We toss the tent in the back of the van and head on down to Tombstone Territory. East on the Interstate, south on 93 to Phoenix. We stop for a couple of photo ops - mostly Joshua Trees - and then I see a Saguaro cactus!
When I was five years old, the youngest of the four of us kids, Daddy rented a beach house somewhere around San Diego for several weeks? months? (I was just turning five! You expect me to remember details like that??) I don't remember Daddy being there, but Momma loaded us kids up in the car along with a school-teacher friend of hers, Mrs. Denton, and Momma drove us out there from Texas following the famous Route 66. I remember having a Davy Crockett coloring book and coloring black bears all the way there. I remember stopping by the side of the road for photo ops with Saguaro cactus. Almost 60 years later, I got to do it again! Okay, I'm not on Route 66 - but I'm in Arizona, and it's a Saguaro. Don't be a party-pooper!
I celebrated my fifth birthday at that beach house. I remember that I got a "see-below raft" which was a little air mattress with a piece of clear plastic that I could look through and see the little fishes as I played along the waterline. And one night there was something called a grunion run where everybody grabbed buckets and headed to the beach.
Grunion runs are a totally unique Southern California phenomenon. The fish are only 5-6 inches long, and they are only found along the southern California and Mexican Baja coastline. Completely unlike any other fish, grunion want to be washed up on shore so that they can lay their eggs in the wet sand. On the next wave they are washed back to sea. Even more remarkable is the fact that, according to the California Department of Fish and Game, "grunion make these excursions only on particular nights, and with such regularity that the time of their arrival on the beach can be predicted a year in advance." Amazing.
With that kind of advance warning people can plan a really fun grunion party. Everybody grabs a bucket and chases the lil' critters down by, well, the bucketful! Then you take 'em home and fry 'em up just like catfish. (Only I'm thinkin' Momma didn't take any home 'cause she's not big on fish fryin'.)
All of those memories from one lil' ol' cactus. But that was also the summer my daddy left us. He wouldn't divorce Momma until years later, but he never lived with us again. I suppose one must take the good with the bad in life. Momma was my best friend, so life pretty much continued the way it always had - except Momma must have been pretty miserable -- for years. She never remarried, but she worked two jobs to support us four kids, and was always ready to play dominoes, cards, go bowling, Momma was always up for a trip, but she never remarried.
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