lucky strike or L.S.M.F.T....

Lucky Strike was a three-legged hound dog.  I can still see her hobbling around the yard at Route 2, Box 72, Salters...loping in and out around the giant oaks...lounging under the porch in the heat of the day, gazing into the beyond...usually to Union Presbyterian.  Maybe she felt the call.  She always seemed deep in thought.  Strike, as we called her, lost a leg in a chance encounter with an electric fence...probably while on a chase.  She never gave up hunting though.  Her uneven gait became her gift.  Daddy called her the "arithmetic dog"...put down three and carry one.  Country people have dogs that are useful...they hunt, they bark at night-prowling strangers, they round up stray children and beasts, they whiz through the woods in chase, and they ride shotgun in pickup trucks.  I always loved Strike from a distance.  It now seems odd to me that I think of her almost every day.  I don't recall ever playing with Strike, chasing her, having her chase me, throwing a ball, or running through the fields with her, but there was something in those lonesome eyes that still calls to me across the years.  Strike was one of us much like Pet and Black, the mules, and Tony's dog, Rambo.  Yes, she was named after a cigarette brand...the same brand that would spark the cancer that would eventually wring the life out of a man ill-suited for happiness.  So, I guess I can't think of Strike and not think of him.  The lucky part I haven't figured out yet!