Fish Story

It's funny sometimes how stuff you've been thinking about pops up right in front of you. In Fixer's post, and mine, we discussed health care for illegal immigrants. I was reading this story in the LATimes, heart-warming, maybe a little sad, of a dad taking his kid to Redondo Beach pier to go fishing as a reward for going to the dentist and ran across this:

Pulido, 37, was born in Michoacan, where his mother sold their home to pay for the move to the U.S. In a Tijuana bar she met a man who agreed to ferry them across the San Diego border.

It was 1974, and Pulido was only 6 but still he remembers crying from the loud music until his mother whispered: "Shhh, hijo. In America, they will fix your legs."

In the 'comments' section of my post, I said I didn't think health care was an attraction to illegal immigrants. I think I stand corrected. A mother's love knows no borders.

On a personal note, when I was a kid in L.A. my uncle would take me deep-sea fishing at Redondo Beach. We didn't fish off the pier. We were rich, so we went high-line and paid a buck and a half (each) to ride the boat out to anchored fishing barges. There were three of them, probably a mile or so apart, and you could go from one to the other all day. We caught mostly mackerel and they put up a good tussle for a 12-year-old. My uncle had several orange trees, and he buried the mackerel in a circle around them.

You haven't lived until you've enjoyed a greasy, fish-scale-covered fishing barge cheeseburger eaten with anchovy-smellin' hands! I think of those days even now as some of the best times of my childhood.