Day 6, Barbara: Me ’n’ Sookie and a toe-tappin’ time in Texas

Kay and I are just back from a stint at the State Fair of Texas, an extravaganza of fried foods, Ferris wheels, and my annual tour of duty at the Food & Fiber Pavilion on behalf of heritage tourism in the Lone Star State. (Did you know that travel & tourism is Texas’s second largest export product, after energy? But that’s another story.)

While we were in Dallas Big Tex debuted a sporty new shirt. Ebola made a nasty appearance. (Another story too.) The world’s largest commercial jetliner landed at DFW from Australia on the world’s longest commercial aviation route. (Yet another story.) And Sookie wouldn’t stop licking my feet.

Now, Sookie isn’t a vampire—she’s just named for one. You see, on the last night of our Dallas visit we accepted the gracious invitation of some of Kay’s kin to stay overnight in their home, which has plenty of extra bedrooms now that the kids are grown and gone. Things are pretty quiet at their house now, except when the granddogs visit.

Barnabas, the six-pounds-when-soaking-wet Silkie, yips and nips when semi-strangers show up. He takes after his namesake that way. I should’ve been mindful to bring closed-toe shoes. (Years ago, when I was a stage mom working with the ever-gallant Jonathan Frid on a college production, I don’t recall having to take any such precautions.)

But Sookie, the winsome Boston Terrier, loves everybody to death. Sookie wags. Sookie slurps. Sookie licks. No fangs in sight.

When I first made the acquaintance of puppy Sookie some years back I hadn’t yet cracked open a Charlaine Harris novel, much less watched an episode of True Blood. Sookie? I asked her pet human. He and his family clued me in.

So I had to know more about the telepath from Bon Temps. Since then I’ve followed the fortunes of Sookie Stackhouse’s prolific creator, and Kay and I will get to meet her at the Books in the Basin festival this weekend in Midland-Odessa's Wagner-Noel Performing Arts Center. We'll kick up our heels at the historic Yucca Theater and stick around for Literary Death Match. We’ll look forward to learning how a mystery writer from Mississippi made it big in the world of the undead.

And hey, Sookie the Terrier, watch your back. We've read there are Living Dead in Dallas. And we hear Ms. Harris’s first book, way back when, was published in the UK as, um, Dead Dog.

Sookie wants to make sure all her friends know there’s an entire museum devoted exclusively to Boston Terriers in Floydada, Texas.