RSS Feed |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Other Voices I read an article about koi recently and it brought back one of my earliest childhood memories. It's the story of why goldfish are orange, and it involves my grandfather, Briggs Arrington, who owned a laundry and dry cleaners in Cordele, Ga. My mother and I frequently visited my grandparents, and I often stayed with them when my parents went out of town. On many of those trips, I would go to the laundry with Papa. It was the late 1960s and I was no more than four. But I remember this as if it happened yesterday, even though it was, unbelievably, nearly four decades ago. Back then, Cordele was typical small-town Georgia. Papa, I think, knew everyone in town, and spending time with him was special. Unfortunately, the story I'm about to tell you is one of the few memories I have of him. He died in 1969, when I was five. I always liked it when Papa and I left the laundry, which to a four-year-old was, frankly, a bit scary. He always told me to stay away from the giant steam irons because they were hot. But after seeing the steam and hearing the noise they made, no one had to worry about me getting close enough for the temperature to matter. Invariably, we'd go to the Cordele Fire Department, which was across the street from the laundry. Papa would sit out front of the fire station and talk to the firemen about boring things like the weather or taxes, stuff a four-year-old couldn't care less about. I, on the other hand, did fun things - like playing on the fire truck. From the fire station, we'd walk on up the block so Papa could talk to a friend who owned the Sinclair gas station. This was fun for two reasons. First, I loved the old sign in front of the station because of the big dinosaur that was part of the Sinclair logo. Second, we'd always buy a pack of Lance cheese crackers and a couple of six-and-a-halfounce Coca-Colas. Or Co- Colas, as we'd call 'em. Being the good Southerners that we are, we never drank anything but Co-Cola. It's sort of the official soft drink of the Arrington clan. Pepsi is a four-letter word to us. Each morning, as soon as my grandmother's feet hit the floor, she'd go to the kitchen, open the refrigerator and get one of those six-and-ahalf ounce bottles. There weren't many rules at my grandmother's house. But everybody knew Rule No. 1: Don't even think about drinking the last Co- Cola, lest there not be a cold one when she woke up. I have no idea what the punishment would have been. None of us grandkids were ever dumb enough to find out. We're partial to cheese crackers, too. My grandmother and her friends used to meet every morning about 10:30 at one of the drug stores in Cordele for, what else, a Co-Cola and a pack of cheese crackers. It was such a grand time and I've often wondered why we don't take time out of our hectic schedules to do things like that today. But back to my story. Armed with our Co-Cola and cheese crackers, Papa and I would leave the gas station and head back to the laundry, along the way passing the Crisp County Library. The library had a fountain in front of it, and in the fountain were seven or eight goldfish. Papa and I would take one of the cheese crackers and crumble it up. Then we'd sprinkle the crumbs in the water for the goldfish to eat. I was always excited at how eager the fish were to eat the cheese crackers we gave them. "Do you know why goldfish are orange," Papa asked me one time. I didn't. "It's because they eat these cheese crackers," he said. To my four-year-old brain, it made total sense. I had seen plenty of fish that weren't orange, and I figured they ate something else, like maybe Saltines. (Of course, years later, Pepperidge Farms turned goldfish into crackers. I was never sure how Papa would have reacted to that.) I'm old enough now to know Papa probably wasn't telling the truth. It's kind of like when your mother tells you that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Or that if you keep making that funny face, it'll freeze like that. But I don't like to take chances and, according to the story I read, this man has 2,000 koi in his fish house. I may send him a case of cheese crackers, anyway. Just in case.
Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times in Gainesville, Ga., and a native of Blakely. He can be reached at mclarke@ gainesvilletimes.com.
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
