What? What? What? — Fred Imus Cap
“A full moon really affects me,” Fred told his brother Don.
“I get nervous and irritable. Does that ever happen to you?”
Only on days that end in Y.
For Christmas in 1999, Joy gave me a “coffee table” book, Two Guys Four Corners — Great Photographs, Great Times, and a Million Laughs by Don Imus and Fred Imus. The Imus brothers grew up on a cattle ranch in northern Arizona, a thirty-five-thousand-acre ranch between Kingmen and Seligman called the Willows. The main ranch house was on a dirt road fifty miles old, Route 66.
We first learned about Don Imus, a ‘shock joc’ nationally syndicated Imus In The Morning radio and TV program out of New York. His younger brother, Fred, also had a radio show and would frequently appear on the Imus program. Fred was the irascible brother of the far even more irascible Don Imus. He was also an entrepreneur, owning and operating the Auto Body Express in Santa Fe.
I didn’t grow up in the Southwest, but I fell in love with Arizona and the Four Corners when I finished my service in the Army in the late ’60s. If you love photography as much as I do, the Southwest provides a photo opportunity at every turn. The gift of the Imus brothers’ book set me on a path that would take me full circle back to Arizona in 2010. Since then, we have photographed almost all the venues in the Imus book.
Speaking of full circle, the Imas program was primarily a talk show. However, he occasionally played Americana music, and one of his favorite groups was The Mervicks. The lead singer is Raul Malo, whose voice is exceptional. They have a new album, Moon and Starts. This past Sunday, Raul, who is 58, was interviewed on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday, during which we learned that he has cancer.
