How color works
Yellow and blue make green. Blue and red make purple. Red and yellow make orange.
I told my father I didn’t believe him. He showed me how to try it with my crayons. Color lightly with the yellow. Then the blue, also lightly, crosswise to the first.
It was green! This amazing thing was true! Then we tried it with my water colors, and the results were spectacular.
The speedometer
The best thing on the car was the speedometer. 10, 20. 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90. I was old enough to read the numbers, with a little coaching, and how delightful it was to roll them off my tongue. When I could say them without looking, my father told me that I was counting by tens. This was an experience of joy.
After each ten, there was a five, even though they don’t show. He pointed out the small marks that stood for the invisible fives. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, yes, I get it, 30, 35, 40, this is easy, this is fun. 45, 50, 55, 60—now I can count by fives!
About dogs
We were walking on the sidewalk when a big dog ran at us barking, and I was scared. “This is all you have to do.” My father leaned down to his side as if to pick up something from the ground.
To my astonishment, the dog turned around and ran away. “There doesn’t even have to be a rock,” he said. “A dog that acts like that has already had rocks thrown at him. He doesn’t wait to see what you are picking up.”
On the other hand, if you want to make friends with a dog, let it smell the back of your hand before you try to pet it. Then it won’t be afraid you are going to grab it.
“A dog understands your tone of voice,” he said, another time, “not the words.” He spoke to our dog Spot in the most affectionate tone, “You bad, naughty dog.” Spot’s ears sprang up, and his tongue lolled out and he looked as if he were smiling.
About cats
Cats don’t care nearly so much how you talk to them. To make friends with a cat, hang your arm down over the edge of your chair and wiggle your fingers lightly. Don’t look directly at the cat. My father demonstrated, and the cat obliged by rubbing its face against his fingers.
It didn’t work so well for me. I wanted results. If the cat didn’t respond immediately, I wiggled my fingers faster. In later years, I have made friends with many cats my father’s way.
If you want to adopt a stray cat, you can get it to stay by putting butter on its front paws. The cat will lick its paws to clean them and will stay at the house where it tasted the butter.
Better put the butter only on the tops of the paws, my father added. Otherwise greasy pawprints.
About birds
If you want to catch a bird, put salt on its tail. My father did not demonstrate. I tried sneaking up on the blackbirds on the front lawn with a salt shaker in my hand.
“I can’t get close enough to put the salt on its tail,” I complained. My father laughed.
He looked down at me, and I saw remorse on his face. “Have you really been trying to do that?” He explained it was just a joke. “If you could get close enough to get the salt on them, you could already catch them, couldn’t you?” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why people tell things like that to children.”
Then he showed me how to prop up one edge of a cardboard box on a stick and tie a string to the stick. We made a trail of white Wonder Bread crumbs across the lawn, leading to the box. “I caught a chipmunk this way, up in the mountains, when I was a boy,” he said, and he went back to the garage, leaving me on the porch in my hideout behind the bougainvillea, with the other end of the string in my hand.
I suppose the trap might have worked, if my patience had lasted longer or the blackbirds had been hungrier.
About catching fish
Trout like to hide in a shadow, but they can be anywhere in the stream. If you can see the fish, it can see you. When you’re fishing, or rather when your father is fishing, you want to hide from the water.
And don’t throw rocks in the water, neither.
Assorted practical stuff
Rub your hads together to warm them. It’s friction. Friction makes so much heat you can start a fire with it. American Indians could make fire by rubbing two sticks together.
You can graft different varieties of peaches onto the same peach tree. You can also graft apricots and almonds onto the tree, because they’re all related. In our backyard, my father showed me his new grafts wrapped in wax and string. But a tree with new grafts on it is no longer a tree you may climb.
Don’t look directly at oncoming headlights. They’ll temporarily blind you. Look off to the side when a car is coming at you at night with the lights too bright.
A pencil will break if you drop it—not on the outside, but the lead inside. Later attempts to sharpen the pencil will prove unsatisfactory. After that I was careful with pencils
When your friend or even your father falls from the rafters and lands on the cement floor while trying to fix the garage door, it is not polite to laugh. However, sometimes it is a natural response. My father explained this to me from where he lay on the garage floor. And then he laughed too.
Elementary cosmology
The stars are much bigger than they look. No, not just as big as baseballs, or even basketballs. They are bigger than the whole earth. If you were looking back from one of them, the earth would be smaller than a speck. It would look so small you couldn’t even see it. The universe holds millions of stars.
And so I pondered the size of the universe while I still slept in a bed with siderails on it.