Seeing this red discus for the first time brought me back to my first record album. Remember those? Nah, you can’t. Being used to downloads and iPads and online iTunes, why for god sake you might not even remember CDs or cassette tapes. Eight track tapes? That’s a negative good buddy.

But here’s the thing–the red fish reminds me of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire record. I “borrowed” it from Dad one fine summer day and to this day, when I see that bright, shiny RED…..Wow!…..And when The Man in Black repeats the line “and all the girls.…”  I just melllllllllt thinking about all the girls in my life who I thought I was in love with but…I was only in love with love, you know? Dad is gone to the good Lord now but I still have the album and as soon as I can find someone with an actual record player or stereo system–remember them? I’m gonna play the entire song.  After Cash sings these opening lines…

“In a little cabaret in a South Texas border town,

Sat a boy and his guitar, and the people came from all around. 
And all the girls from there to Austin,
Were slippin’ away from home and puttin’ jewelry in hock.
To take the trip, to go and listen,
To the little dark-haired boy who played the Tennessee flat top box.”

Then there’s the instrumental part… and when I hear that, or see a bright red fish like this one… it kind of hits me hard, sledgehammer hard.  Apparently Dad understood all this too, and like a good father, passed it on to his son, me. I now pass it along to You.

“Then one day he was gone, and no one ever saw him ’round,
He’d vanished like the breeze, they forgot him in the little town.
But all the girls still dreamed about him. 
And hung around the cabaret until the doors were locked.
And then one day on the Hit Parade,
Was a little dark-haired boy who played the Tennessee flat top box.”

By Robert Gluck