Joe Fahey

I’ve been multi-tasking this past week.
I agreed to co-host a discussion on Impeachment with my friend, former Syracuse Mayor, Stephanie Miner at Colgate University where she is the Rakin Fellow to be held on Friday, February 7. So, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the topics and sources she identified and gathering other readings on the subject. I’ve been reading and taking notes while at the same time, watching the impeachment trial on television.
Comparing the readings and sources with the commentary being offered by participants in the trial and some of those commenting on it, their lack of knowledge about impeachment has stunned me.
One of the best references on this subject is the book Impeachment by John Meacham, Timothy Naftali, Peter Baker and Jeffrey Engel.
Engel’s explanation of the evolution of the impeachment clause and its inclusion in the Constitution was particularly illuminating.
I was surprised to learn that whether to include impeachment in the Constitution at all was a controversial issue for the Framers during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.
The Framers were familiar with the mechanism of impeachment and removal from office because it had existed in the British system as early as the fourteenth century. While the King, who was ordained by Divine right, couldn’t be impeached, judges and other ministers could and were impeached and removed from office.
As the framers debated the duties and powers of the office of the President, which they called the “First Magistrate,” conflicting opinions were offered about the need for impeachment. Benjamin Franklin observed about George Washington that, “The first man at the helm will be a good one, nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.” George Mason of Virginia declared “Some mode of displacing an unfit magistrate is rendered indispensable by the fallibility of those who choose as well as by the corruptibility of the man chosen.”
When an impeachment clause was adopted on June 2, 1787, George Mason offered an observation that is often cited today. “No point is more important than the right of impeachment shall be continued. Shall any man be above the law?”
Governeur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, approved of impeachment but resisted vesting the impeachment power in the Legislature believing that it would empower the Legislature, while at the same time, weaken the President, noting that “It will hold him in such dependence that he will be no check on the legislature and will not be a firm guardian of the people and the public trust.” Morris believed that a good president would be returned to office and a bad one voted out. He believed that a shorter term of office and frequent referenda was preferable to making the executive beholden to the legislature.
Delegate, William Davis, of North Carolina, in an observation that should have particular resonance today, declared “If non-impeachable, a thoroughly immunized president would spare no effort or means whatever to get himself re-elected.”
George Mason offered a similar caution opining that, “The man who has practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance might otherwise be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt.” It is not lost on me that Trump made his “perfect call” to the President of Ukraine seeking an investigation of the Bidens, on the day following Robert Mueller’s testimony about the conclusions in his report concerning Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Benjamin Franklin finally brought those delegates who were wavering on the inclusion of an impeachment clause to the conclusion that it was essential by posing and answering a question. As he framed it, “What was the practice before this in the cases where the chief Magistrate rendered himself obnoxious? Why recourse was had to assassination.”
The Framers had to next decide what would be a sufficient basis for impeaching a president.
I’ll share some thoughts on that in the next blog post.

On August 1, 2018 I boarded a flight at Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, New York to fly to Dublin. The flight was scheduled to leave at 9:00 P.M. but was delayed until 11:30 P.M. I wasn’t troubled by the delay because I realized that it would arrive in Dublin at a more suitable hour than dawn.
One thing I have learned about the airline industry, both international and domestic, is that the airlines are the only industry that is convinced that people are getting smaller.
After storing my backpack in the luggage bin, I wedged myself into my seat, tilted the seat back and closed my eyes confident that I would wake up as we descended into Dublin. The lights in the cabin were dimmed and I began to doze off. I was asleep for about a half an hour, when the lights were turned up and the flight crew made an announcement that they would begin serving the meals that passengers had ordered. That would keep me awake for another couple of hours.
One of the things that has changed dramatically during my lifetime is the convenience and comfort of air travel. When I flew from Syracuse to Knoxville Tennessee half a century ago to attend the University of Tennessee, air travel was elegant. Full meals were served along with a complimentary beer, wine or cocktail and the seats had more than ample leg room. Now, every foot of space is utilized to jam as many passengers into ever shrinking seats and every service is offered at a price ala carte. I predict that we are less than a decade away from the airlines perfecting a way to meter the air you breathe during the flight and it will be an additional charge on the price of the ticket.
A decade ago I had my right knee replaced and it didn’t take long for my knee and leg to stiffen in the cramped seating space. The only relief was from getting up and walking the length of the plane periodically down the aisle that could barely accommodate one person let alone two. All night long passengers squeezed past one another, brushing up against seated sleeping passengers with apologies. Needless to say the flight was neither comfortable nor restful.
Once the dinner was served and the trays collected, I did manage to get a few hours of sleep. I awoke at approximately 7:00 A.M. and was able to look out the window as we passed over the west coast of Ireland. I was as struck by the lush greenery that covers the whole island as when I first viewed almost two decades before.
The Dublin Airport had grown considerably and been modernized in the twenty years since I had last visited. I retrieved my suitcase from baggage claim and decided it would be wise to have a couple of cups of coffee before attempting to drive into Dublin, where you drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car.
The first time I had visited Dublin, I was in a car with my wife Terri and her friend Mary Beth. Like this trip we had been on a flight that landed in the early morning. Bleary eyed, I tried to adapt to driving on the left side of the road and the right side steering wheel. The roads were narrow and every time we went around a curve the bushes would brush the left side of the car eliciting screams from my passengers. I tried to shrug off, what I perceived as needless hysteria, when I rounded a curve and sheared off the left-side passenger mirror on the side of a beer truck that was partially out in the road. My passengers let out a scream and dove into the rear seat with their coats over the heads. I got out and picked up the mirror and put it on the floor of the front of the car. “Are you going to call the police?” Mary Beth inquired. “Are you kidding me?” I responded, “who do you think is going to be found at fault for this?” We drove on and for the next several days I endured the shrieking that accompanied my driving.
We were coming out of Mass in Kinsale, a city with very narrow streets, when I tossed Marybeth the car keys and remarked, “I’m kind of tired of driving, why don’t you get us back to the B&B.” She climbed behind the wheel and drove about fifty yards, stopped and said,” I can’t do this.” “How about you Terri,” I said to my wife. “There is no way I can do it,” she said. We sat there for a few minutes and I said, “I don’t know how we’re going to get back then.” “Can’t you get us back?” Terri said. “You want me to drive?” I said incredulously. “Yes,” they both replied. “Okay, I responded, “I’ll do it on one condition. I don’t want to hear a sound for the rest of the trip about my driving from the rear seat.” With that understanding, we had a pleasant drive back to the B&B.
On my next trip to Ireland with my daughters, six months later, I discovered that the ability to drive on the left side with the steering wheel on the right, came back to me right away. My daughter, Meghan, who was nineteen at the time, also mastered it. Notwithstanding this, since it had been twenty years and I was older, so I was apprehensive about trying it in Dublin in midday. I needn’t have worried, it came back like riding a bicycle.
I don’t mean to suggest that driving in Dublin was easy. Like all of the cities, town and villages in Ireland, the streets are narrow and can be confusing. In some cases, the streets will intersect with another without any clear sign of where on ends and the other begins. It is not hard to get lost. Anticipating this, I had purchased an app for my cell phone called “Google Ireland” that was advertised as providing directions throughout the country. It would prove to be the most useless tool I ever purchased. As I drove to my hotel, jetlagged and all, the app never made a sound. I was relegated to driving through the city, while glancing at the screen to see if I was going in the right direction. Like a blind squirrel finding an acorn, I eventually found the hotel. I checked in and decided to go out for a walk to see if I could acclimate to Dublin time.
Dublin has metamorphosed into one of the most cosmopolitan, cultured cities in the world. It has a rich and diverse citizenry. The streets are filled with immigrant people dressed in their native garb. You can hear any language being spoken and find any cuisine. If you were to close your eyes and listen to the streets, you might think you were in New York City. Unlike Trump’s America, the immigrant population is welcomed, if not celebrated. I suspect that the reason for that is because throughout the past couple of centuries, other nations welcomed the Irish fleeing oppression and famine.
I checked into my hotel and immediately went out for a walk to stay awake, avoid jet lag and try to adapt to the new time zone.
Almost immediately I came across “The castle Lounge operated by J .Grogan.” Since one of my closest friends is Mike Grogan, I took this as a sign from God that I should have a pint. I went inside, ordered a pint of Harp and stuck up a conversation with the bartender. When he learned that I would be traveling to Northern Ireland he asked if I was going to attempt to cross the rope bridge at the Giants Causeway. It was the first time but not the last that I would hear about the Giants Causeway. At that point, the Giants causeway was not part of my itinerary and not being crazy about heights, I doubted the rope bridge would be added to it.
After leaving Grogan’s I walked through the neighborhood enjoying the scenery, sounds and the lyrical lilt of the Irish brogues. I ate dinner outside at an excellent Indian restaurant and decided to call it a night.
As I was checking out the next morning, the clerk inquired about my next destination? “Enniskillen,” I responded. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “If you think people are friendly here, wait until you meet the people there.” I would happily discover that she was right. To be continued.

In the weeks after I returned from Ireland with Meghan and Kate, I talked longingly of returning to it for a third visit. Terri, who had been very gracious about my taking the second trip with the girls six months after the first trip, told me I needed to take her to Italy first. In my book, that was more than fair.
Since we both were living busy professional lives, I was a judge in county court and she was the city attorney, we put our travel plans on the back burner.
Several years went by and one late weekend summer day in 2003, I was sitting in the sunroom at our home, giving a Mega Million lottery ticket a cursory glance while comparing the numbers on the ticket with the winning numbers published on the newspaper. I didn’t have my eyeglasses on but it appeared I purchased the winning ticket. My heart started to pound as I conducted a mad search for my glasses. Once I found them, I compared the numbers again. It turned out that I had five out of six of the winning numbers plus the mega ball number. It was one number short of the first place prize but I knew it had to be worth a prize. On Monday, Terri and I visited the lottery office and learned that the ticket was worth Five-thousand dollars.
“What are you going to do with the prize money?” Terri asked. “I’m going to use it to get the Italy monkey off my back,” I replied, “let’s start making travel arrangement.”
We traveled to Italy during the last week of October that year and had a wonderful trip through Rome, Florence Luca, Siena and Venice. The country was beautiful, the people very nice and the cuisine was out of this world. The only drawback were the drivers. Scooters would swarm every intersection almost daring you to hit them. Leaving Siena one morning, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a scooter rider behind me. He was so close that only the goggles appeared in the mirror. I told Terri, “If I touch these brakes, he’ going to go over the top of the car and be in front of us.” I decided that I’d rather drive on the left side of the road in Ireland with the steering wheel on the right side of the car rather than our conventional way in Italy.
When we returned home, I still longed to return to Ireland but it would be fifteen years more before I realized that dream.
In the intervening years much occurred that would whet my appetite to do so.
I began to follow the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland and the Peace Process that was unfolding there. In particular I studied the reports of the Independent Monitoring Commission which kept track of sectarian violence. I wrote an article titled “The Elusive Promise: Northern Ireland and the Quest for Peace” which I was invited to present at the regional conference of the American Conference of Irish Studies in Portland Oregon.
I was approached by the local chapter of the Irish American Cultural institute and asked to write a profile of my great-uncle, James K. McGuire, the youngest Mayor in the history of Syracuse, New York and leader of the Friends of Irish Freedom, a national organization that raised money for Irish independence in the years before, during and after the 1916 “Rising” in Ireland. I knew from family lore that Eamon DeValera fled to America after escaping jail in England that he had been sheltered by my ancestor, a fact that DeValera confirmed during a visit my parents had with him in 1973. My knowledge of McGuire was limited to what had been passed down from my mother, his niece, but I began to research his life and discovered a fascinating individual. When I was done, the profile amounted to thirty-eight pages on his life. The anthology was never completed or published.
I submitted the profile as a topic for the annual conference of the American Conference of Irish Studies to be held in New York City in April 2007 and was invited to present it on Friday, April 21 at City University of New York. Terri and I traveled to New York where I gave a talk entitled “James K. McGuire Boy Mayor and Irish Patriot.”
Shortly after I returned home, I was contacted by James Mackillop, who was the Editor of the Irish series at Syracuse university Press and very active in the American conference of Irish Studies. He told me that he had been at the ACIS Conference in New York and had very favorable reviews of my talk. We met for lunch and he asked me if I thought I could turn the paper into a full blown biography. I told him that I thought that I could without realizing that it would consume much of the next seven years of my life.
My great-uncle left no papers, letters, diaries or any other evidence concerning his experiences or thoughts about the events in his life. I was forced to go to a variety of sources, official mayoral correspondence, newspaper accounts, books that he published and the writings of others whose lives intersected with his fascinating journey through life. My research ultimately filled several large boxes which I would donate to the local historical society at the end of my quest to chronicle his life.
One of my earliest discoveries came from my great-grandfather’s obituary in the local Catholic newspaper. I discovered that my mother’s family didn’t come from Athlone but rather Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. My mother had passed away by then but I delighted in calling all of my siblings who had made pilgrimages to Athlone and asking them, “Where is Mom’s family from?” “Athlone” they all answered, “we’ve all been there.” “Well, I hate to break it to you but I found her grandfather’s obituary in the Catholic Sun and it says that he’s from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.” My youngest sister, Jane, who never lacked certitude said, “Maybe it’s wrong.” “You don’t think they knew where he was from when he died?” I replied, “he was only forty-nine years old.”
I continued to research and write about each episode in his life in local, state and national politics and his involvement in the 1916 “Rising” and fight for Irish independence. Along the way, I learned about fascinating characters from that era such as John Devoy, Michael Collins, Roger Casement, DeValera and a figure from an earlier era named Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, who is the subject of my current writing project.
In 2013 I delivered the Manuscript entitled James K. McGuire: Boy Mayor and Irish Nationalist to Syracuse University Press. It was over nine-hundred pages. The editors at the Press persuaded me to cut it to slightly over three-hundred pages. It was published in 2014 and won the 2014 Central New York book Award in Non-Fiction.
After the launch of the McGuire biography, I turned my attention to researching the life of O’Donovan Rossa. I followed the same routine of scouring the newspaper accounts about him both in Ireland and the United States. Fortunately, Rossa wrote his own recollections about the various episodes in his life and there is much great writing about the “potato famine” by the acclaimed Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan, Cecil Woodham-Smith and others although “famine” is a term that Rossa, Devoy and even James K. McGuire eschewed.
In 2015 I retired and had even more time to devote to this project and the desire to return to Ireland and make a long overdue pilgrimage to Enniskillen to see where the McGuires came from as well as the many places I was learning about in my research was upon me again. I proposed idea of a trip to Ireland to my close friend and law school classmate, Pat Doyle, a very successful lawyer in Washington, D.C. We agreed to meet in Dublin in August 2017 for a few days and travel throughout Northern Ireland.
More to come.

It had been nineteen years since I first visited Ireland. My wife, Terri, arranged the first trip with a number of our friends as a 50th birthday present. Little did I know that the country would have a magnetic effect on me that would pull me back again and again.
I think we were only three days into our excursion when it dawned on me that both sides of my family, the Faheys and the McGuires had longer history on this island that they did in the United States.
On our first trip with friends, we didn’t get to visit either of the areas where the Faheys and McGuires had come from. My cousin, John McGrath, a Canadian journalist had found our great-great grandfather, John Fahy’s baptismal certificate in Knockavilla, a hamlet outside of the Town of Cashel in County Tipperary. None of us batted an eye at the fact that the spelling of our last name had been changed with the addition of the letter “e” to it, since that seemed to be a common occurrence experienced by immigrants entering this country. I would later learn that our great-great grandmother’s name had been altered from Honora to “Hannah” when she arrived in North America. Unlike the McGuires, who entered the United States through New York City around 1855, the Faheys had emigrated through Canada during the 1870s and all searches for emigration records there led to a dead end.
We stayed in Waterford, Kinsale, Kenmare, Tralee, Galway and other beautiful towns and villages along the Irish coast. I was captivated by the beauty of the Cliffs of Mohr and amazed that there was no fencing at the edge of the cliff. Since I’m not a fan of heights, I stayed about fifteen yards back taking photos. Suddenly through the camera, I saw a young girl jump over the side. Heart pounding, I forgot my fear and ran to the edge and looked over to discover that she had jumped down to an out cropping about five feet below the edge. As my heart pounding was subsiding, I couldn’t help but think how lucky she was that I wasn’t her father.
I returned to Ireland six months later with my daughters, Meghan and Kate. Meghan was nineteen and Kate was fourteen. In Dublin on our first day, I told Meghan I would buy her a first “legal” pint at lunch. The pub owner took both our orders and then turned to Kate and asked, “What kind of a pint will you be having?” She looked at me and I said, “Not a chance.” Flattered at being thought to look older than she was, she turned to the pub owner and asked, “How old do you have to be to drink here?” “Eighteen but were flexible” he replied, “How old are you?” “fourteen,” she answered truthfully.” “We’re not that flexible,” he told her and she had to settle for a soda. She looked at me and plaintively asked, “Aren’t you going to let have even a sip while we here?” Yes,” I told her “But I’ll pick the time and place.”
We stayed in Dublin for a day and then set off on what I thought would be a journey to the places where the Faheys and McGuires came from.
Our first stop was Athlone, a beautiful town which the Shannon River ran through. My mother told us that her forebears came from Athlone and no trip to Ireland would be complete without a pilgrimage there.
I hadn’t seen Athlone on my first trip since we were traveling with friends and it didn’t fit into our itinerary. We arrived at mid-day and went into the Cathedral that sits at the heart of the town square, knelt and said a prayer for all the McGuires that had gone before us and lit a candle to their memory. Afterward, we ate lunch in Sean’s Bar which is the oldest pub in Ireland according to the Guinness Book of Records. After lunch we set out for our next stop, which was Cashel. We arrived in Cashel at dinner time and stayed at Rockville House a B&B owned by the Hayes Family.
The following day we drove to Knockavilla, a hamlet approximately ten kilometers away where my cousin, John, had found our great-great grandfather’s baptismal certificate. The only edifice in Knockavilla was the parish church, Church of the Assumption. Like our stop in Athlone, we went inside, knelt, said a prayer and lit a candle for all of the Fahey or Fahys that had come from there. As we left the church I told the girls that we needed to find a pub to toast the Faheys. My daughter, Meghan, said, it’s got to be a catholic pub too.”
We drove a short distance and the first pub I came to was named “The Rectory.”” Is this one Catholic enough?” I asked Meghan. The girls decided to fix their hair and make-up and I took the opportunity to go inside and order a Bulmer’s Cider which was Meghan’s drink of choice, a pint of Smithwick’s beer and a half pint of Smithwicks.
When the girls came in, I put the half pint of in front of Kate and said, “Here’s your sip.” As we ate lunch I stole glances at her and could tell she hated the dark beer but kept dutifully sipping it. Suddenly, her face flushed and she said to her sister, “My face feels hot.” Meghan started to laugh and told her that her nose had turned red. She turned to me and said, “Oh my God, Dad, my nose turned red, it will go away won’t it?” “Not if you keep drinking,” I replied. That was the end of her half pint of Smith wicks.
We left the Cashel-Knockavilla area and drove to Blarney so that they could kiss the Blarney Stone, not that either one of them needed it to get the gift of blarney.
Our next stop was in Limerick, where I had arranged for a walking tour of the locations set out in the memoir Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.
While McCourt’s book was a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner, I hadn’t realized how unpopular it was in Limerick. I suspect that there were a number of reasons for that including the portrayal of the Catholic Church as indifferent to the plight of the poor and the relationship between Angela and a cousin. As we walked the streets of Limerick with our guide, he was the target of a number of derisive comments by several motorists in the city. He took it in stride and was very knowledgeable about the locations and some of the situations portrayed in the book such as why many of the husbands and fathers had to seek employment in England due to Ireland’s poor economy, leading some of them to never return.
Limerick, which also has the Shannon River running through it, bore some of signs that the hard times had left on it in terms of poverty and neglected infrastructure. Fortunately, better days were ahead. While we were there, Dell Computers announced that it was opening a plant there and would become the largest employer in the country.
We left the following day for home. It was a very special father-daughters trip and I would always cherish those memories but I still hadn’t seen, done or visited all the places that I wanted to in Ireland and the yearning to return would be with me for the next two decades.

In his masterpiece, In Cold Blood, the author Truman Capote observed that neither Perry Smith nor Dick Hickok could have murdered the Clutter family alone but together they formed third personality.

The same was true of Buster and Casey as the roamed both the Harrigan property and ours.

Casey was a sweet little chocolate lab who wanted to be liked by everyone.

Buster, more aloof and a bit of a loudmouth, was really a nice dog that never bit anyone.

That said, if you were walking by the properties, one would sound the alarm and the other would start barking and this racket would continue until you traversed both properties.

It was particularly loud if you were wearing a mail uniform.

Despite their apparently different dispositions, it became clear, over time that Casey was in charge of this two dog pack.

She would periodically reassert this dominance by suddenly charging at Buster growling and snarling, chasing him through the electric fence and out into Strathmore Drive.

Buster would then be the recipient of a shock once he went through the fence and, again, when he returned.

When she got bored, Casey would steal a sneaker, shoe or some other object and make you chase her around the yard to get it back. She knew enough about frustration and torment to periodically drop it and then snatch it away as soon as you went to get it.

Occasionally, these episodes could result in a truly painful encounter.

I once stepped out into the yard as she came barreling around the garage with a golf club in her mouth which got me squarely on the knee.

I joined the long list of Irishmen who knew what it was to be “kneecapped.”

Buster had superb instincts and speed.

He could run like the wind, turn on a dime and would chase anything that moved or flew.

I often wondered what the neighbors watching from afar thought when they saw him charge out the door snapping at bees that they couldn’t see.

On one of their early morning walks behind Corcoran High School, he suddenly dove at a squirrel, causing it to leap up on Terri’s leg before trying to get away.

All before her morning cup of tea.

We ultimately learned, that despite his superb conditioning, Buster suffered from some of the congenital conditions common to pure-bred German Shepherds.

It first manifested itself when Terri noticed he wasn’t getting up either quickly or easily and seemed to lack his usual enthusiasm for his morning walk.

We took him to the Veterinary School at Cornell where they did a thorough work-up on him, including x-rays, and told us that he had a deteriorating disc in his back that was causing him discomfort.

The good news was that it could be surgically repaired.

Buster was required to stay there for a couple weeks after the surgery, which allowed me to tell the world that “there was finally a Fahey at Cornell.”

Once he came home, he was confined to the house for a couple of months and could only be taken outside for bathroom breaks on a dog sling.

Once the vet cleared him to return to everyday activities, he raced out the door and promptly blew out his ACL.

It was back to Cornell for a graduate degree.

All was well for a few more years until one morning he began to yelp in pain as he got up and down from the floor.

We took him back to Cornell for an evaluation and the vet called us while he was sedated on the x-ray table to tell us that bony scar tissue had grown through the spinal canal and was pressing on the nerves in his back.

He said that they could repair it, but it was only a matter of time before the condition repeated itself and caused the excruciating pain that he was in.

We both agreed that he was too nice a companion to put him through that again and again.

We enjoyed him for a good and memorable decade and still miss him.

I’ve been posting a piece here each week since January 2016 without a break.

I hope you have enjoyed reading them.

I’ve decided to step away from a weekly blog post for a while to concentrate on a couple of other writing projects that I’ve been neglecting.

I intend to post from time to time while concentrating on those projects and will alert in the usual way on Sunday night.

Thanks for reading and sharing my thoughts and experiences these past two and a half years,

It has been fun sharing them with you.

One of the things we discovered about Buster was that his protective instinct was constant whether it was in the yard, in the car or in the house.

My daughter, Meghan, loves to recount how he would happily get in the car to do errands with her and then hang out the window barking at everyone who passed by.

On one occasion, she was driving down Glenwood Avenue when she passes a woman jogging with earphones on, which kept her from hearing the car’s approach. As they came abreast of the jogger, Buster leaned out the window and let out a large bark near her ear. The poor woman jumped a foot into the ear, letting out a scream that almost caused Meghan to drive into the retaining wall next to the road.

When he was young, doing errands with him was a challenge. If you left him for a few minutes in Wegman’s parking lot, his separation anxiety would kick in and he’d hang out the window whining and crying loudly. On more than one occasion I came out of the store to find a crowd gathered around the car convinced that he was being tortured.

His sense of protection extended particularly to Terri, Meghan and Kate. If somebody came in the house and gave one of them a hug, he’d jump up on them to push them away. Very few people ignored this or pushed back. Ultimately, I was able to use this to my advantage.

Terri and I were reading in bed one night, when one of the girls came upstairs and asked if she could watch a movie downstairs with her boyfriend.

“Sure,” I replied, “make yourselves at home but don’t stay up too late.”

After she went back downstairs, Terri said to me, “Aren’t you concerned about them being downstairs alone?”

“They’re not alone,” I replied, “Buster is down there with them.”

I was dead certain that my boy would climb up on the couch across from them and the first time the guy put his arm around her, he’d be met with a low growl that would cause him to re-think the wisdom of that move or any others.

Buster never disappointed me in that situation.

Later, I would have to resort to introducing myself to a prospective boyfriend by declaring, “I want you to know that I used to represent people that killed people for a living.”

That introduction had the same effect as Buster’s growl but caused my daughters to take a dim view of me for a few days.

Buster could be somewhat discriminating about who he would let into the house.

One summer my elderly aunt, who lived in Canada, stayed with us while she attended a reunion.

Terri and I had plans for the evening of her reunion and gave her a key to the house in the event she came home ahead of us.

“I hope you’re not afraid of dogs, Aunt Margie,” I told her, “Buster can be territorial.”

“I’ll be fine,” she told me.

When we got home, we discovered that she had no problem getting into the house and going to sleep.

At the next family gathering, Margie’s visit came up and one of my cousins asked her if she wasn’t nervous trying to get into the house with a dog that size and that protective.

She waved away any concern telling the group, “it’s easy if you just reach in and pet him.”

My sense of security began to wane.

After Kate and Meghan went off to college, Terri, Buster and I continued to live in the six bedroom house on Strathmore Drive.

With the girls gone, sleeping arrangements shuffled somewhat and Buster now had a bedroom with a queen size bed at the end of the hall over the driveway.

For some reason that I never quite figured out, he also had the telephone in his room.

I am a pretty sound sleeper and I didn’t hear it ring one night when the police called to see if they could bring a search warrant over for me to review.

When I didn’t answer the call, they pulled into the driveway and knocked on the driveway door.

This resulted in Buster charging down the stairs, barking, which woke me up?

I threw some clothes on, went downstairs and let them in while I reviewed the warrant.

A few weeks later, they called with another warrant and, as usual, I didn’t hear the phone ring.

They pulled into the driveway and called the house again.

I later learned that after the second call, they called their superior for instructions about what to do.

“Go knock on Fahey’s door,” he told them, “that will wake the dog up and he’ll answer the door.

The cops and I had found our rhythm.

I was later recounting this tale to my friend, Larry Hackett, while Kate Fahey listened.

When I was done, she asked Larry, “Do you think Buster is a police dog?”

He thought about it for a minute and replied, “I think he’s more like a crossing guard dog.”

I wouldn’t argue with that.

More next week

When we agreed to take Buster, we really didn’t have a complete sense of what his personality was.

He was a year old and the couple who was giving him up assured us that he wasn’t mean or vicious and this seemed borne out by the way he interacted with their children when we were there.

We quickly discovered that he was a dominant dog as evidenced by the way he would try and herd Terri and the girls downstairs each morning by nipping at their ankles.

It became increasingly annoying for them and although they told him “no” or “stop” it continued.

It all came to a head one Sunday evening when he started it and I happened to be on the landing with Terri between the first and second floor.

I raised my voice and firmly told him “no,” only to be met with loud barking. I repeated the word louder and the barking got louder.

I swallowed hard reached down, grabbed him by the collar and pinned him on his back and repeated the word loudly.

I held him on the floor for a minute and repeated “no” again before letting him up.

Little did he know how nervous I was about this show down.

We had one more encounter like this and then he accepted the fact that I was leader of the pack.

From that day forward, he would, for the most part, obey when I gave a command…….unless I let him off the leash and he went stone deaf.

He was also very territorial and protective.

For the first couple of weeks, he wouldn’t let the Harrigans cleaning lady come up the driveway to get to their house. Eventually, he decided she was part of the pack and relented.

A more complicated situation involved deliveries to their house.

Denny did much of her writing at home and was the recipient of occasional FedEx deliveries.

Since we didn’t know when the FedEx deliveries were scheduled, whether the package was delivered might depend on whether Buster and Casey were outside.

Although we later discovered that Casey held the upper hand between them, she was only too happy to back Buster up when it came to preventing deliveries.

All of this was minor compared to the situation that shortly unfolded after Buster’s arrival.

Terri and I were standing in our kitchen one Saturday morning, when we heard a loud male voice repeatedly shout, ” How do you like that?”

We opened the door onto the driveway and found the mailman spraying Buster with a can of “Halt.”

Buster had backed up, out of range and was barking loudly.

Apparently, the mailman had come up the driveway and was trying to put the mail in the box, which squeaked loudly, resulting in Buster racing around the house from the back yard barking.

I tried to calm the mailman down by telling him that Buster had never bitten anyone which seemed to give him little comfort or reassurance.

Over time, I would give this same assurance to visitors that he barked at until Terri told me that it didn’t have the desired effect.

The mailman left after uttering a few choice curse words and I had the vague realization that I had seen this movie before.

I quickly got into the car and drove to the Post Office on South Ave, where I rented a post office box.

The ghost of my sister’s dog, Lucky, had returned.

A month or two after we started picking up the mail at the post office, our mailman went on vacation and his substitute made a friend of Buster, by providing him with dog treats.

Mail deliveries resumed for two weeks until our regular mailman returned.

He would march past the house, glaring at Buster with his can of “Halt” in his outstretched hand.

Buster and Casey dutifully ignored him.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the workings of an invisible fence, I’ll try and explain it.

I should warn you that my knowledge of all things scientific is primitive and my primitive explanation could be wrong.

A wire is buried several inches in the ground which looped around both properties at their rear and side perimeters and then across a portion of the front yard.

A unit with a transmitter mounted in Kevin’s garage sent electricity to make the wire hot and also, depending on the strength of the signal, caused the dog collar to beep at a certain distance from the fence and delivered a shock to the collar if the wire was crossed.

The distance between when the beeping started and the wire could be increased or decreased by raising or lowering the frequency.

The first time we turned the fence on, the frequency was so high the dogs wouldn’t leave the house.

Buster and Kevin’s dog, Casey, a small female chocolate lab looked forlornly at each other across the driveway from kitchen doors that faced each other.

Once we got the frequency lowered to an appropriate level, we had to walk the dogs around the yard so that they would get familiar with the beeping.

There were a few draw backs to the invisible fence.

If the power went out the fence was useless. This happened a couple of times allowing Buster to wander freely throughout the neighborhood.

Another drawback was the battery in the collar getting low.

I could usually tell that was occurring when Buster would venture further and further down the driveway and ever closer to the line in the driveway under which the wire was buried.

The sales representative that sold us the fence advised us that we could tell if the collar or the fence was in operation by walking down the driveway holding the collar and listening for the beep.

He neglected to tell me that you shouldn’t hold it with your fingers on the prongs that delivered the electric shock.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

The third and most complicated was a break in the wire.

On one occasion an adjacent property owner took it upon himself to clear weeds and brush along the rear property line.

He dutifully dug up the wire, thinking it was a root, he cut it.

I didn’t have much of a challenge finding that break and was able to shut the fence down while I spliced it back together with heavy duty electrical tape.

The challenge in finding other breaks came when the wire was cut while mowing the grass or doing yard work.

On the occasions when that occurred, it was necessary to get down on hands and knees and follow the wire around the property until the break appeared. It was like looking for the proverbial needle in the hay stack.

For whatever reason, we were always able to locate the break and splice it back together.

As Otto Von Bismarck once observed, “God smiles on fools, drunkards and the United States.”

While the fence kept the dogs in most of the time, it didn’t keep anything out.

Buster and Casey would lay in the front yard and watch the world go by.

Another neighbor’s cat, Olive, learned that she could inflict extreme emotional distress on both dogs by running into the yard and then scampering outside the fence as both dogs charged at her full speed while the collars beeped.

That led to a discussion with my daughter Kate, who asked what she could get Buster for Christmas.

“Well,” I said after a minute, “I’d bet he’d like his very own cat.”

“You’re awful Dad,” was the only reply.

In due time, history would repeat itself.

More to come next week.

Terri and I hadn’t been living on Strathmore Drive in the city, when she proposed that we get a dog.

“What kind?” I asked. “How about a German-Shepherd” she responded.

When she was single and living in Portland, Maine, she had a shepherd named “Caleb,” who was, by all accounts, the model dog.

I’d had dogs growing up but never a pure breed and never a shepherd.

Our dogs were mutts that came from somewhere which now escapes me.

My sister, Jane, brought home what appeared to be an escaped junk yard dog, that she named “Lucky.”

He didn’t like anybody but her.

When my brother Jim came home from his tour with the poverty program, VISTA, it was a few weeks before the dog would let him in the house without one of us having to meet him at the door.

Lucky stayed with us for a number of years during which we had to pick the mail up at the post office because he would take the seat off the mail carrier’s pants.

His encounters with the mail carrier weren’t by chance.

He dug a pretty good sized hole under a bush next to our house and would lie in it up to his neck and charge out when the mail carrier least expected it.

On some nights he would refuse to come in the house and would lie outside chasing traffic-particularly motorcycles.

My father would stay up all night with the screen door propped open and try to entice him into the house, when suddenly a motorcycle would go by.

The next day I heard him yelling, “You’re no Goddamn good. You stay out all night. You don’t come home. You keep everyone up!”

It took a while for it to register that he was yelling at the dog and not one of my brothers.

Lucky disappeared as mysteriously as he came.

One of the neighbors told us that they thought they saw him go by in the back of a pick-up truck but he neglected to get the license number.

Terri came across an ad in one of the weeklies that said a German-shepherd was up for adoption to a good home.

We made arrangements to visit.

My first impression of Buster was that he was the largest German-Shepherd I had ever seen.

He came into the house and proceeded to go from table to table picking up any toy the children had left behind.

The owners told us that he was only a year old but they decided that since they had a number of small children that they just didn’t have the time to spend with him.

They assured us that he was very good with children and I was reassured by seeing that he seemed quite gentle around them.

Terri and I told them we would talk and let them know what our decision about taking him would be.

I have to say that he was one of the most beautiful dogs I had ever seen.

We both came away with the impression that he seemed quite gentle and, since Terri had experience with shepherds, we decided to adopt him.

We brought him home and our adventures started.

Probably the first thing we learned was that if he was outside off the leash, he went completely deaf.

You could call his name until you were blue in the face and he wouldn’t come until he felt like it.

That never changed.

We both had some real safety concerns about this.

He had moved from the country to the city and the traffic was much denser so the possibility of his getting injured or killed by a car was very real.

Our second concern was that he could get dognapped and wind up in one of those dog fighting rings that seemed to be proliferating at that time.

Since we were both working it wasn’t fair to leave him in the house all day and we learned that there were down sides to that.

Shepherds, in particular, suffer from separation anxiety and during the short period we struggled to come up with a solution, he destroyed a couch in our television room.

The solution would have to come fast.

I got estimates from a number of fence companies but they were not only expensive but there was no guarantee he couldn’t jump the fence.

Strathmore was a beautiful neighborhood and the last thing I wanted to do was put up a chain link fence that looked like the second coming of Attica Correctional Facility.

As it turned out, the solution was across the driveway.

We shared a driveway with Kevin and Denny Harrigan who became great neighbors and great friends.

They had a female chocolate lab named Casey and they were wrestling with the same dilemma.

While neither of our yards alone afforded the dogs much room to run, if we fenced both of them they had plenty of room to play.

We hit upon putting an invisible fence that ran around the perimeter of both our houses and the dogs would be able to keep each other company and have room to play.

It would prove to be one of the most entertaining sagas I ever was privileged to witness.

More to come next week.

Once Donovan passed away, Terri was faced with a dilemma.

She had only two mules and taking one out for a ride would throw the remaining one into a panic because of separation anxiety.

The only recourse was to get another equine.

To my surprise, she wasn’t going to restrict her choice to mules.

Horses were in the running so to speak.

She spread the word among her riding group and everyone was on the lookout for a likely candidate.

Throughout most of 2016, Terri checked out a number of likely prospects to no avail.

Finally in October 2016, she learned from a friend about a Tennessee walking horse that she might sell.

Tennessee walkers are prized for their smooth gait.

When I was considering what kind of equine to buy, my friend and horse guru, Gordon Bellair, was very high on my getting a Tennessee walker.

Instead, because I’m a chicken at heart when it comes to heights, I opted for a mule because they were so conscious of their own safety that they won’t do anything dangerous to themselves and, presumably, me.

If I’d chosen another path, I would probably have missed out on my pal, Donovan.

Terri and several of her riding group went to look at the Tennessee walker and, as promised, he provided a very smooth ride.

Cody came home that fall.

Once Cody became part of the herd, there was a change in the pecking order.

Cody is younger and bigger than Franklin and established himself as the barnyard boss.

Where once Franklin was able to bully Donovan out of his grain, he now found himself on the receiving end.

I can’t say my heart broke for him.

Like all of her other equines, Terri spent a lot of time doing ground work with him in the round pen learning commands.

Cody proved to be an apt student picking up the commands quickly.

He was so responsive, that during a gathering of her riding group at our house, she remarked on how pleasant it was to not have to play tug of war with a 1,500 pound mule on the other end of a rope who didn’t want to come.

“Who knew?” she said out loud.

After a pregnant moment of silence, her friend, Laurie Bobbett, said “We all did,” to a roomful of laughter.

While the third equine would appear to have solved the separation anxiety that would have arisen with the mules, Terri wasn’t done acquiring a herd.

I should have recognized that in the way we accumulate animals.

We now have two dogs, two cats and three chickens.

Occasionally someone will ask me if I have considered building an ark.

The truth is that I have.

The problem is that I would be tempted to set sail without them.

Earlier this year, Terri and her girlfriends went to a horse sale and she spotted a paint horse.

She was told that he came from Kentucky but the reality is that he could have come from anywhere.

He’s a nice, quiet, responsive and obedient guy who will be occupying the fourth stall that is being readied for him.

He is presently being boarded at Terri’s riding instructor, Meg Titus’s barn.

His name is Finn and he’ll be arriving home soon.

I don’t know if he is the last of the menagerie or whether there is another set of animals in our future.

The only prediction I am prepared to make is that when I ultimately go on to my great reward, those mules will be fighting over my recliner.

This also brings me to the end of my series on our animals.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I don’t know what I’ll be blogging about next weeks.

If it’s about current events, public officials or politicians at the state or national level, we will have segued from half-asses to complete asses.

When was the last time we got to do that?