Mack Comes Marching Home

A recurring character in the Skitter Cat books is Aunt Maud, who lives just down the street from Skitter's family, next to the train tracks that divide the town in half.  Like Skitter (and the train tracks) Aunt Maud is real, based on Eleanor's friend and neighbor, Maud Mauger Mead.  Maud Mead (pictured left) was wife to Brigg's nephew Merrill Elmous Mead (the son of William Mead II who co-founded Pataskala Bank with his brother-in-law Jacob S. Youmans, and whose family home in Pataskala is now the Kauber-Sammons Funeral Home).

Maud's granddaughter, Barbara Spears, very generously gave me a few pages from an original manuscript of Eleanor's eighth novel, Little Dog Mack.  The editorial marks on the pages are definitely Eleanor's, as the handwriting matches that of letters she composed prior to the 1960s (when failing eyesight presumably lead her to write in a larger, rougher script--a sharp contrast to the tight curly-ques punctuating a typed, yet hand-corrected letter to her sister, dated 1944).  The manuscript is typed on bonded paper, now yellowed.  If you turn the pages over, her editorial pen strokes have bled through to the back and turned oily brown from eighty-years of oxidation.

According to the manuscript, Little Dog Mack was once titled Mack Comes Marching Home, and his given weight went from seventeen to fifteen pounds.  (If only weight loss were so easy in real life)!  Other changes seem mostly to pare down her wordage, sharpen their meaning, or lend to more standardized speech.

In reading over the sheets--comprised of the title page and first and fifth pages of what remains of the original 61 page manuscript--I realized that I have several photos of Mack.  The story begins with Mack's naming, no easy process for his ten-year-old owners, twins Rachel and Ralph.  Whereas Rachel wants to call him "Toodles,- 'Because he is so little and cute,'"  Ralph "chose MacGregor,- for the hero of a book he liked."  Their ensuing argument is settled by their father, who suggests "MacToodles, which satisfied Rachel but left Ralph doubtful."  In the end, the dog "grew so fast, and became so valiant, that, before a great while, the latter half of his name sounded silly," and "Ralph shortened it to Mac."

When I read Little Dog Mack last winter, I hadn't yet viewed the glass plate negatives the West Licking Historical Society owns, so this passage at the time didn't strike me.  But now having viewed the collection, I realized that the handful of dog portraits labeled "Toodles" are also pictures of Mack!

You can also see Toodles in the photo of Eleanor's home on Main Street, where he is seated on the chair in the front yard!