Old Yeller

     Old Yeller (1956), by Frank Gipson, is one of those tearjerker dog stories which would make life miserable if they didn't exist. It was a Newbery Honor book, and made into a movie by Disney the next year.

     This story takes place in the West Texas community of Salt Lick in the late 1860's, as best our narrator, Travis Coates, can remember. The men in the community decide to start a cattle drive to Abilene, six hundred miles north, in order to get some money. So fourteen-year-old Travis is left to take care of his mother and rock-throwing five-year-old brother, Little Arliss, as best he can until the men get back in fall. That goes well enough, until one day a very ugly dingy-yellowish dog with no tail and one ear steals the last bit of ham out of the smokehouse. Arliss adopts the dog, much to Travis's displeasure. And he also steals chicken eggs, according to Lisbeth Searcy, their pretty neighbor.
     However, Old Yeller scares off a pair of dueling bulls that threatened to smash up the Coates cabin, and then he saves Little Arliss from a wild bear. That endears Travis to both Yeller and Arliss, and from there on he discovers how smart and useful the dog can be. Which is why it's such a worry when a man comes along claiming that he owns Yeller. But on seeing how much Travis and Arliss love/need the dog - having been a boy himself, and likely with a boyhood dog of his own - the man (a bachelor) agrees to let them keep the dog in exchange for one of Mama's home-cooked meals. He also prominently foreshadows (without much subtlety) the oncoming plague of hydrophobia.
     Yeller then saves Travis from a group of angry wild hogs, getting all slashed to bits, and barely hanging on to life. Just when he's about healed, though, two cows get hydrophobia and have to be shot. (And burned, so the wolves and buzzards won't spread the infection.) Just after Mama and Lisbeth finish burning the second cow, they're attacked by a mad gray wolf, only to be saved by Yeller. After some time, Papa and the rest of the men come back from the cattle drive, and Lisbeth gives Travis a puppy, parents Yeller and her dog Miss Prissy(who was herself a puppy of Bell, the Coates' previous dog), and Travis decides to teach the puppy and Little Arliss how to hunt squirrels.

     Lots of people would consider this one a prime candidate for Saddest Ending Ever Written, but in my opinion Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls, is far worse(and by that I mean, while still horribly sad, much more worthwhile and beautiful). It's noble that Yeller dies protecting his family, and the tension of the hydrophobic cows is strong, but this just isn't that special a story. There is a lot of this-is-how-things-were-done-on-the-frontier-at-that-time description of hunting and trapping techniques, which some boys would likely love(like my brothers). I would have preferred more societal/historical details about the setting, if it were me. Travis is a frustrating narrator, because, no matter how responsible, the attitudes of most early teen boys are insufferable by nature(I'm sure I was, too). He was still easier to deal with than Katniss, though. I think it's because of the movie that this is considered such a classic.

#Wesley