Bananas anyone?

This story appears in my autobiography that Joy helped me publish last year, but I wanted it also to be on my blog, Fleeting Memories. It really belongs in a series of stories about Scout trips. Originally written about 1980.

When I was twelve years old, our ward leaders organized a trip to Mexico for all of the boys in the Aaronic Priesthood who had 90% attendance or better at all their meetings. At the end of the year I had 100% attendance and got to go.  There was only two other deacons, Harley Pace and Richard Stubbs my cousin.  There were three teachers: Mike Traasdahl, Keith and Karl Edwards, the twins; and one priest, Hugh Scott.

Carl James Stubbs (Jim) on the Los Angeles Temple
grounds. Taken in April 1956 colorized on
MyHeritage.com. 

It was an exciting time getting ready to go. We were going down through Mexicali to San Felipe to go deep sea fishing. We were going to stay at churches on the way down, visit the Los Angeles Temple grounds and stay on the beach in Mexico. We all headed out early one morning, seven boys and one advisor, Bert Whitney. I have seen pictures of myself on that trip. What I can remember of the trip I thought of myself as older, more mature, one of the big boys, but the pictures don’t lie.

When we got to Mexicali the first thing, we did was to buy enough firecrackers to blow up most of Mexico. Harley made a great purchase of a silver cased watch that quit running by the time the trip was over. The silver looked a lot like polished tin, which it was. Two of the guys came back with a bunch of bullshit cigars.  It didn’t go over too well with the advisor, especially since it was an Aaronic priesthood outing. I’m glad I wasn’t one who showed up with any.  The advisor years later was to become my teacher in school, then my bishop and finally my father-in-law. We finally got to San Felipe, set up camp and went swimming. We swam and set off fire works all day. Sun-burned and tired, we turned in. The next morning, we got up and went out on a boat deep sea fishing. It was great fun. It was the first time I had ever been fishing. Everyone caught something. One of the fishermen on the boat caught a small shark. When they cut it up, it had small live baby sharks inside. Harley took one and put it in a jar of sea water to take home.

When we got back, we were all turned loose to go shop at the market.  There was everything at the market: guitars, bookends, chess and checkers sets made out of onyx, sandals, blankets, all kinds of things made out of wood, and food. Bananas were five cents a pound. That may seem unimportant, but it proved to be for me. I like bananas, and so decided to buy some. I had no idea of weight or prices; I just wanted a couple of bananas.

I walked up and tried to make a purchase. I didn’t speak Spanish and the salesman didn’t speak much English. He finally got across to me “How much do you want to spend on bananas?” Then I made my big mistake. I told him I wanted a dollar’s worth. A dollar’s worth five cents a pound is 20 pounds. I gave him the dollar, and he weighed out and gave me the bananas. I ate a couple.  They were good, but the law of diminishing utility began to operate very quickly. I think I finally downed three or four of them. The big question then was what does a twelve-year-old do with what was left of 20 pounds, about 19 pounds.

I really felt stupid. I couldn’t take them back to camp, because everyone would have really laughed. I wasn’t going to carry them around all day, I couldn’t eat them, and I was too embarrassed to take them back to the stand, so I dropped them off in the first alley I found.  I still remember the foolish feeling of holding that 20 pounds of bananas, looking at the salesman smiling at a dopey little kid.