Regale desert newbies with the tale of the stick lizard

Clay is off today. Here’s a column first published June 12, 2009.

Today’s questions:

When I first came to Arizona, my uncle, who was a great storyteller, told me about the Arizona stick lizard. He said it was known to carry a stick in its mouth so it could jam it into the sand and run up it to get its feet off the hot ground. I wasn’t gullible enough to fall for it, but I have enjoyed repeating the story. Do you know its origin? Yes, I’ve heard it. Along those same lines, I also read one about a lizard that, when threatened, holds a stick crosswise in its mouth so it can’t be swallowed. Where did the tale come from? Who knows? How does any tall tale arise, from Baron Munchhausen’s 18th-century whoppers to today’s urban legends?

The stick-lizard tale is just part of the rich oral tradition of the American West, where there were always plenty of gullible newcomers around to learn about Mike Fink or Paul Bunyan or stick lizards.

My father-in-law said the first drive-through bank was in Arizona. He said someone drove up after a branch closed for the day and knocked on the window and that was the first drive-through banking transaction.

The first drive-through bank was not in Arizona, but in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1928 or Chicago in 1946.

Maybe your father-in-law was thinking of McDonald’s. I am told the first McDonald’s with a drivethrough opened in Sierra Vista in 1975. Supposedly, it came about so soldiers from nearby Fort Huachuca could get around orders that they not been seen in town in their fatigues. Apparently, staying in the car circumvented the command.