You could call it ‘Travels With Barkley’

The logical question to ask as I abandon you in an era of terror and uncertainty and fear and loathing is, “What in God’s name are you doing in Lone Pine?”

I wonder the same thing as I pull into this quaint little town a couple of hundred miles northeast of L.A., the adventurous Cinelli next to me and the dog Barkley sprawled out in the backseat.

As I think back, it was actually my idea to hop in the car and drive to places where men pick their teeth in public and women wear cotton dresses. Not here exactly but, well, other places. I enjoy meandering on quiet roads. But bringing the dog was another matter.

There is something unsettling about riding around with a nonhuman creature looking over my shoulder, its nose at my head, and occasionally startling me into a rapid heartbeat with a sudden bark.

But I am a small voice in the night, a whispering child yearning to be heard when it comes to the dog’s welfare. We left him home a few months ago when we were traveling in Europe and he became ill. Cinelli believes it was because he missed us so much. I am not ready to buy emotional trauma applied to a dog, but I know I am beaten when I hear, “If he doesn’t go, I don’t go.”

So we rigged the backseat to his comfort, purchased a large, collapsible pen in which he could spend his motel nights, froze a couple of pork roasts for his dinners and off we went on a visit to more small towns than I ever intended to see, a trip that would eventually cover 2,700 miles of California and Oregon.

But first things first. You’re wondering about the pork roasts. Since the onset of his illness, Barkley requires a special diet to keep his weight up and has requested, by refusing other offers, that dinner consist of pork roast and rice or he absolutely will not eat. He will die of starvation and we’ll have him floating through our nightmares, whining pitifully, for the rest of our miserable lives. So pork roast it is.

Other features to accommodate the dog include sheeting to darken the back windows from the intense sunlight as we drove through the high desert to reach Lone Pine, a town of 1,655 souls, whose claim to fame is an annual cowboy film festival and a restaurant called Seasons, where the chow is good and the martinis ample.

“You worry more about the dog than you did about our kids,” I said.

“Our kids didn’t lie on the backseat with their tongues hanging out, panting.”

That’s the kind of rationale that is difficult to question because, as I recall, neither of our two daughters or our son ever panted.

“You only have a vague memory of our kids when they were little,” Cinelli added, seeing me on the ropes. “You probably wouldn’t recognize them today if you passed them on the street.”

“That’s crazy. One of them, what’s her name, is about so tall and lives with 18 cats, and the other repairs used cars.”

“Right, and your son holds up liquor stores in Wyoming.”

“He does?”

“Just drive.”

I discovered as we rolled along that not all motels are what is known as “pet friendly.” The one in Lone Pine is, although the presence of a pet requires a nonrefundable fee in the event, one supposes, that the dog not only poo-poos throughout the room, but also breaks all the windows, smashes the heater and eats the bed. However, the room is in such a state that there is very little that even a berserk rhino could do to it that would matter.

But we are a tidy middle-class couple raised to respect the property of others, even if it does appear to be shabby beyond repair. I walk the dog regularly, a pooper-scooper in my hand, feeling uncomfortable. It is vaguely humiliating to be standing there, trying to look nonchalant, while an animal answers nature’s call.

When I mention to Cinelli that the path least taken is never intended to involve this kind of demeaning activity, she replies, “Think of it as bonding.” I don’t think of it in that way at all, any more than I accept the notion that men bumping their bare bellies at a football game indicates any kind of lifelong commitment to each other.

Whatever my objections and whatever Cinelli’s insistence, Barkley was perfectly happy to take the trip, responding to “bye-bye” by jumping into the backseat. When I found myself saying “bye-bye,” a term I had not used in 40 years, I realized that I had accepted without qualms all the conditions of this journey, an odyssey with a dog to the kinds of small towns where the women aren’t as skinny as Calista Flockhart and the men would rather drink swill than bottled water.

So off we went, northward, seeking different horizons, a man, a wife and the family dog, barking all the way.

(To be continued.)