Actually, Blackie isn't all black. He's accented with sienna brown and white which, in my estimation and esteem, makes him all-American. We love Blackie. And if I sometimes say "C'mere, Dammit," I say it affectionately.

The story is rooted in an almost identically colored and marked dog our family owned in the 1940's and early '50's. My older brother Bud, who was born in a Colorado hail-storm in the Depression years and has always had a mind of his own, had gone to a Episcopalian Church camp in Colorado. At one of the sessions, the subject was the storied Ten Commandments. Though many think otherwise, only the 6th, 8th, and 9th enter into civil law.

By the 6th, we are admonished not to murder. Therefore, all murderers should be punished, unless of course as Mark Twain noted, "they kill in great numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

The 8th admonishes us not to steal. And sociologist C. Wright Mills observed long ago, "Unless you already have money, stealing can be a perilous business." Even conservative anti-regulation, free-market, psalm-singing Kansas working folks understand better now -- seeing their 401k's in the dumper. Maybe someday they'll get what's the matter with Kansas.

And, of course, there's the 9th. Commandment about bearing false witness. That one is full of loopholes, too. Gossips are rarely prosecuted -- nor are Presidents who lie us into war and swear the government doesn't wire tap American citizens, or torture. Yes, I digress.

At the church camp, the counselor was commenting on what in most Protestant and Jewish tradition is the 3rd Commandment. The Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, who rarely agree on anything, both say number 3 is really number 2. And, if you thought there were just ten commandments, peek at variants in Exodus 34:1-26; and at some real doozies in Leviticus 19: 19-28. Mrs. Pewparker, that polyester dress could get you sent to Hell. Farmer Pewparker, if you plant two crop varieties in the same field your tail's in the toaster.

Well, to continue. In the midst of the camp counselor's discussion, he pointed at a dog. "That's my dog," he said. "His name is Dammit." Using a mild expletive from time to time, he said, may be rude in mixed or prissy company. But it was not reason to lie awake nights, agonizing in guilt, contemplating eternal fire.

When my brother returned home, we got a dog, a doppelganger to our Blackie. Bud named him Dammit.

My mother was horrified. She consulted our local priest at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Logan, Kansas, Father Robert Mize -- as saintly a man as ever there was. Some will remember that in 1945 he founded St. Francis Boys Home in Ellsworth, today known as St. Francis Academy. He was my hero.

"Father Bob." my mother says she asked, "What shall I do with Bud?"

"Anna," he answered, in effect, "So his dog's name is Dammit. I think God would laugh and say, 'Looks like a dandy dog.' " And so he was. Dammit became the talk of the town.

Father Bob later became Bishop Robert Mize, Jr., and served the Church in Namibia, South Africa. He was deported in 1968 by the apartheid government for advocating publicly for racial equality. Father Bob died in August 2000 in Fresno, California. He was 93. Kenneth Spencer Research Library at KU maintains an extensive collection of his life and work

Every time I look at Blackie, I see Dammit. Sometimes I call him that. And I think about the religi-ossified jackasses who, like Sadducees and Pharisees, are so self-righteously transfixed by Old Testament legalisms (and, yes, some nonsense) and so ignorant about things that really matter.

I could have it all wrong, of course, but that's the way it seems to me and Blackie, Dammit.