Fish Tale

My husband Greg and I are having a yard sale Thurs/Fri/Sat this week, in preparation for our big move to Virginia next week. It’s a lot of work, and we are very tired. One really good thing about it is it’s the hottest week of the year century!

I’ve been really stressed over the last few weeks worrying about what is going to become of my big fish. In 1999 one of our suppliers took me and a few others from my company on a fishing and golfing trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was four days of drunkenness and fun.  When we were out on the fishing boat, I was the only one who caught a fish. It was a 9 foot, 3 inch striped Marlin, and weighed 125 lbs. It took over an hour to reel it in, and before it was over my arm muscles had turned to rubber. I had a really hard time of it. Thankfully the Captain backed the boat up to help me.

All the guys on the boat goaded me into having the fish mounted as a trophy. The fact is, I was drunk and didn’t think that decision through very well. It cost a lot of money, sure, but its true cost was the space it took up. Greg and I didn’t have a wall big enough in our Chicago house (where we were living at the time) to hang and display the fish. Neither did we in our Florida or Ohio homes. So this whole time, from 1999 to present, the fish has been living in its original shipping crate, in either our basement or garage.

I used to tell people after I got my trophy fish back from the taxidermist that no matter what happened to me in life, even if I ended up homeless, at least I have my fish.

Next week we are moving into an apartment in the sky, and there is no room for the fish. Greg convinced me it was time to say goodbye to it. I really had no choice. No one in my or Greg’s families wanted it, and I had no luck selling it on Craigslist. I was worried to the point of losing sleep that next week when we drove away in the moving truck that I’d have to leave the fish for the garbage men to take away.

But yesterday on the first day of the yard sale, in fact in the first hour of the yard sale, an old man from a few streets behind us in our neighborhood stopped when he saw the fish out in our yard. He caught a big fish himself several years ago and had it mounted and he displays it on a wall in his house. I asked him if his fish needed a friend. He said yes, and before you know it cash changed hands and he came back a few hours later with a pickup truck and hauled it away. I’m happy my fish found a good home and will have a friend.

Cubby's Striped Marlin, caught off Cabo San Lucas, 1999