FAT FISH STORY Last month while riding south on Interstate 77 in Virginia on our way to the annual Herman-Arndt Families Reunion in the Hickory-Newton-Conover tri-town area. Along the downgrade toward the New River I saw a road sign which brought back pleasant memories from my childhood.
It is just a few miles south of I-81 before you get to Fort Chiswell. South on I-77-77 there is a road leading off to the right but I'm usually busy looking in the opposite direction to get a good look at the old Shot Tower there on the bank of the ancient river - the oldest on the North American continent -ironically named the "New."
I remember going to that fish hatchery many years ago when I was just a little kid and seeing what, to me was something unusual - and still is today. a real natural. I saw the world's largest fish bowl and possibly the fattest fish, as well. We called them "goldfish" - not knowing any better and compared them to the pair we had in a small, glass bowl at home. We fed ours sheets of tissue paper food but the ones we saw that day were among the steak and potato-eaters, at least. The "bowl" was a metal tank; rock-fringed all around and set deep within the floor of the foyer in the first large building on the Hatchery grounds. The tank was alive and throbbing with interweaving fish of an average length of about a foot and half as wide! With each of many collisions you wondered which one was going to pop first!
We learned that very day, of course, that me of the official name of the fish was, of course, was "carp." I've learned since that they are long-lived creatures, but I would imagine the fat has taken that batch of golden swimmers to fin and flipper paradise by this time. I'm going to stop in at the old hatchery the next time we head trip-town way to check it out.
A.L.M. Aug. 1, 2005 [c359wds]
