Sidewalk paw prints recall a long-lost friend

Like a lot of families in the 1950s, my father and mother, Francis and Margaret Ellen Barker Mangold, while living in Washington, Iowa, were parents of a growing family. I and four of my siblings were born in Washington within five years of each other. My youngest brother was born in Sioux City some years later.

Welcoming the arrival of all these children, in addition to Mom and Dad, was our family cocker spaniel, Flash. My mother and grandmother, Bessie Barker, became “moms” to flash in 1948 — a year before Mom and Dad married. Born first, I developed a special bond with my four-legged protector and playmate. Even now in my 73rd year I remember the softness of his hair, his floppy ears, and the kindness in his eyes. As my sisters and brother grew older, they too experienced the companionship of our beloved Flash. Wherever we were, Flash was there with us.

In 1955, our family and Flash moved to Muscatine after Dad took the position as news and sports director for radio station KWPC. Here is a picture of Mom, us kids, and Flash in front of our house in Muscatine. I am bending over holding Flash on the far left.

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It was a sad time for all of us when our beloved Flash passed over the rainbow bridge when I was about nine years old. As if knowing how much we would miss him, Flash left us a concrete memorial of himself.

In the early 1950s while our family was living in the upstairs of Grandmother Barker’s house at 529 West Main Street in Washington, Flash decided to do a little exploring of the neighborhood. According to family lore, Flash took off and ran into some freshly poured sidewalk concrete on West Main.

On occasion, when we visited family in Washington, we marveled at the remembrance he left us in the sidewalk. As time went by and I and the rest of the family moved from Iowa to other states, the memories of Flash’s contribution to posterity faded a bit. In 2021, one of my sisters moved back to Washington from Minnesota. The following year, the exodus from Minnesota was complete when my wife and I moved to Burlington to be closer to family.

In September 2022, I began thinking about the paw prints and returned to the sidewalk on West Main to look for them. Sure enough, there they were, and remain to this day. I sometimes wonder what people were thinking if they happened to peer out their windows to see me walking up and down the sidewalk in front of their houses, and then stopping to take pictures of who knows what on the sidewalk!

After I took the pictures, I showed them to my sister living in Washington. She knows a thing or two about dogs having had many of them throughout her lifetime. She confirmed for me that they were paws from a cocker spaniel.

While we miss this special family member, we are comforted by being able to view Flash’s paw prints and walk on the same sidewalk he ran on some 70 years later. Thank you, Flash, for watching us over all these years!