I Write About a Favorite Word...

Freshman English assignment time. Write 500 words about your favorite word. That should be easy because of two things. One is that I made a pretty good grade in freshman English. Not that first or second time I took it but that third time I did really well. Second is that I picked my favorite word really well. It's fish. That makes it easy. I like to talk about fish, catch fish, eat fish and of course, now I write about fish. 

A few weeks ago we played out at Stonewall Studios for the M.D. Anderson cancer Benefit. Part of the fundraising was that they sold fish plates. There was a very good emcee, Mark who announced between bands and like any good show barker he pushed the fish plates. I liked to hear him talk about them. He said things like:

"There's fish." 

They way he intoned it the word just lay, like a Spanish Mackerel jerked from a green flowing Texas surf to lay on the dried boards of an old gulf coast fishing pier. After being said or caught it moved no more. 

 On a recent European vacation if we saw a fish somewhere we usually made a photo. Here's one that Cathy made. It was in the Spanish Hall at Schloss Ambras Castle in Innsbruck.. 

A recent winner of the Nobel Prize Prize for Poetry, Bob Dylan even wrote about fish. In one of his longer songs from the Blond on Blond album I cite the tune, "Visions of Johanna." There is the line:

"The fiddler steps to the road

He writes everything's been returned which was owed

on the back of the fish truck that loads

while my conscience explodes."

We could analyze, but this might become NSFW reading and besides I have always enjoyed driving down the highway and seeing the refrigerated trucks with the word "Fish" in large black letters. This is only seen in Texas. If you have fish on the truck, you are ok. If you don't have the word a game warden has the right pull your truck over without a search warrant and see if there is fish in there. I know I have a photo of the back of a fish truck somewhere but I don't know where. 

If you are on facebook you get your "memories" notification each day. Usually I am doing one of two things in these messages from the past. I have spent the day fishing or playing a gig somewhere. Sometimes the gigs smell like fish.

By the way I did have fish for supper tonight. 

And then there is this. A Tattoo by the Tiny Tattooist. It's her interpretation of a 13th century plate I saw in a Munich museum. Three fish. It's a symbol found in Christian, Celtic, Turkish, and Norse imagery. Fish is everything, everywhere. 

 I figure with this I have all the bases covered and am pretty close to 500 words.  I did not count the ones by Dylan. .  

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