The Well Loved Larry Morrison

The little framed work glove at right is from Larry's youth.

I attended my friend Larry Morrison's viewing and service last night, and I was happy to see the room packed with family, friends and neighbors who all loved and admired Larry. It was a full house, and this was the second shift! Very nice.

Larry's digging tools were leaning up against the wall and he was buried in his overalls, with ramp seeds in one pocket, and a good folding knife in the other.  The bouquet on his coffin included deer antlers and a cornucopia of vegetables from the garden.

It was perfect. He would have love it. I know I did.

Gail had asked me if I would say a few words, and these are those:

For those of you who are already blaming the other side of the family, let me offer some relief. I am not related to anyone in the room.

Larry, you see, was my friend.

I have to tell you that I was at the back of the room earlier this evening, and I was really enjoying all the wonderful pictures of Larry. This was a man who loved to experiment with facial hair! He looked  great in a lot of them, but he kept changing it up.   Wonderful.  Love it.

There was not a lot of jelly on Larry Morrison.  He was all biscuit -- and it was darn good biscuit.

I met Larry 14 or 15 years ago, and I have to tell you that when I met him, it was like cool rain on dry ground. I liked him instantly.

I think Larry might have had some reservations about me, however!

You see, within two hours of our first meeting, I was hog-tied, upside down, hanging from one ankle from an electric fence, getting shocked with a couple of thousand volts every time I moved a muscle.

Yeah, I’m an idiot -- that's not a closely held secret.

But to Larry's immense credit, he did not laugh too hard when he cut me down off that electric fence.

Later, when he retold the story, he would preserve my dignity by referring to me as "that nice retarded boy" without actually mentioning my name.

Larry was a gem.

Most of the essential stuff I learned about working terriers, I learned from Larry Morrison.

He gave me my first digging bar. It's the one I use today, as straight as an arrow after two thousands holes. It's just like that one over there -- we call them "Morrison bars".

Mountain, my good working dog, is now old but still working. She came from Larry and Linda ---out of Key, who came out of Who, who -- as far as I can tell -- came straight out of Linda Morrison’s heart.

You get to know people a bit if you dig on the dogs with them.

I remember laying on the dirt listening to the dogs bay underground and talking with Larry about “Kennedy Meat” -- the canned meat that the government used to give away back in the 1960s -- and the failure of young people these days to show up on time and to work an honest day’s work. Larry had a long life, but he did not take many sick days, did he?

I remember the day Larry and I took Key and Mountain out early one morning after an ice storm, when everyone sane was warm in their beds. Osama Bin Laden had just escaped from Torah Borah, and we joked about that, as first one dog and then the other bolted red fox out of a deep den under an old Walnut Tree.

"There goes Osama" Larry said. "And there goes MRS. Osama!"

We roared. Days like that are solid gold.

I was past 35 years old before I knew people like Larry and Linda Morrison existed -- people who would stick out their hand, invite you in for breakfast, and spend all day with you in the field… and half the night on the couch afterwards laughing about it.

A small army of folks saw their first dig to a working terrier under Larry Morrison… and ate their first bite of squirrel meat with their feet under Linda’s table.

I have to tell you such warm welcomes are considered strange stuff down the road in Washington, D.C. where I work. The people in that town are so predatory, there ought to be a bounty on them.

But in Edgewood, Maryland, there lived a different sort, and I was privileged -- I am privileged -- to know them. Here were the Gospels come to life -- genuine people who manifested an extraordinary kindness to strangers like me, and who wrestled with the world with infinite good humor.

Long before "pay it forward" was a term to be found in movies or on the Internet, Larry and Linda Morrison were actually doing it.

A few years passed, and one day I was up at Larry and Linda's, and I pulled Larry off to the side, and tried to thank him for all he had taught me.

It was a little awkward, as such things are when one man tries to express gratitude and -- dare I say it -- love to another.

Larry just smiled. He was not for getting gushy.

"Pass it on," he said, and we gave each other a hug.

Pass it on.

My own father is now 84, and my mother is 80. I was talking about that with a friend who said something so true I will never forget it.

"You will not remember a single sentence your parents told you," he said. "But you will always remember every fiber of who they were."

Yep. That's about it.

Lesson learned.

Let’s remember every fiber of who Larry Morrison was... the always changing facial hair, the terrific sense of humor, the solid service and remarkable charity of the man.

Let’s pass that on.

Larry, Mountain and Sailor.

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