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The Old Stagedriver’s Yosemite Yarns (1962) by Laurence Degnan and Douglass Hubbard

JOHNNY BROWN AND THE WATERMELON

JOHNNY BROWN was a full-blooded Yosemite Indian. He was the son of old “Buckshot Bill” Brown, who was raised in Yosemite valley before the white man came.

“One day Johnny was sitting on the porch of the Old Village Store, getting ready to go to work on a huge watermelon. Someone—perhaps it was Julius Boysen, the photographer— stopped to talk to Johnny before going into the store:

‘Hello, Johnny. You going to eat all of that big watermelon?’

‘Yep’, said Johnny, ‘me eat ’um.’
‘But won’t you have a terrible stomach ache?’

‘Yep, me gettum stomach ache. But he don’t last long.’”

[click to enlarge]

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