I still can recall the story, now old,
as clearly as just yesterday.

For context however,
and it to be told,
I must go back into time –
What year this all was, I can’t say.
 
I was merely sixteen, still young, a teen,
inclined rather deep in a young man’s own way
to a bad case of sheer naiveté—

As much, alas! as I still am today,
but this story will still have its say.
 
In the Land of Enchantment,
once upon a time,
at a trading post,
somewhere near Santa Fe,
my uncle and I stopped for some gas
and pick up provender one day.
 
There on the stoop sat an old man;
my uncle, he claimed to have known him.
 
“That old Indian,’ my uncle began,

“can remember each meal that he ate.”
 
“Any year?”
 
I asked,
 
“Any year.”