Let 'em Fish!
This took place in a bar in Ajo, Arizona I think. We on our way home from Puerto Peñasco and my parents likely didn't care to wait to get back to Tempe before they could have a beer or two.
There was an old man in there in a sentimental state of mind talking about my brothers and me. He was giving my parents ideas of what to do for us to have fun. My dad mentioned that we had just come back from Minnesota where we had done a lot of fishing.
This struck a note with the old guy.
"Oh, let 'em fish! Let 'em fish!" he said passionately.
I guess I hadn't had enough experience with this roadhouse elocution to recognize it because after we left, I asked my mom, "Didn't you think that guy was a little crazy?"
"Oh, no, no," she said. "He was just an old man missing his kids and wishing he were young again."

Healthy Fish
My dad once told me that some guy was being interviewed about raising catfish in stock tanks on a ranch. He was a crusty old ranch hand and he told the interviewer that you had to check the PH to make sure it was correct. Very important.
"Gosh," said the interviewer. "What's PH?"
"Do you want healthy fish?" the guy replied.
"Yes, of course," she answered. "But what is PH?
"Look lady," he said. "Do you want healthy fish or NOT?"

Eskimo Diet
I could swear that my mom told me more than once that at the beginning of winter an Eskimo would catch a fish and bite off half of it and save the rest for the spring thaw whereupon he would eat what was left and that would be all he ate in an entire year.
There is some question in my mind about whether this memory is the result of youthful and undeveloped listening skills.


SUNSETS
Sunsets like You Wouldn't Believe!
When we first came to Arizona in 1958, it was a rebirth of kinds to be in a new world with modern one-story flat-topped houses, open vistas, and 300 hundred days of blazing sun. My father used to call people back in Louisville and he would say, "Sunsets like you wouldn't believe!"
When I mentioned this memory to my brother Steve, he said he wrote back to a guy in Louiville named Craig and told him about the the silhouettes he had seen of people on horseback set against the beautiful sunsets, but he didn't remember whether he saw them for real or was just describing what he had seen on a postcard.

Sunset Feb 2021.jpg
 

Fruit Cans  THERE'S AN ILLUSTRATED VERSION HERE:  Fruit Cans
I'm sure they don't make them anymore; those little tin cans of frozen, concentrated fruit juice. They use paper now, I'll bet. But I still remember the little ones. A can that size went a long way and the cans themselves and I'm guessing that the thickness of the sheet metal used for cans in general was standardized. That meant that these little ones were sturdier than the average sized ones. Even the seam running up the side looked bigger and tougher. At least to me.
Everybody's parents used the empties quite a lot because they were about the correct size for their younger children to drink out of. A twelve-ounce can would be too large. 

I remember drinking milk and fruit juice out of them too, but the memory that first comes to mind deals with how my mom found them convenient. She used to supply me with one filled up with beer and I can recall happily walking around the livingroom at age four in Louisville sipping my hoppy, soapy brew. I think she might have done it to calm me down and stop my endless chinwag.

Some will say that drugging a child in this way is to stray from the path of goodness, but as far as crimes go this seems small potatoes to me.

From Parece que fuera ayer (It Seems Like Only Yesterday) Strange incidents are snippets too I guess. If they're small enough.

Strange Incident Number One
As a child, my brother made a time machine from cardboard boxes on our patio. When he got inside, something mysterious took place.
Through a crack in the cardboard, a ray of light entered that made an image on one of the cardboard walls. The image on the wall shone with all the colors of the rainbow as if the light had passed through a prism or as if my brother were looking at it through gasoline fumes.
It was the image of a pterodactyl.



Strange Incident Number Six

Yesterday when I was going through my pictures on the computer, I found a thirty-minute video. It had no name. When I started watching it, however, I at once realized that it was a movie of me in the hospital after my surgery to replace my shoulder that had been shattered in a fall. Apparently, my camera was in the bed and I had inadvertently pushed a button and the camera began to film without anyone knowing it.
My brother can be seen.
"What's that?" I asked him.
"What?" he answered.
"Is it a bug?"
"What do you mean, a bug?" he answered. "There aren't any bugs in the recovery rooms."
"It's a cockroach!" I insisted.
"You're imagining things," he said and left.
I fell asleep at once. You can hear the sound of my breathing for more than ten minutes. Then someone knocks on the door and I wake up.
"Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!" I groan apparently in agony. "Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!"
You can hear the sound of the person entering the room and I ask, "Is there soda pop? I want a pop!"
"I don't have any," replied the nurse. "I've brought your breakfast."
"Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!" I groan again. Then I shout in Spanish, "¡Tocino!" And then in English, "Oh, happy day!"
You can see my hand with a strip of bacon in it.


Suceso raro número seis

Ayer al repasar mis fotos en la computadora encontré un video de treinta minutos. No tenía título. Al verlo, sin embargo, inmediatamente me di cuenta de que era un video de mí en el hospital después de mi cirugía para reemplazar mi hombro que había sido desmenuzado en una caída. Aparentemente mi cámara estaba en la cama y yo había pulsado un botón sin querer y la cámara empezó a filmar sin que nadie lo supiera.
Se puede ver a mi hermano.
—¿Qué es esto? —le pregunté.
—¿Qué? —contestó.
—¿Es un bicho?
—¿Cómo que un bicho? —respondió él—. No hay bichos en los cuartos de recuperación.
—¡Es una cucaracha! —insistí.
—Te estás imaginando cosas —dijo y salió.
Me quedé dormido enseguida. Se puede oír el sonido de mi respiración por más de diez minutos. Entonces alguien golpea en la puerta y me despierta.
—Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh! —gimo aparentemente en agonía—. Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!
Se puede oír el sonido de la persona entrando en el cuarto y yo le pregunto:
—¿Hay refrescos? ¡Quisiera un refresco!
—No tengo —dice la enfermera—. He traído su desayuno.
—Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh! —gimo otra vez.
Entonces grito en español: "¡Tocino!" Y entonces en inglés: "Oh, happy day!"
Se puede ver mi mano sosteniendo una rebanada de tocino.


Strange Incident Number Two
I must have been six years old when my family was on vacation on the coast. I was swimming in the ocean. Suddenly, a wave hit me from behind. The blow was so strong and unexpected that—I don't know how—I could see my own face along with my own expression of shocked surprise in front of my own eyes.