Mi familia

Thursday, as my sister and niece shredded up some beef for barbeque sandwiches, I expressed my wish to eat Mexican food before leaving Texas. I don't eat beef, anyway, so my sister suggested I order takeout from Mi Familia, a restaurant just a couple of blocks away from her house, to substitute for the barbeque sandwiches. And so I did (although finding an entree without any carne was a bit of a challenge in itself).

Mi familia. I spent a lot of time Wednesday and Thursday with the newest member of mine.



And, taking up a suggestion from Z, (and product advice from Dan), I spent a couple of hours my last evening in Texas, getting down a few short interviews with my parents on my new Olympus digital recorder.

I talked to my father about joining the navy in the last year of World War II.



Why the navy? He didn't want to sleep in fox holes. Pearl Harbor? It's a nice place. Worst moment? Being followed by three Japanese submarines, staying at his gun station on deck from 1 am until 9 or 10. Smoke filling his lungs, his nose, giving him a headache.

And I talked to my mother about going to business college. Her classes included one devoted entirely to spelling. She went to business college because a recruiter came to her house her senior year in high school and her father signed her up. Afterwards, she worked not as a secretary but as a switchboard operator. That is, until she married my father. Here they are, just a little while before that:



My father liked talking into the recorder. My mother, not so much. Is that on? she would ask. I was just going to tell you. I didn't want you to record it.