Member-only story
About Me — Len Bassham
The Same, but Different
Non-members may read this entire story by clicking HERE.
My first pet was not a puppy or a kitten or a fish or a parakeet or even a lizard.
My first pet was a turnip. I kid you not.
That choice has set the tone for my entire life. Even though I’m 85 now, and have had many other kinds of pets (and even extended periods without any), that early experience formed me. (Some might say ‘warped,’ but that’s their problem, not mine.)
I don’t even remember now how or where I got it. I only know that I was about 18 months of age at the time, and that I wept when my mother cut it up and cooked it. I couldn’t eat any of it. It was my pet!
Which may or may not explain why I have never liked cooked turnips. Or raw ones either. I like other things that grow underground — carrots, radishes, peanuts, onions. Just not turnips, thank you very much. (Or parsnips either, but then I’ve never met anyone who likes parsnips, so that doesn’t count.)
Once you set off on a life path like that, there’s no turning back.
I started piano lessons at age five, learning to read music before I learned to read English.
At age ten, when I played baseball in the Old Timers Association (the Colorado…
