Grunions with Onions

This is a story about a kid named Beevie, who like most little boys, didn’t like to eat his vegetables. He especially didn’t like his mother’s casseroles and usually pouted when supper wasn’t some cool food like pizza or burgers. He gets a little too big for his britches one night after a skirmish with his mother and takes off into town on a mission to find some real food. His trip into town becomes somewhat of a surreal, dream-like sequence as he encounters one weird fast food restaurant after another. They not only don’t seem to have the food he wants, but things get increasingly bizarre as the night progresses. At each restaurant Beevie thinks he has found what he is looking for, only to be further frustrated by food even more grotesque than the last.

After a nightmarish night of many wild and unearthly foods, his fatigue and hunger get the best of him and he decides that maybe, just maybe, Mom’s cooking is not so bad after all. This is the moral of the story, but we have fun getting to this point.

ABOUT GRUNIONS

The “grunions” he encounters are sardine-sized fish (genus Leuresthes) which are found only off the coast of California and Baja Mexico. They are about six inches long and are known for their unusual mating ritual. During high tides, the females move to the shallowest water and dig their tails into the sand to lay their eggs. The whole thing usually occurs at night and lasts for only half a minute or so. On the west coast, it is called a “Grunion Run.”