Hey, Dad:

Remember the High Plains place near your hometown where that train loaded with pinto beans wrecked? A growing season later, it produced a field of beans.

I thought of that, and you, the other day. I was sweeping a pile of dry beans out the back door and wondering what springtime will bring to my backyard.

Actually, I think of you whenever I’m in the backyard. For one thing, you were happiest in your yard. For another, out back I’m surrounded by dogs, another thing that made you happy.

It’s been a while since we last talked — almost a year, in fact. We used to talk by phone every Sunday evening at minimum. Then, with me soggy-eyed at your bedside last December, we had our final goodbye.

To some people, losing a father during the holidays is a nasty blow. To me, with the suffering you would have endured were we to have had you longer, it was a bargain worth taking.

Still, I miss those talks.

Two you haven’t met

I have so much to tell you about what the dogs have done.

We invariably talked about dogs when we had our weekly phone call, whether it was your precocious cocker spaniel Speckles or my band of mutts.

You were one of humankind’s best dog owners. Long after Mom died, you signed your letters and cards, “R.B. and Speckles.”

Well, we have some catching up to do — like telling you about the loose beans, and Sadie and Lucy.

They — the puppies — came from a pile of them a friend found outside of town. They gave Bandit some much-needed company after beloved Tramp’s mighty ticker finally gave out at, what, 150?

To everything there is a season.

Pursuant to their lineage as dogs, Sadie and Lucy have chewed everything presented to them or otherwise in reach.

The dogs have gone through more dog toys than China can produce, each advertised as “durable.” Yeah, right. Sell that to the Taiwanese.

With the anticipation of cooler temperatures, Becky purchased pillowy doggie beds for sleeping in the laundry room. The first morning after the doggie beds’ maiden voyage, the laundry room was a sea of stuffing torn from the pillows, their tags (“durable”) still in mint condition.

Similar fates befell all the second-hand blankets we’ve put out to cushion and warm the tile floor.

Sadie and Lucy have gone through a dozen or so collars as they have wrestled and otherwise assaulted each other.

Besides ripping up things we give them, they have found things we figured were out of their reach.

Hence, the mountain of beans in the laundry room.

At first it looked like coffee beans — a mountain of them. Colombian hills of them. Or maybe rat droppings — snowdrifts of droppings.

The beans were from a pillow — one of those reputedly revolutionary pillows that cushions the neck with “shifting bean action.” It didn’t revolutionize my sleep. I placed it on top of the dryer. The girls got hold of it.

Next morning, beans were everywhere.

As I shoveled and swept beans from the floor, I thought of you, Dad. You were one who would have gotten an immediate chuckle out of this, rather than months later after having an initial meltdown over the mess.

You knew what dogs are about. Mostly, they’re about chaos, affectionate chaos.

I wish I could say I removed all the beans in that one effort. The fact is, as long as this house is a house and that room is a room, it will have loose beans in it.

And, as said, I’m wondering if we’ll have a crop in the backyard this spring, and if we’re going to have to go into the pillow-stuffing business.

Well, it’s good to talk dogs with you again, Dad. Hope all is fine. Unlike you and Mom, I’m not religious. I don’t know about the here, much less the hereafter. If there’s a latter, it has room for dogs.

That said, with Mom and all those wet noses around, you are doing well.

John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.