In the ninth grade, my Uncle Bob and Aunt Hester returned to the Philippines for six months to care for Hester’s ailing father, while I stayed at home with the world’s most brilliant jackass. His name was Ulysses, and he was technically a donkey, but our family always referred to the breed by the other name. It was just more fun to say.
Equus asinus asinus, aka the burro, Ulysses was a local celebrity around my late parents’ apple farm. Every fourth grade class took a field trip to Quercetin Farms, and every field trip got hitched to Ulysses hay wagon to visit the “last year trees” which would soon be taken out of production. Inevitably, a student would ask my father the name of his donkey. “Ulysses, dear...” my father would answer, “...and he’s a brilliant jackass.”
Each year, another group of Mrs. Anderson’s fourth graders would marvel at him. Area graduates recalled Ulysses climbing onto the school bus in order to open the emergency exit and walk off onto our loading dock. My father had trained him to bring up the paper up from the township road, and Ulysses faithfully delivered to the porch in return for an apple slice and a thank you. He stomped his hoof to answer simple math problems: “Ulysses, how many bushels are on the table?” Clop, clop, clop, clop. “That’s right, four! Now if I fed you one, how many would be left?” Clop, clop, clop. “Right again!” He’d even been written up in a special feature in the Star Ledger by a visiting North Jersey reporter whose family farm bordered our own.
Aside from a long list of parlor tricks, Ulysses had the innate ability to pick the losing contender from a pair of potential candidates. The spring Top Gun came out, we all laughed at Val Kilmer’s “Iceman” macho character clicking and baring his teeth at Maverick, and we’d spent the next eight weeks clicking our own teeth together and calling each other a loser. Along the way, we noticed Ulysses began clicking his own teeth together in fake bite--every time one of us said the word “loser.”
One afternoon, we asked Ulysses who would lose in a bike race--me or my childhood friend Carl--and Ulysses clicked his teeth at Carl. 20 minutes and a lap around the farm later, the jackass started a winning streak that didn’t end for the next 14 years.
Ulysses started his guessing locally by calling the results of a local mayor’s race, successfully picking a crusty old farmer named Willard as the loser. He was flawless in picking local football teams, gained notoriety calling the Patriot’s one-and-fifteen losing record in 1990, and correctly picked the losing candidates from Dukakis, Bush Sr. and Dole. Only in 2000 did his record become flawed, but at least he was in good company. Most of the country thought Bush Jr. was a loser, too.
This summer, I spent a few weeks back east at Bob and Hester’s, recovering between treatments and catching up on Bob’s first year of retirement. We spent a few afternoons on the farm, trading watercolor techniques and marveling at effectiveness of the near invisible hearing aids Bob now wears. On our last day together, I visited Ulysses, still hanging on around the farm in his golden years. Old, feeble, and near his final days, his long bristly ears still perked up when he heard my voice, and he clicked his teeth twice at me right off.
“Hey old timer, I haven’t even asked you my question yet,” I objected, but he only clicked his teeth at me again. I’d planned on asking him who he’d pick as the loser between me and my cancer, but instead stopped and thought better of it. Ulysses is, after all, still a jackass.
Equus asinus asinus, aka the burro, Ulysses was a local celebrity around my late parents’ apple farm. Every fourth grade class took a field trip to Quercetin Farms, and every field trip got hitched to Ulysses hay wagon to visit the “last year trees” which would soon be taken out of production. Inevitably, a student would ask my father the name of his donkey. “Ulysses, dear...” my father would answer, “...and he’s a brilliant jackass.”
Each year, another group of Mrs. Anderson’s fourth graders would marvel at him. Area graduates recalled Ulysses climbing onto the school bus in order to open the emergency exit and walk off onto our loading dock. My father had trained him to bring up the paper up from the township road, and Ulysses faithfully delivered to the porch in return for an apple slice and a thank you. He stomped his hoof to answer simple math problems: “Ulysses, how many bushels are on the table?” Clop, clop, clop, clop. “That’s right, four! Now if I fed you one, how many would be left?” Clop, clop, clop. “Right again!” He’d even been written up in a special feature in the Star Ledger by a visiting North Jersey reporter whose family farm bordered our own.
Aside from a long list of parlor tricks, Ulysses had the innate ability to pick the losing contender from a pair of potential candidates. The spring Top Gun came out, we all laughed at Val Kilmer’s “Iceman” macho character clicking and baring his teeth at Maverick, and we’d spent the next eight weeks clicking our own teeth together and calling each other a loser. Along the way, we noticed Ulysses began clicking his own teeth together in fake bite--every time one of us said the word “loser.”
One afternoon, we asked Ulysses who would lose in a bike race--me or my childhood friend Carl--and Ulysses clicked his teeth at Carl. 20 minutes and a lap around the farm later, the jackass started a winning streak that didn’t end for the next 14 years.
Ulysses started his guessing locally by calling the results of a local mayor’s race, successfully picking a crusty old farmer named Willard as the loser. He was flawless in picking local football teams, gained notoriety calling the Patriot’s one-and-fifteen losing record in 1990, and correctly picked the losing candidates from Dukakis, Bush Sr. and Dole. Only in 2000 did his record become flawed, but at least he was in good company. Most of the country thought Bush Jr. was a loser, too.
This summer, I spent a few weeks back east at Bob and Hester’s, recovering between treatments and catching up on Bob’s first year of retirement. We spent a few afternoons on the farm, trading watercolor techniques and marveling at effectiveness of the near invisible hearing aids Bob now wears. On our last day together, I visited Ulysses, still hanging on around the farm in his golden years. Old, feeble, and near his final days, his long bristly ears still perked up when he heard my voice, and he clicked his teeth twice at me right off.
“Hey old timer, I haven’t even asked you my question yet,” I objected, but he only clicked his teeth at me again. I’d planned on asking him who he’d pick as the loser between me and my cancer, but instead stopped and thought better of it. Ulysses is, after all, still a jackass.
