Dream XXXV

I was at a traffic island, and a car pulled up behind me and shut its engines off. I turned to look, and there was no driver inside. There were a couple of large friendly dogs, however, in the back. Another dog, who might or might not have belonged with the others, was running around outside.

I decided I should take the car to the police station so that it and the dogs could be returned to their proper owner. I drove in what I thought was a likely direction, though the streets became more and more suburban. Many people were out raking leaves and hauling them to the edge of the street.

I passed one house which seemed likely to me, for some reason I could not say, and stopped and backed up so that I was parallel with the house. Across the street, a policeman, who looked and sounded like Lee Marvin, shouted “Hey!” at me and drew his weapon, saying that what I was doing was wrong. I got out of the car to try and explain, and he began firing. A huge wall of flame engulfed the rear of the car, and I yelled, “You can’t do that, there are dogs in there!”

I jumped back in the car and drove off. Fortunately, though there had been a lot of fire, nothing was damaged and the dogs were all right. I pulled into a side street, a sort of drive-way type road that spanned two other roads, and parked the car, trying to think of what I should do next.

After a few minutes, I decided the best thing to do was to back all the way down this alley and back on to another road, and try again. As I started the car and backed down, a man who looked like Clint Howard rose up in front of the car, as if he’d been working on the engine and I’d backed away from his work. On his face was a look of bemused puzzlement.