When traveling the world as a geologist, you tend to encounter a lot of interesting world views. I went into a small general store in the Texas Panhandle and asked the woman at the register where something was. She replied, “Go two aisles South and one East.”
I encountered another interesting world view in Boone’s Tavern, PA. I was having a few beers and playing pool in Boone’s Tavern. (I’m not sure which was named after the other, but the Tavern owner’s name was Boone, too.) I was most of the business that night when two ladies came in. They looked and dressed a lot alike, and I suspected they were older and younger sisters. After a half dozen beers I was pretty charming and we began to chat it up. Soon I was dancing to the juke box and necking with both of them. After a few more beers the ladies invited me to come finish the party at their place. That seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, but, as I settled up my tab, Boone told me that they are mother and daughter. I was drunk, but not quite drunk enough for that scene and I begged off. I’ve always kind of regretted that.
My cohort in crime in the Northwest Territories happened to be Jewish. None of the local crew knew that. One day one of them referred to “jewing him down”, which my partner pushed back about. We finally told that guy that my partner was Jewish. The guy adamantly would not believe us. He got rather angry that we would take him for a fool and try to scam him like that. We finally asked him how he could be so certain that my partner was not Jewish. His answer was, “Because he doesn’t have horns.” Encountering people like that on a regular basis is one of the reasons I left field geophysics.