The goldfish hung from my handlebar in a plastic bag filled with water. The bag swung back and forth, side to side, and the fish scrambled in the water to maintain its equilibrium. Its days were numbered, it knew. It stared with huge eyes in proportion to it's finny body, and I thought I noticed a grimace, although it's hard to tell whether a fish is grimacing or not. I glanced down at it every now and then. It continued to flit around, hovering and flailing its fins like a slow humingbird that had somehow become trapped within an inexplicable force field in square inches of air. It seemed content enough as far as I could tell; or was it grimacing? Was it already starting to use up all the oxygen in it's transparent cell? Whatever the case, I was following Bill and Bob. We were heading back home. It seemed like it would take forever to get back there. My world consisted of the wobbley white stripe along the edge of the hightway below my bike's tire, the heat of the late afternoon sun, the wire basket attached to the handlebar, the sticky rubber grips on the end of the handlebars, the crunch of the stones on the edge of the highway, and the occasional roar and whoosh as a thunderbird or a semi truck slammed past, making me waver and wobble even more, trying to stay at all times on the white line painted along the edge of US 23. We had made it to the Josephenium. The priest factory. We were on our way. Soon we'd reach Flint Road.
Bill and Bob Campbell where the twins who moved in next door when I was eleven or twelve. They lived with their divorced Mom. That was pretty exotic, divorced mom, even to say it. They were renting the old house, which was like a big house on a plantation, next door to our house. They were identical twins, but I think I knew Bill a bit better than Bob. They were skinny, kind of wiry, and blonde headed. Real All American Boy material. I knew Bill and Bob for around those one or two years, and then they moved away.
I don't really have a feel for what it was like to ride a bike down to Graceland with these two kids. I don’t think I ever would have thought of doing it on my own. I'm not sure I told Mom where we were going. Graceland was probably ten miles each way. It seemed like it took forever. You had to go all the way to the end of County Road 10, turn right on County Line Road, then quickly left on Flint Road after crossing under the railroad bridge, and then on Flint Road, which diagonaled up to 23. I was really scared of 23, because it was this four lane highway with big old semis coming along at sixty miles an hour. We went past the Josephinum, and on for another two or three miles until we hit Worthington. That's where 23 changes to High Street. In Worthington, they've got sidewalks along High Street, and we took the sidewalks all the way into Columbus, down past Kanawa where Grandma Britt lived, past the first McDonalds in Columbus, past the Worthington Ford dealership and just before that Selby Boulevard, where we used to live.
I probably would have turned back a lot of times, but Bill and Bob kept egging me on to see if we could make it down to Graceland. It was hot, in the middle of summer, proabably July. It must have been around July 1964 or 1965, somewhere in there.
We made it to Graceland, and I think we went through the Woolco's discount store, sort of an early day Wallmart, and later we found the pet store, and decided to buy goldfish. The pet store smelled sweaty, poopy and had a familiar humidity. Big tanks near the entrance were crammed with floating gold flakes of flittering fins that stared out of the glass as though pining for some unknown other place. They could not have imagined the tropical reef covering candied coral and gentle warm waves where their ancestors played and risked being devoured by grumpy sea ducks and big mouthed salt water predators. That world was not even a dream to these glittering iterations of tropical genes where of all the pet joints in all the seedy corners of the complicated big finned cold war world they had to end up here in this one, staring at this particular kid who was just about to snag them in this particular net attached to that particular metal handle. Gotcha, said the pet store guy. That's a beaut, isn't it?
They put the goldfish in plastic bags, and then put the plastic bags inside paper containers like the ones used by Chinese restaurants. I didn't have a basket on my bike, so I figured I'd tie the the long end of the plastic bag around the handle bar and let it dangle from there. That way I could keep an eye on my fish. I stuck the paper containere in the trash and mounted up. I think each of us bought one fish. We retraced our path, back along High Street, past Worthington Ford, past Kanawa, past Selby Boulevard past downtown Worthington, norh of Worthington where the countryside started, then the end of the sidewalks again, and I remember I said something about being scared to ride on the pavement on 23. I remembered all of Dad's warnings, but Bill and Bob told me it was ok as long as I kept my bike tires on top of the white stripe along the edge of the highway, that we'd be allright, that they couldn't hit us. So the three of us went single file on our bikes down 23, keeping our tires within the white stripe on the shoulder, buffetted by the winds as huge semis slammed past at sixty miles an hour. Finally we got to Flint Road, and turned right onto it, and it seemed we might actually make it back. We checked the fish in their boxes once in a while. They seemed a bit listless.
I remember having an argument with Bill and Bob when we pulled off along the side of the road for a rest. We laid our bikes down on the side and sat on some big rocks along a wide place in the berm of Flint Road. Bill was insisting that helicopters were safer than airplanes. I told him he didn't know what he was talking about, because my Dad flies an airplane that's safer than any helicopter. I tried to explain, but they just didn't get it. They didn't get the superiority of the Helio airplane, and I just couldn't make them shut up about helicopters. We pedaled on, and I was starting to get blisters on my hands from holding the handle bars.
We got back to County Road 10 by about five or six in the evening, I bet, and pedaled home. When we got there, the fish were dead, floating upside down in their little plastic prisons. We compared them, Bill's fish, Bob's fish, and my fish; all dead, all floating upside down, gold fins swaying limply back and forth as we jiggled the plastic bags. We dumped them on the grass in the ditch in front of my house. The little gold fish lay motionless in the grass and weeds. Mine fell right on one of those spreading prickly weeds with the big stalk in the middle that makes a dandelion, and lay their lifeless in the prickly bowl of the weed as though it were a platter for some exotic meal.
Bill and Bob Campbell where the twins who moved in next door when I was eleven or twelve. They lived with their divorced Mom. That was pretty exotic, divorced mom, even to say it. They were renting the old house, which was like a big house on a plantation, next door to our house. They were identical twins, but I think I knew Bill a bit better than Bob. They were skinny, kind of wiry, and blonde headed. Real All American Boy material. I knew Bill and Bob for around those one or two years, and then they moved away.
I don't really have a feel for what it was like to ride a bike down to Graceland with these two kids. I don’t think I ever would have thought of doing it on my own. I'm not sure I told Mom where we were going. Graceland was probably ten miles each way. It seemed like it took forever. You had to go all the way to the end of County Road 10, turn right on County Line Road, then quickly left on Flint Road after crossing under the railroad bridge, and then on Flint Road, which diagonaled up to 23. I was really scared of 23, because it was this four lane highway with big old semis coming along at sixty miles an hour. We went past the Josephinum, and on for another two or three miles until we hit Worthington. That's where 23 changes to High Street. In Worthington, they've got sidewalks along High Street, and we took the sidewalks all the way into Columbus, down past Kanawa where Grandma Britt lived, past the first McDonalds in Columbus, past the Worthington Ford dealership and just before that Selby Boulevard, where we used to live.
I probably would have turned back a lot of times, but Bill and Bob kept egging me on to see if we could make it down to Graceland. It was hot, in the middle of summer, proabably July. It must have been around July 1964 or 1965, somewhere in there.
We made it to Graceland, and I think we went through the Woolco's discount store, sort of an early day Wallmart, and later we found the pet store, and decided to buy goldfish. The pet store smelled sweaty, poopy and had a familiar humidity. Big tanks near the entrance were crammed with floating gold flakes of flittering fins that stared out of the glass as though pining for some unknown other place. They could not have imagined the tropical reef covering candied coral and gentle warm waves where their ancestors played and risked being devoured by grumpy sea ducks and big mouthed salt water predators. That world was not even a dream to these glittering iterations of tropical genes where of all the pet joints in all the seedy corners of the complicated big finned cold war world they had to end up here in this one, staring at this particular kid who was just about to snag them in this particular net attached to that particular metal handle. Gotcha, said the pet store guy. That's a beaut, isn't it?
They put the goldfish in plastic bags, and then put the plastic bags inside paper containers like the ones used by Chinese restaurants. I didn't have a basket on my bike, so I figured I'd tie the the long end of the plastic bag around the handle bar and let it dangle from there. That way I could keep an eye on my fish. I stuck the paper containere in the trash and mounted up. I think each of us bought one fish. We retraced our path, back along High Street, past Worthington Ford, past Kanawa, past Selby Boulevard past downtown Worthington, norh of Worthington where the countryside started, then the end of the sidewalks again, and I remember I said something about being scared to ride on the pavement on 23. I remembered all of Dad's warnings, but Bill and Bob told me it was ok as long as I kept my bike tires on top of the white stripe along the edge of the highway, that we'd be allright, that they couldn't hit us. So the three of us went single file on our bikes down 23, keeping our tires within the white stripe on the shoulder, buffetted by the winds as huge semis slammed past at sixty miles an hour. Finally we got to Flint Road, and turned right onto it, and it seemed we might actually make it back. We checked the fish in their boxes once in a while. They seemed a bit listless.
I remember having an argument with Bill and Bob when we pulled off along the side of the road for a rest. We laid our bikes down on the side and sat on some big rocks along a wide place in the berm of Flint Road. Bill was insisting that helicopters were safer than airplanes. I told him he didn't know what he was talking about, because my Dad flies an airplane that's safer than any helicopter. I tried to explain, but they just didn't get it. They didn't get the superiority of the Helio airplane, and I just couldn't make them shut up about helicopters. We pedaled on, and I was starting to get blisters on my hands from holding the handle bars.
We got back to County Road 10 by about five or six in the evening, I bet, and pedaled home. When we got there, the fish were dead, floating upside down in their little plastic prisons. We compared them, Bill's fish, Bob's fish, and my fish; all dead, all floating upside down, gold fins swaying limply back and forth as we jiggled the plastic bags. We dumped them on the grass in the ditch in front of my house. The little gold fish lay motionless in the grass and weeds. Mine fell right on one of those spreading prickly weeds with the big stalk in the middle that makes a dandelion, and lay their lifeless in the prickly bowl of the weed as though it were a platter for some exotic meal.