Daily Grist; a man can count the number of seeds inside an Apple when he cuts it open. Only God knows the amount of apples that one seed will produce. JDRhynes
We have all heard the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction. Well, this is a true story and it darn sure isn’t a work of fiction. Here is how it all came about. I can’t remember the year this story happened , maybe some of you readers can, suffice it to say at this time that it happened 10 or 12 years ago at the strawberry festival at camp mather. Junior Brown was one of the featured artists there that year and he happens to be one of my favorites when it comes to real country music. Junior is the real deal and there is not a phony bone in his body when it comes to real country music. I had the good fortune to make his acquaintance backstage of strawberry that year, and we spent the better part of the afternoon talking about real country music and mutual acquaintances that we shared in the business. I told him of my background in country music and the performers from California that I had made acquaintance with back in the 50s and 60s and 70s. Folks like Del Reeves, who I knew as Curly Reeves back in the 50s, Cal Smith and Cottonseed Clark, from the California hayride program, Chester Smith, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Vern and Ray,Lori and Larry Collins, etc. Eventually the subject got around to good Mexican food and naturally Junior being from Texas bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t had any good Mexican food since leaving home in Texas a couple of weeks prior. Just about that time he was called to the stage to do a sound check with his band. I asked him if he liked good fish tacos? His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, and he said those are my very favorite. So I told him I would see what I could do about rounding up some for him after his show was over, we shook hands over the deal, and I told him it was such a pleasure to meet him and his band, and to go break a leg.
Suffice it to say that he put on one hell of a good show and the audience absolutely went nuts over them, and they had to do three or four encores. I met him backstage and told him that the fish tacos were on their way, jumped in the golf cart with my buddy Eloi and headed for Taco Joe’s food truck. The family that bought the business from taco Joe, the mother made the very best fish tacos I had ever experienced in my life, and when we pulled up to the food truck she had two of them already to go for me, so backstage we headed and presented those gastronomical works of Mexico cuisine to my buddy Junior Brown. He polished those off along with a big cup of ice cold beer, and pronounce them the very best fish tacos he had ever experienced outside of Texas. All the time he was eating those tacos his bus engine was running and warming up for the trip back to Texas and the whole band was just waiting for him on board his bus, so we said our goodbyes and shook hands and by this time it was after midnight so I headed to my room for the night. Uneventful? I don’t think so! The very next morning my buddy Mitch third told me that those tacos have more than likely saved Junior’s life, as well as his entire band’s. Mitch told me that Junior was getting on his bus when he was suddenly called away to answer”natures call” to the nearest porta potty, which took another 30 min. or so, just in time for his bus driver to suffer a grand mal epileptic seizure, a malady which he had suffered for some time and had never told Junior about. When they total up the time that Junior spent eating the tacos and answering “nature’s call”, they deduced had the bus left right after his show was over, they would have been on the priest grade heading downhill and more than likely suffered a massive wreck when the driver had a seizure. And that dear hearts is how the lives of Junior Brown and his band were saved that night. I have no doubt that it was heavenly intervention that did it, I was merely the taco delivery boy. Who says miracles don’t happen anymore?
