Illustration Friday: Superstition

One Superstitious Fellow

Cuko was a familiar sight on the streets of a certain agricultural town in the heart of a certain Central California valley. He seemed to always be heading to somewhere or from somewhere and always with a bag of groceries, though no one could recall ever seeing him go in or out of either of the two grocery stores in town.

Aside from the ever-present straw cowboy hat on his head, he was never seen without a dime lodged in each ear.

When asked why he carried the dimes about in such a manner, he would respond with a sly grin, "When people say I have no sense in my head... Well, I just point to these." And he would continue on his way.

One night at the beer and wine joint, when free drinks had come from the other end of the long bar in rapid succession, and he was particularly borracho, he confided to Charlie and Louie with the utmost seriousness that the dimes were firmly in place to protect him from the space men who visited from time to time.

The two young men thought they had finally been let in on the answer to one of the town's greatest mysteries, until Shorty told them a week later that Cuko typically varied the villains in his story between the space aliens and CIA agents and foreign spies. Evidently, the dimes were protecting valuable information for which any, or all, of these entities would stop at nothing to retrieve.