Chances are, if you have a dog, you're familiar with Snausages. An art director named Dennis Yeider came up with the name in a eureka moment years ago, when our group was working on this new sausage style snack. I think his exact words were, "Snack sausage? How about Snausages?"
In advertisng, my being in the same room with Dennis is almost as good as
coming up with the name itself. But modesty forbids taking all the credit. Anyway, you may
remember the commercials, the silly dog and the funny voiceover --
"Snausages. Dogs in search of the perfect snack."
The guy who did the voiceover for all those commercials -- remembered
by Snausages fans almost verbatim to this day, twenty years later, was
a good friend of mine. Where he came up with that voice, I'll never
know. He was usually hired to be the voice of beer or insurance
companies, not for something goofy like a cartoon dog. Dennis and his
partner obviously saw a side to him I missed in the four decades I knew
His voiceover work was quite lucrative for him. He also had small
character parts in a few movies, especially if they were looking for a
coach or a cop. His most high profile role was playing The Rangemaster
in The Untouchables. He only had a couple of lines, but he ended up
with plenty of stories about what it was like working with Sean Connery
and Kevin Kostner. None of which can be told here.
He wasn't that old, sixty-one or sixty-two. But his last seven years
had been pretty hard. Especially for a guy who'd been MVP of his high
school football team and won the local 4th of July race for men 18 and
over well into his forties.
That's because seven years ago he underwent a heart liver transplant
after his heart was destroyed by the hereditary version of a disease
His dad had died of the same illness. He had the same doctor as his
father, so you might think the doc would have been alerted to the
possibility. Like father, like son. However, not only was his doctor
clueless, but a cardiologist who looked at an echocardiogram of his
enlarged heart said it was bigger because he had been an athlete all
his life. Even with evidence to the contrary, like a telltale halo on
the scan, caused by the disease, nobody caught the problem until two
Anyway, he underwent the heart-liver transplant they hoped would alleviate the
symptoms of the disease. Except that the amyloidosis, which is pumped
out by the liver, had invaded too much of his body, in particular his
intestines. So he spent all these years after the transplant with
chronic diarhea and nerve damage in his lower legs that finally left
him emaciated and unable to walk.
He was also always complaining that he was cold, so he would lie in
front of the fireplace to warm up at night. Unfortunately, he couldn't
feel the heat from the fire on his legs, so two or three times he fell
asleep and woke up with second and third degree burns that once
required skin grafts. I asked him why he didn't just get an electric
blanket. He wondered why his wife didn't get him one.
What about his wife? She became a monster. Without her he wouldn't
qualify for the transplant list because family is so important
afterward. Because of her I'm convinced he died sooner than he had to.
Once a week she would prepare boxes of pills for him to take each day.
I guess the effort was exhausting. You'd think she was Mother Teresa
the way she talked about the sacrifices she was making for him. She
didn't let hiim forget it either.
She added a dose of venom to every meal she served him that left those
of us who listened to her heartless ridicule just shaking our heads.
During the year he was waiting for his transplant, I drove him out to a
house they owned in Michigan to open it up for the summer. His wife made some snide remark about how she wasn't worried about us
being alone together because he couldn't get it up anymore anyway.
Yeah, he'd been a bad boy forty years ago. I busted him myself on more
than one occasion. But I knew her secrets too. In fact, I may be the
only person who knew both sides. As time and his health began sliding
down hill, she just got worse and worse.
The last time I was with them together last summer, she was making
faces at him behind his back. He saw her reflection in the window and
told her to stop.
When he died last week, I'm glad one of the kids, not the witch, called
to tell me. "Is this a call I don't want to get?" Yes. Two days
later I called her to ask if there was anything she needed me to do. I
was referring, I thought, to bringing food, helping to make
arrangements, writing an obituary.
"No, My friends from work have all been great. I'm going to Millennium Park today and tonight we're all going out."
She never mentioned her dead husband during our conversation. Not once. It was all about her.
So I called his daughter. She told me about the arrangements. I was
reminded of a conversation he and I had that weekend we went to open up
the summer house. We talked about two things -- first, should he have
the transplant? I said yes, because he had grandchildren who loved him
and deserved to have him around as long as possible, another seven to
ten years, versus just one or two. The other subject was his
funeral. We talked about music he'd like, stuff like that. Apparently he never shared his thoughts with anyone else.
This September as the two of us sat silently on the patio of their summer
house overlooking the lake, he suddently turned to me said he wanted me
to speak at his funeral. I didn't say anything. He didn't press me. I
was honored that he asked. But I also knew I couldn't do it
Wednesday there will be a memorial service at a local funeral home. His
daughter said that they were asking people to speak. I didn't
volunteer. She didn't ask.
He died on one of my brothers' birthdays, which just means it will be
easy to remember the day. Next year on the first anniversary, I'll call
a couple of his other friends to go to dinner and we can have our own
memorial to him.
This thing on Wednesday will probably just piss me off.