cold, the warmth of the fresh milk on my lap during the ride home was something of an unappetizing surprise.