Battery Park and Gazebo
Act I : After touring the historic areas of downtown Charleston by car and on foot we pulled our car into a difficult to find and tight parking spot on South Battery Street,

alongside the expansive grassy park lawn in the shade of an abundant array of mature, massive and stately oak trees. Battery Park is intermittently lined on the Charleston Harbor side with ancient black cannons and welded cannon balls piled pyramid style alongside each. The muzzles face out to an island housing the historic, Fort Sumter National Monument.

*

Almost immediately we were caught up in an all consuming morality play being staged on the wide sidewalk surrounding the park.

There were two uniformed African Americans in dark blue uniforms, a female who appeared to be the one in charge and her male partner. Both were overweight, but she, much more noticeably so than he. They were working feverishly at some unusual task alongside a maroon van with a partially opened sun roof. There were nine white people, including the two of us, who were observing what was going on. Some of us were also overweight but we were dressed informally in light summer colors. It took long moments to figure out what was taking place.

The female was extending a pole out away from her. It had a noose-like collar at the far end, which was around the neck of a small thin black dog suspended in mid air. She was slowly, carefully, lowering the dog into a cage sitting on the sidewalk. Her male companion was very cautiously (to avoid being bitten) guiding the animals descent into the cage which opened from the top.

*It was then that the story began falling into place. Their dark blue police-like uniforms and the two official vans parked on the street indicated that they were animal control officers, out on assignment.

What was taking place was one thing, but the different interpretations of and reactions to the incident were something straight out of William Faulkner, counter posing southern blacks and whites but in a reverse relationship. There was one small, red faced older gentleman, wearing a flat brimmed straw hat with a red band wrapped around the oval top with the word “Marshall” prominently displayed. Whereas his demeanor was serious and his label appeared to call for respect, he looked less like a government official and more like someone on a lunch break from a political convention.

He volunteered to us, almost indignantly, that the officers were only doing their job and it was a job that needed doing. At that moment I didn’t understand where the indignation came from, so I let it pass. My wife, picking up on something the Marshall said earlier about a dog having escaped and run wild through the park, asked innocently, “but how did he get out of the car?” The Marshall stormed away from us, in a huff.

Another fellow, a rather stocky middle aged gentleman who, like the Marshall, sounded southern and local to that neighborhood, found it necessary to explain to us that, because Charleston gets so hot, leaving children or, as in this case, animals in a locked car is a very serious matter. He explained that there had been recent incidents involving infants. We too, even up north, have heard of such cases. He spied another mustached man who had entered upon the scene, and was talking to our straw hatted confidant who was now about 15 feet away, and called out to the newcomer, “Here’s another case for you, Brett”. Ah, Brett must be an attorney, I surmised.

It was 5:15 P.M. The female officer is heard to say “they have been here since 1:00 P.M. “We’re gonna throw the book at them people”.

Act II : Two middle aged women come running onto the sidewalk (stage) with expressions of serious distress on their faces. That is their car and those are their dogs. At this point it is clear that there are four dogs involved, three miniature black dogs belonging to one women and a miniature white one belonging to the other. Throughout this period I never heard any of the dogs bark. “What are you doing to our dogs?”. The female officer goes immediately on offense. She is accusatory and dramatic in her response, citing the seriousness of the animal abuse that has taken place. The dogs were abandoned for many hours in the locked car. They escaped and were running wild around the park. People in the park were worried sick about the dogs being left for so long and then running out of control.

The animal control office had strict rules and procedures in such cases. In a nutshell, the animals would not be available to their owners for a month. They would be spayed, be given shots and have identifying microchips implanted. Ownership papers would have to be submitted by the 30th. day. Fines and costs would have to be paid. All in all, it would come to $1,000. No, she answered in response to the woman's plea, the process can not be speeded up and no, we cannot simply charge the $1,000 to your “Master Card”. You’ll be lucky if we don’t put you in jail.

The older of the two women is beside herself and begins weeping. She is apologetic and admits she was wrong. By way of explanation, she maintains they weren’t gone that long, that the sun roof was left open for cooling and it just wasn’t that hot a day. They had gone into a restaurant and then for a stroll. The suitcases were piled on the seat so the dogs could climb up and stick their heads out the window. None of the dogs was capable of jumping out. The weeping dog owner said they were visiting from Ohio and could not stay in Charleston for a month. We’ll, they were told you can leave and return in a month. The older woman explained, that one of the dogs had previous bouts of separation anxiety without her. It was all to no avail.
The supervising officer was severe and unsympathetic. These were the rules and those were the procedures. There would be no exceptions made.

She was in the process of gathering the identifying information when an older woman observer with a French accent, who herself had a dog on a leash, tried to intervene on behalf of the accused women. Her face was distorted probably as a result of a previous stroke and her French accented speech was therefore doubly difficult to understand. The officers would hear nothing of it anyway and continued. The woman then came directly over to us and repeated her objections to what was taking place. We listened attentively but were not able to catch it all.* I then heard some God awful singing. It was coming from the nearby park lawn. A man was riding his bicycle round and round the immediate area, repeatedly calling the man in the straw hat, a ”Blue Blood”, “your a blue blood through and through” over and over in his best singsong voice. There were two other bike riders behind him following every circle he made, but they said nothing. I was reminded of a circus act featuring clowns on wheels.

*
In a few minutes he and his two teen age daughters sat down next to me and explained how he had received the exact same treatment. His labrador retriever who wasn’t bothering anyone, was captured and confined while the animal control department went through a long involved procedure and later charged for all costs plus a fine. The shots and the microchip alone cost $150. He had only one dog these women have four.

Picking up on the sympathy being expressed for the dog owners among the observers the female warden switched from offense to defense. She laid out her own sense of victimization in the situation. She revealed that she had a bad back and her doctor has ordered that she not lift anything heavier than a quart of milk. She was the one who did all the heavy lifting in transferring the dogs from the car to the cages. It’s no wonder she was so angry. Then surprisingly, she relented somewhat and offered the dog owners some hope. They could come to the department office tomorrow to plead their case. Something seemed to have happened to, at least soften her mood and the previously rigid attitude she projected.

After a while, the officers left with the dogs and we went over to try and comfort the women. Another couple that I hadn’t previously noticed joined us. They had seen the whole thing from the beginning.


They recounted what they had witnessed. It started when an elderly woman, who was walking in the park alone, caught sight of the dogs in the car. She was outraged by the scene and what she read into it, so she called the police. Animal control arrived and attempted to remove the dogs one at a time from the car through the open roof with the stick and neck collar. One, only one, of the dogs escaped and ran through the park catching everyone's attention. The two huffing and puffing, yelling officers chased him all over the place, but fell further and further behind. Another woman, realizing the dog was scared more than anything, lured him to her comforting arms and carried him back to the car. The officers continued their dog extraction efforts and transferred the four dogs into two cages.

The male observer who together with his wife were visiting from Kentucky pulled out his business card and offered himself as a witness to the women from Ohio.

Whose behavior was more abusive, the dog owners or the authorities? The clash of views apparently brought together here, included the formal traditions and casual sense of time characteristic of the Old South, minority group members who have risen to positions of authority in the municipal bureaucracy of their southern community and outsiders, tourists and dog lovers whose attitudes toward this kind of infraction were very different.

In reflecting on the events we witnessed, two puzzling question came to mind. Why was it that almost everyone that took part in the controversial incident (both actors and observers) chose to seek my wife and me out to express their take on what had taken place? We were strangers trying to grasp what was happening just like everyone else, but we hadn’t really asked a lot of questions or stated a particular point of view.

During the unfolding events we assumed they sensed our desire to know and were trying to be helpful. But there were many other observers and we seemed, for some reason, to be the listeners of choice.
*
Secondly what was it that accounted for the seemingly dramatic shift in the stance of the female officer, just before she left?.


Then a possible explanation for both presented itself. I had been taking photos of the whole incident from all different angles, and assumed I would be the proverbial “fly on the wall” and noticed by noone. Upon reflection however, people had to have been aware of my activities. There were no objections, nor even a wayward sign of recognition, but how could they not have known. They must have drawn some conclusions about my purposes and whatever those assessments were, they decided to volunteer information. We were all observers but my picture taking must have made me the official recorder of record.

They wanted me to get the story right. Getting it right meant seeing things as they saw them. But not everyone saw it the same way. What each person brought to the scene influenced what they took from it. The presence and activation of a camera made virtually everyone suspect that the script for this dramatic slice of life probably would be written in retrospect.

Even when the female officer opted to tell of her bad back she, intentionally or not, was trying to influence how she would be seen in whatever final script there was to be written. No one knew if, or when or even where the final judgment would take place. No one knew who would be the final arbiter (her Maker, her supervisor, the observers or my camera.