is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Where the Ducks Walk on the Fish.
Where the Ducks Walk on the Fish.
Today Evany became the first non-Jill's-family-member I know to have seen the ducks walk on the fish. Well, she didn't really see ducks walk on fish. She saw the fish, and the ducks, and some geese standing by, but none of the ducks were at that time walking on the fish. That's not important. What matters is that Evany has now seen the Spillway at Pymatuning Lake in Linesville, PA. This is where the fish gather so thickly that you can't even see the water. They gather because there are humans gathered as well, and these humans are throwing bread at the fish. So the circular spillway area fills with gaping fish mouths sucking up air hoping bread will land in their holes. Once bread is thrown the fish fight for the bread in a writhing mass of fish-on-fish action. Sometimes ducks walk along the tops of the teeming writhing fish to get some bread for themselves. That is why Linesville, PA is known as the place where the ducks walk on the fish. It even says so on the sign that welcomes you to the town.
My family, the extended but strictly blood-related version, used to spend portions of our summers camping at Pymatuning, and we would always go to see the ducks walk on the fish. It is a disgusting sight, what with the huge unnaturally bread-crazed fish mouths jumping all over each other and making sucking noises. And the huge people throwing bread at the huge fish. But of course kids find it exciting. And adults find it repulsive in that way where you have to go see it because it is repulsive. In fact Evany yelled out at the fish, "you are disgusting fish, all of you" �much to the shock of some nearby onlookers� and then she went to look at the fish from another angle.
There are other things Evany now knows and has seen about my upbringing:
The house and neighborhood where I grew up in Cleveland Heights Ohio is very all-American cute.
The sky in Ohio is often grey-white instead of blue.
My paternal Grandma and Grandpa are buried in a very pretty place.
It rains all summer in some areas of the world and so, unlike in California, events can be altered or ruined by rain easily and often.
We were driving around, and it was raining, again, and she asked whether it always rains in the summer here. And whether it also rains in New York in the summer. Ha! She is from California! Oh California. You are a good place to live.
Speaking of rain, the picture I had in my mind of what it would be like the first time I visited my grandparents' gravesite when they were both in it and the grass had regrown after my grandma died, that picture was of me standing there on a sunny day with some blue sky showing through the grey-white. This is no doubt because I live in California. Instead it was raining and I stood there with a broken umbrella. It was still a very pretty place, and I was glad to be able to be there.
(I was also proud that I found it without help.)
On the way from Chicago to Cleveland I was laughing and telling Evany how in Ohio people are always talking about what routes to take to get places. All the major streets are also some form of numbered route. So I grew up listening to people debate routes, and one time my cousin Adam and I, as adults, giggled in the back of the car while my grandma and grandpa had a very long conversation about whether the route my grandpa had chosen was the right one. They stopped and bought us ice cream cones so we would stop laughing at them.
Anyway, just a few miles into Ohio we had already taken some misstep. Evany was navigating and I was driving. She was directing me to take the 78 to the 80 (I am using random numbers because I do not remember the actual routes). Then, after gazing at the map, she said, "you know, it might be better if we doubled back on the 78 and then took the 54 to the 6." She wasn't joking. And then we started laughing really hard.
In other news, I've been singing the Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere" on and off throughout our trip (whenever we aren't listening to music and I'm not singing "Baby's on Fire"). Today we finally heard it on the radio somewhere on I-86 in New York.
Tonight we are in Sayre, NY. We are on a road called FUTURE I-86. We are hoping that this means we will get to Manhattan yesterday once we get on the road tomorrow.
Stats:
Cleveland, OH to Sayre, PA
Miles: 380
Lodging: $90
12:08 a.m. - September 05, 2004
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