Easter Puppy

I told my 4 year old this story this morning. It's as true as I can remember, the hat may have been black or tan, but this is, essentially, non-fiction. 
Easter Puppy

I was 5 years old and my brothers, just a bit older, were playing with their new (plastic) golf clubs they had gotten for Easter. I wished I had golf clubs too, but I was more distracted by the thought of the 'big event' coming up. Every year, in Teutopolis, the tiny town where my mom grew up and where we spent most Sundays, the Knights of Columbus hosted a city-wide Easter Egg Hunt. I don't know if my brothers were too old for it or just didn't want to participate, but I was excited to go and my cousin Tim was too. 

My parents were off somewhere and we were staying with our grandparents and my Aunt Cathy, who was in high school at that time. I don't know who was supposed to be watching Tim and me, but in typical small town fashion, we were left to wander the field where the hunt was held. We filled our baskets up with colored boiled eggs and at the end, all the kids gathered around for the prizes. I was a pretty distracted child in general and I had no idea that there were any prizes to win. The men in charge, my grandpa among them in his brown cowboy hat and smoking a cigar, started calling out for specially marked eggs. They were standing by a table that had a number of prizes on it and I remember there was a cage with a beautiful puppy in it. 

One by one, the eggs were called (the blue egg with a white spot, the green and red egg, the egg with a star on it) and the kids would come forward and collect a prize. Most of the prizes were candy or cheap toys but toward the end, there were some fancier items like a Tonka truck and a toy John Deere tractor. I hadn't won anything and wasn't really expecting to. I had come to hunt eggs and I was pretty happy with my take. 

The excitement built as they were about to give away the grand prize and they asked who had the gold colored egg. I still wasn't really paying attention, and I think it was my cousin Tim who told me that I had the gold egg, I was the grand prize winner, I had won the puppy! Puppy? I won a puppy!? Tim and I were very excited about the puppy. I stepped forward with my egg and I showed it to my grandpa. 

"Oh boy" was his reaction. It wasn't "Oh boy!" like "Yay!", but the other "Oh boy", like "uh oh". There was some laughter at this as I walked over to the cage, Tim right beside me. And my grandpa leaned down and said, "Bill, are you sure you want a puppy?" My grandpa was a very smart man, and that is the dumbest thing I ever heard him say. Of course I wanted a puppy! I was a 5 year old boy! 

I don't remember what kind of puppy it was, but no doubt it had a fine pedigree. People in Teutopolis in 1971, even the kids, would not have considered a dog worth anything if it couldn't do something, or at least have some promise to do something useful in the future. It might have been a german short-haired pointer or an Australian shepard. But to me, and to every five year old on the planet, it was a PUPPY. The only thing that could exceed the value of a puppy was a pony. 

The negotiation was swift and ruthless. Tim lobbied for the puppy and was quickly taken out. I cried a little bit and was mollified. But I remember my grandpa, faced with the possibility of sending me home to my mom with a puppy, said to me: "What do you want? Anything you want, what is it?" And that is how I got my first set of golf clubs.