Synaptic Misfires™

I'd like to take a moment to discuss apples. If you have kids, apples are a big part of your lives. Sliced apples, apple juice, apple sauce, apple pie, apple fritters. Peanut butter on apples. Stewed apples. Apple butter. Apple cider. Caramel apples. I could go on forever.

Kids and apples. They go together.

But I've come to realize, I don't love all kinds of apples. My kids are partial to Granny Smith's, which I find too tart. Red Delicious apples are waxy and tasteless. For my money, I like a Fuji apple. They brown quicker, but damn, their flesh is porous and sweet.

Golden apples of the sun.

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The shorter the nap, the more refreshing.

I think this is a truth, however, I need to do far more research. Daily and consistent research over the next 40 years.

I doubt my employers will be on board for that, though.

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Been listening to a lot of movie soundtracks lately, as I write. Low volume, faint in the background. I've been enjoying it but I've found that my writing is too saccharine when listening to Harry Potter, too bombastic when listening to Indiana Jones, and my dialogue sucks when listening to Star Wars.

When I listen to Fargo?

Just right. I just have to go in afterwards and delete all the "Yahs".

Go figure.

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I drove to work this morning holding an over-ripe tomato in my hand and my head full of the image of hurling it into oncoming traffic.

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I have this memory of a fishing trip with my dad, but over the years I had convinced myself that I imagined it, or that he had told me the story of himself as a boy and I had placed myself in it, creating a false memory.

But I had dinner with them last night, and we talked about it.

In the seventies to early eighties, my dad had a house boat on the White River. The "houseboat" was really just a small trailer home on massive styrofoam blocks. It was moored in Jack's Bay, Arkansas. It had bunkbeds, a kitchenette, a TV and two 12,000 btu air-conditioning units that made it absolutely frigid. I'm talking height of summer get under blankets and shiver. Its name was Fat City and it was totally immobile, moored to the banks.

Jack's Bay was close to a lot of great fishing lakes, so we'd motor out on the lower White, go to the point in the bank closest to the nearest lake, and hike through deep woods, my father porting a massive outboard motor the half-mile to the lake, hiking back to the river to retrieve our cooler and gas. And then back one last time to drag the flatbottom through the brush and mud to the lake. I'd carry the lighter stuff. I remember, at 10 years old, being quite worn out by the time we ever made the first cast. I can't imagine how my dad felt. God, he was massively strong, then.

We fished all day in this lake, caught some bass and bream, and my father had shown me how to hook alligator gar - by casting over them with a diving treble hook lure, like a classic Rapalla, and then as you reel it in and get close to the gar, which usually stays on the surface, you give a sharp yank. The lure dives and embeds its prongs into the fish.

Here's the point where I questioned my own memory. We were paddling back to shore at the end of the day and I noticed something coming towards us in the water. At first I thought it was a beaver, or even an otter. When it got closer I said, "Dad, there's a dog swimming across the lake."

My dad kinda jerked around, peered at the swimming dog, and shook his head but said nothing. He reeled in his line and picked up a paddle.

As it got closer, I said, "What's a dog doing out here?"

"That's not a dog."

I looked at it closer - at that point it was only about twenty feet away. It was a bear. A small brown bear. However, it was large enough to tump our boat and fuck us up, real good, I think, if it had wanted to. Which is why my dad snatched up the paddle, I guess. After seeing my dad porting all that heavy stuff over to the lake, I was a little more worried for the bear than my dad, honestly. Your father looms large in you mind as a child.

Once the bear got close enough to us to see we were a pair of the fearsome naked ape, the most deadly of all creatures, it made a drastic turn and swam off.

We watched it until it reached the shore and disappeared into the thick, deep woods.

"Was that a bear, dad?"

"Yep," he smiled and put down the paddle. "That was a bear. You want a Coke?"

Strange. I never expected to see a bear in the not-so-wilds of Arkansas. Last night, I reconstructed this memory with my dad because I feared I had made it up in the intervening years.

Nope. I didn't make it up.

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It began raining last night, ending, for a while, 105+ degree temperatures. Damn, that's really too hot.

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Ironically, Fat City burned down. Another house boat caught fire, its mooring snapped, and then it drifted into Fat City, burning it to a cinder. Luckily, no one was on board our house boat except numerous wasp nests and a family of mice. The water moccasin that lived on top of one of the styrofoam blocks smelled the smoke and had the presence of mind to slither into the water before things got too toasty.

Fat City. Gone but not forgotten.

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I have no other news to report. No acceptances. No big deals. And the rejections I've received, I'll keep that info private, thank you very much.

Have a good week, be kind to yourselves, and others, and remember to spay and neuter your cats and dogs.

Adios, muchachos y muchachas.