Abocado from Mexico

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 I know. Avocado is misspelled, but I'm enjoying remembrance of a long lost friend I left behind in Dallas. When she grew comfortable enough with me to get engrossed in conversation, her accent would get a little heavier. Sometimes she called me 'Alvert.'
This picture is one of my few still lifes and that avocado, although I didn't know it at the time, is most likely Mexican. This I learned years later in Dallas when I walked by a proudly Mexican coworker, who was busy carving into one about this size and I says, "I can't find avocados that big anywhere!" and he says, "Go to a Mexican grocery store."
But that doesn't really explain this one, which I found in P'gould back in '79.
Oil on a 16x20" canvas that was originally on a commercial panel. For some reason I don't exactly recall - probably dampness partially dislodging it - I tried to steam it off of the cardboard. Which I was sort of successful at, but not entirely. It still has some glue and bits of cardboard stuck to the back, and that vertical line in the upper right corner is where I tore it in the process. I did manage to get it stapled to stretchers though.

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