The Food and Fun was crowded as usual, a kind of food Disneyland. Though I ain’t never been to Disneyland, just guessin. Food because it has food in every isle, fun because it had a bunch of ride on toys for a quarter in a little kiddie corral. You know, horses, cars, fire trucks. I stood in line at checkout stand number 9. A lady with 2 kids had 3 gallons of ice cream in her cart. Also 3 packages of Ho Hos, bread, and frozen chicken fingers. I always wondered where the chickens kept their fingers. Don’t know. The kids didn’t seem happy about anything, not as happy as they should with all of that ice cream, and were screaming and pulling each other’s hair. I tried to look straight ahead, ignoring the wild kids and the grocery cart. It was hard. You just want to look. Can’t help it. Then I heard a yelp from outside, like a dog being struck by a car or kicked by a local curmudgeon. Just as I started to unload my cart onto the little moving table the checker asked “What was that?”
“Don’t know,” said the bagger. “Sounded like a dog, but it coulda been a kid.”
Don Miguel and Don Paulo played chess at a small table under the mango tree every day at 10 am. The mango tree was in the town square of El Pueblo in the low, coastal mountains of Baja California Sur. El Pueblo was their town. They were the Jefe Dons. The Jefes usually played for 1 hour, then the rest of the day could unfold as it might.