How much is that Bloodhound in the window?

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I’m a mutt, I’ll admit it–half Italian, half Heinz 57, solid C average across the board–any board.  No papers. I may have been a little smarter (transcript wise) had I attended easier schools in the early years but hey, I was always a low hanging fruit grabbing kind of guy.  I was born in Levittown, Pennsylvania where they planted a low hanging fruit grabbing tree in every front yard, for crissakes. It was included in the $9,999 List Price along with a garden hose and a rose bush.  Environmental Determinism, I argue.

My parents stood in line to buy their asbestos and plywood dream home, along with every other aunt and uncle in the Petro family, back in the early 1950s.  I, my one sister, and at least 17 of my 27 first cousins, were all conceived under identical roofs over identical floorplans and given the limited TV Guide lineup of that particular era, possibly with the same program airing on the tube during many of our respective magic moments…as it were. Reruns, Vatican I et al…

This inauspicious start in life is not to imply that I don’t have good taste; or an appreciation of the finer things in the universe; or a penchant for all treasures classic, or rare, or unique. On the contrary, I love all those things. I embrace the perfect example of anything. I’m all about pinnacles. (I may even suffer from a little pinnacle envy, if you must know.)  I’m just saying…putting it out there, as it were…that I may not be a 100% blue blooded, redbone Bloodhound.  Somewhere along the line, I misplaced my registration, or forgot to apply, or didn’t qualify by the published AKC Flemish Hound Standard as follows:

Temperament: Extremely Affectionate. (Points taken off immediately)

Expression: Noble and Dignified. (Ditto)

Gait: Elastic. (I can see that. Give me a point)

Weight: Male–90-110 LBS. (Whack me double)

Head: Narrow in proportion to its length.  (See where I’m going with this?)

We all saw the You Tube video. My big fat head is not narrow or proportionate to anything. As I told  Don Reedy, my table mate and new BFF at Unchained,

“I look like my grandfather. He was a butcher. Five foot nothing and bald as a polished walnut.”  Not a thin man either, my maternal grandpop.

Don thought that was funny. But I was being serious. We watched the taped daily highlights every morning in full, wide screen panavision before the start of each day’s session. My head was not narrow and my expression, not dignified. Now Glenn Kelman…he’s dignified. Kind of looks a little like a Bloodhound pup, too; very cute and hard not to like (although not quite deserving of link love at this point from Author 26).

My grandpop would sip on a hammered tin cup of chicken blood, eat Limburger cheese, smoke Camels and drink Bendictine all day long in his butcher shop, waiting for the few neighborhood customers he had left to come in for a quick visit and a pound of veal on credit.

“Get your thumb off that scale, Dan Girardi!” they’d tease as he prepared their orders. 

Or

“Grind a pound for me, too, Dan Girardi!” as he crunched through the gears of his Rambler Ambassador on his way to the beer gardens.

The A&P down the street had all but wiped out his livlihood by the time I was born but he still found a way to die a modestly wealthy man. He’d reread one book, Dante’s Inferno, over and over (I have the very, crumbling copy on my credenza) and watch Westerns on the Black and White in the back room in the afternoons. A man who read Dante and drove an Ambassador had to have a least some Bloodhound in him, perhaps.

“Hey Genie….empty the tray,” he’d cackle in broken English. “…emp-a-tee da turday.”  Empty the tray; the imaginary tray under the television that collected all the blood from the Cowboys and Indians and the vertical waste from their horses. It was a big joke to him. That and putting Limburger cheese on my ‘snout.‘  To this day I can eat my meat raw…if I have to, and my sense of smell is, at the very least, keen, thanks to him. (Okay, add points there.)

So at best I’m loyal and I’m trainable and I know my place in this pack of blogging pedigrees–the collective genius minds at Unchained this past week proved to the RE.net world as much. This is why I personally will never attempt to post algorithm formulas or think of anything intriguing or relevant enough that would possibly generate more than a handful of comments. I’m not that kind of dog. I’m guessing I’m the kind in the window you look at when you walk by–nothing too flashy; just your basic Sit/Stay/Fetch variety canine with a Thesaurus and Spellcheck.  I don’t even like to bite much anymore. Like I said earlier, Heinz 57.  (I don’t know, maybe it’s vernacularly Pennsylvanian term. It was always a big saying in our family but then again, we were all  genealogical mutts on my father’s side of that low hanging tree.)

My wife Mona wanted to know if we would get a pair of flappy bloodhound ears at the conference.  “All good conferences get at least some kind of hat to wear,” she added in jest…I think. Back at the hotel I pulled up the You Tube video on my laptop and proved her otherwise. “Maybe not,” she said. “But that Glenn Kelman guy looks cute.”

 I looked around for some Limburger cheese to stick on her snout but the mini bar was only stocked with liquor and breath mints. Law and Order was on the tube in both rooms of our suite. I told her to empty the tray before Leno came on then fell asleep on the sofa thinking about Page Rank and  f(x)*.05 and WTF any of it has to do with the price of tea in Chinatown and if my grandpop was at least part redbone Bloodhound…