Very seldom did we go to Sacramento to see my grandparents. But this was a special occasion. My grandfather died. I hardly knew him and he hardly knew me. It was not a close relationship between my mother and her brothers and sisters and her mother, but she worshipped her father. I was only twelve years old when my mother took me to my grandparents house, and yet I had to leave to have a cigarette, I walked in the rain for two miles, through a peach orchard, and then a grape vineyard before I arrived at the river, there I took out a cigarette and my lighter and lit up. I smoked that whole cigarette, and threw the butt in the river.

I took my time walking back the two miles, singing and dancing all the way. When I got to my grandmothers front porch, I stopped, I squirted some breath freshener in my mouth, I didn't want my grandmother to know that her young grandson smoked, I didn't want her to smell smoke on my breath.

I opened the door, and my grandmother was way back in the kitchen, helping my mother make biscuits on an old wood stove. before she looked up she said, did you enjoy your smoke Donny? How did she know? I have asked my mother that question many times, all my mother would say is, granmas psychic.