Coolin' Off

     Coolin’ Off

                                                                       by

                                                               Mike Capron

It has been hot and dry enough in my part of the world to the point that it is hard to talk about anything other than how long is it going to last. People are comparing this to other times they have experienced or heard about.  I always enjoy a good story as I compare the creativity of story telling to painting. I think one leads to the other.  Some older experts had gathered at my studio and were comparing times gone by.  All the stories were about hot and dry. But one expert claimed he saw a rain just after the drought of the fifties that was so hard that it was raining fish.   He was working on a ranch between Odessa and Crane in the early sixties and he and a friend were headed to the house after making a big circle horseback.   A big cloud came up and it started raining hard, harder than they had ever seen it rain and there was no shelter to hide from the rain. They got pounded by the rain shower while heading home.  After the rain let up and they could see where they were headed, they noticed that all the mud puddles had little minnows swimming around in the puddles.  As they were riding they were trying figure out were the little fish came from. No streams or rivers in that part of the world and these cowboys knew nothing about fish.  They got down for a closer look and sure enough just little minnow looking fish. They found an old tin can and gathered as many as they could in this tin can with some water and hauled it to the house. They transferred it to a larger container and decided to take it to the college in Odessa and see if they could find someone more qualified than they were.   After shopping around they found a Fish Expert and showed him the fish and told him where they had found them.  He was amazed and puzzled. He said they were saltwater fish from the ocean. That sure didn’t solve much. No telling how far they were from the ocean at this ranch between Odessa and Crane, Texas.  The Fish Expert was just as lost as the cowboys. He said who knows? Maybe a water spout picked them up from the ocean and somehow deposited them in a cloud that was headed to Odessa and then dumped them on this dry ranch………..????????