Spaz-R.I.P.

Talked to Richie  yesterday.  If I hadn’t asked about him I don’t know if he would have told me, but when I did he told me-Spaz had died.  Spaz was a real friend and I don’t think it foolish at all feeling real grief over the passing of my friend.  

Spaz lived most of the time (and most of his life) in the offices of Richie's construction company.  The offices are in the lower level (read “basement”) of a strip shopping center in the South Bronx at the corner of Randall Avenue and Castle Hill Avenue.  Around the back of the stores and under a bodega, a Laundromat, and a dental clinic there is a roll-up door and a glass storefront door and that is the entrance to the construction office.  The offices consist of several rooms including a hallway off the entrance, a receiving room with a sliding glass window where the UPS guy drops off boxes, Richie’s office, the plan room and the conference room.  Each room is successively recessed further back into the bowels of the basement and progressively darker and less ventilated.  There is also a small pantry and a restroom just outside Richie's office.  The other ‘spaces’ are storage closets and water closets that are too gruesome to describe.  One such is the closet with the main building house trap buried in the floor.  When the door of this space is opened sewer gases and their smells invade the plan room and make working there impossible. 

Spaz’s food and water bowl were in the hallway just inside the vestibule door.  His bed was a pad in the conference room but I don’t think he slept on it, preferring to sleep most of the time in the front of the building where he could hear the sounds from the parking lot or the subsidized housing projects close by.  His food was (a huge bag of kibble) stored in a heavy duty trash can with a lid-also in the hall.  Every day he got fresh water and kibble but that was not what Spaz subsisted on.  He was a not a ‘kibble’ kind of dog.

Down the way from the main entrance to the office was a basement workspace or shop where tools and material were stored.  The crew also used the space to put together parts of the job and work in when it was raining or when they needed to do work on one of the company vehicles.  During break time they would crank up the radio (Spanish of course) and sit around drinking coffee and eating cake, cookies, chips, sandwiches, rice and beans, chicken, pizza…you name it.  If there were any way in the world that Spaz could get down there for the meal he would.  He was slick.  There was almost no way to keep him inside if he wanted to get loose.  He’d sneak out with the delivery guys or anyone else coming and going from the office.  And the men got a kick out of seeing him drink a cup of coffee, crunch a bunch of chicken bones or devour a couple of slices of leftover pizza.  He would sit patiently waiting for his turn at the food…sipping his coffee from a paper cup (the men regularly bought him his own cup).  I believe that if he’d been given a chance he would have smoked cigars or cigarettes as well.  And when the eating was done, and break time was over Spaz would take off in the South Bronx looking for adventure. 

When he got loose he would roam the ‘projects’ and as scary as he looked almost no one was afraid of him.  Everyone in the neighborhood knew Spaz.  He was the neighborhood dog.  When I walked him on a leash everyone-Abuelas (grandmothers), little children, junkies, hookers, the toughest looking bangers on the block-all knew Spaz.  All the pit bulls, poodles, and other miscellaneous pouches knew he was cool.  All the cats knew he was not.  Spaz hated cats.  But everyone else was Spaz’s friend.  Oh, except the cops.

There are stories about Spaz and the cops that still circulate and are mostly true.  It is not that they didn’t like Spaz, it is just that they had to enforce the law and Spaz was an outlaw! 

I personally got a ticket because Spaz was not on a leash one day.  I hadn’t even been walking him-he’d just slipped out of the offices and was roaming the parking lot.  When I saw the patrol car coming I tried to get Spaz back into the office but the cops said I was walking him without a leash, and gave me a court appearance ticket.  It cost me a fine and a day in the Bronx courtroom.  Spaz was the reason Richie spent a night in jail and who knows how many other tales could be told if all his adventures were known?  I’ve been told Spaz was once personally given a ticket by the cops-the ticket was attached to the dog’s collar and he was sent on his way.  He brought the ticket back to Richie.  True story.  It has also been said that a woman once came to the office and demanded support payments because Spaz had ‘knocked-up’ her dog.  Paternity was never proven, or so I have been told. 

Richie tried to bring Spaz home with him on some weekends but Richie lives in an apartment and most of the time the dog had to spend seven days a week living in the office.  One of the men who lived nearby in the ‘projects’ was supposed to come to the office and walk him.  Sometimes on Monday morning there would be a pile of dog shit and a puddle on the floor when I would come in.  Obviously no one came to take him out and he’d been locked up all weekend long.  When I could I used to bring Spaz home with me on the weekend.  He would stand in the back seat of my car-never sat or laid down-and he’d bark at everyone he saw, as if to say “Hey! Look at me!  I’m goin’ to the country!”  Of course I have to assume he was saying it in Spanish.  And once we got to my house he loved to lie on the porch and bake in the sun or walk with me down the shaded street.  New smells.  New sights.  On Monday morning he was happy to get back in the car-standing up, of course-and go back to his home in the Bronx, his friends and his cup of coffee.

Good luck my friend.  Hope you are happy and free, where ever you are now.