[Jolly Amaranto]

In 1959, while living on Okinawa, our family leased a house outside Kadena AFB in a neighborhood called Awasi Hights, overlooking Buckner Bay. My best buddy, who lived next door, had a German Shepard who loved to play fetch. That dog would follow us everywhere when we went out exploring. On one trek, we found a benjo ditch, basically an open septic tank where the local Okinawan population would collect all their "night soil" to later be used to fertilize their rice paddies. As little boys are prone to do, we started pitching rocks to break the crust that had formed over the pool of human waste. Rex decided it was fetch time. And the dog plunged in and actually found one of the rocks. He was bound and determined to return it to us. He would not give up and chased us all the way home and jumping up on us with his paws on our shoulders and snout in our face to give us the rock. Fortunately there was a garden hose deployed on the lawn of his house and a bottle of detergent for car washing. We suds down repeatedly with many rinse cycles, dog and all until we felt clean enough to enter our homes for a further bath.