EJ - Barbara, an enlightened person like yourself should know not to buy into that old "dog-years" thing. One year in a dog’s life is equal to seven so-called human years. It's a crock. Oh, I admit that a lot of dogs die young; but that's a dietary thing. Have you seen the stuff that humans typically feed their dogs? Have you smelled it? Some of us never wise up. Alas.

Barbara Moisture - What's the secret of your longevity then?

EJ - Well, I learned early on to eat green, leafy stuff, an occasional rodent, but mostly stuff out of the garden and the rice paddies. I didn't eat healthy all my life though; when I was in the 623rd, actually I ate just whatever the guys sneaked out of the mess hall for me; pancakes and sausages in the morning or at midnight mess, and whatever the humans were having for their dinner, they usually brought me some. Not the milk though, I never sunk so low as to drink the milk. I overheard one guy say it was "re-constituted", whatever that is. Yuk. Sometimes I over-ate because there were so many that brought me food. I know better now, but I didn't want to seem un-grateful. You know how it is; they were so nice and all.

Barbara Moisture - EJ, I'm glad you brought up the 623rd AC&W Squadron. I've heard before that you have claimed that you were a member. Care to comment?

EJ - What's to claim? Who was more a member than I was? Who served the longest? I've lived to see my boys come and go, and I was still doing my thing when they left. I could always tell when they were fixin to leave though; they took the string off a glass bottle and put it on their clothes. Even when they changed clothes, they put the string on their new clothes. Never did figure that one out, but they often did strange stuff. Pretty soon they were carrying that big long, round thing on their shoulder and heading on down to where the floating barracks came ashore. Then they were gone. I used to ride with them down the mountain, cause I knew they weren't coming back, you know. I got sad sometimes.

Barbara Moisture – I noticed you called the Airmen ‘my boys’; why is that?

EJ – Well they were my boys. I always thought of them that way, you know? I figured their families would want someone to kind of look out for them. And I just took on the job. I didn’t have any family of my own, so I sort of adopted em. When some left, others would come. It was that way a long time.

Barbara Moisture – In what way did you take care of them?

EJ – The usual stuff; I kept most of the rodents and habus away from their places, and walked them to and from their operations place every single day. I even waited in the monsoon rains for them to walk them back to the big house they all lived in. Whenever some of them decided to walk instead of ride down the mountain I always went along to protect them from the habus. Even if I was just ‘dog’ tired. It wasn’t always one-sided though; they petted me a lot and called me ‘goodog’. They would say; 'EJ’s ah goodog,' and scratch behind my ears. That was nice.

Barbera Moisture – So you had a symbiotic relationship then?

EJ – Er, sure; whatever you say, toots.