Dog we have never seen before and have no 3 страница

day you will catch that seagull; the next you’re

barely able to bend down to drink out of your wa-

ter bowl. Like Patrick Henry and everyone else, I

had but one life to live. I kept coming back to the

same question: What in God’s name was I doing

spending it at a gardening magazine? It wasn’t that

my new job did not have its rewards. I was proud

of what I had done with the magazine. But I

missed newspapers desperately. I missed the peo-

Marley & Me

ple who read them and the people who write

them. I missed being part of the big story of the

day, and the feeling that I was in my own small

way helping to make a difference. I missed the

adrenaline surge of writing on deadline and the

satisfaction of waking up the next morning to find

my in-box filled with e-mails responding to my

words. Mostly, I missed telling stories. I wondered

why I had ever walked away from a gig that so per-

fectly fit my disposition to wade into the treacher-

ous waters of magazine management with its

bare-bones budgets, relentless advertising pres-

sures, staffing headaches, and thankless behind-

the-scenes editing chores.

When a former colleague of mine mentioned in

passing that the Philadelphia Inquirer was seek-

ing a metropolitan columnist, I leapt without a

second’s hesitation. Columnist positions are ex-

tremely hard to come by, even at smaller papers,

and when a position does open up it’s almost al-

ways filled internally, a plum handed to veteran

staffers who’ve proved themselves as reporters.

The Inquirer was well respected, winner of sev-

enteen Pulitzer Prizes over the years and one of

the country’s great newspapers. I was a fan, and

now the Inquirer ’s editors were asking to meet

me. I wouldn’t even have to relocate my family to

take the job. The office I would be working in was

John Grogan

just forty-five minutes down the Pennsylvania

Turnpike, a tolerable commute. I don’t put much

stock in miracles, but it all seemed too good to be

true, like an act of divine intervention.

In November 2002, I traded in my gardening

togs for a Philadelphia Inquirer press badge. It

quite possibly was the happiest day of my life. I

was back where I belonged, in a newsroom as a

columnist once again.

I had only been in the new job for a few months

when the first big snowstorm of 2003 hit. The

flakes began to fall on a Sunday night, and by the

time they stopped the next day, a blanket two feet

deep covered the ground. The children were off

school for three days as our community slowly dug

out, and I filed my columns from home. With a

snowblower I borrowed from my neighbor, I

cleared the driveway and opened a narrow canyon

to the front door. Knowing Marley could never

climb the sheer walls to get out into the yard, let

alone negotiate the deep drifts once he was off the

path, I cleared him his own “potty room,” as the

kids dubbed it—a small plowed space off the front

walkway where he could do his business. When I

called him outside to try out the new facilities,

though, he just stood in the clearing and sniffed

Marley & Me

the snow suspiciously. He had very particular no-

tions about what constituted a suitable place to an-

swer nature’s call, and this clearly was not what he

had in mind. He was willing to lift his leg and pee,

but that’s where he drew the line. Poop right

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