Them’s Goldfish
Burt and Harry were doing what they did best: sitting on the back terrace of the old-age home, swapping tales over the dregs of their morning coffee, and munching whatever was left on their plates after flicking the crumbs from the croissants onto the flagstones for the birds. The other residents gave them room, tired of being told whenever they came close that the two of them were just letting their choppers do the talking. “They get a good rest from the glass on the bathroom sink overnight, not having to get up a single time to pee!”
Maggie was one of the few residents to go up against the dynamic duo. Her quip that “It wasn’t funny even the first time!” got more laughs.
In any case, this morning turned out to be for walks down memory lane. A cardinal landed on the far end of the patio, having spotted the crumbs. Burt was first out of the chute. “I told you those birds have super sight.” Harry ignored the remark and tried to encourage the bird with his tweet, tweet, t w e e t, which didn’t play well through his choppers or 82-year-old lips.
Burt pounced, “Give it up Harry, your lips are past their prime.”
“Never. They’re the same ones I was born with.”
“Well, must be the teeth then.”
“No different than yours.”
There was a rumor circulating in the residence than once the two friends had gotten their dentures mixed up after laying them out on a dining room table for comparison.
Harry tried to deflect. “Too bad you weren’t around when I was a kid. You should have heard me whistle like a blue bird. Plenty of them back east then. They were more melodic than these red cardinals.”
And that started the trip down memory lane.
Harry’s family grew up in Hoboken. “They called me Hoboken Harry soon as I turned eight!”
Burt’s family was from the lower East Side. He would spend the next two weeks trying to come up with his own handle, but he was stuck as East Side Ed even though his name was Burt. Meanwhile as best defense is a strong offense, he had launched the following story:
“OK, Harry, let me tell you a story that my father told me about when he was eight growing up on the Lower East Side. Summers were hot then too. Maybe not as hot as they are now but then if you were poor the best you could do was open all the windows and pray for a breeze, trying to ignore all the smells coming in from the streets and alleys. ‘Whoo-ee, gardy-loo.’”
Burt moved on quickly, realizing his French wasn’t what it used to be, which never was much anyhow. “Yeh, on hot days he and his brothers and cousins – by the dozens – would go down to the East River and jump in to cool off. Dad would joke, ‘So our mother wouldn’t have to wash your underwear.’ We took turns, always making sure a couple of the family members stayed up to guard the pile of clothes and shoes.”
He paused for effect. “I bet that was at least one hundred years ago. They’d run down the pier, hold their nose, and jump in. On one such run some big kid from uptown stopped him and pointed out the shit floating in the water, guess there were even fewer sanitation regulations then, and asked, ‘Hey kid, what do you call that stuff floating there?’ My pop answered, ‘Them’s goldfish,’ held his nose, ran down the pier, and executed a perfect bombardier into the river.”
Burt figured his story won the prize that morning, so he pushed back from the table, looked around for anything he may have brought and left, and nodded to Harry. “Loser must bus the dishes. And don’t forget, ‘them’s goldfish’ and you heard it from me first, right here!”
About the suthor
Kenneth M. Kapp lives with his wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, writing late at night in his man-cave. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. Please visit www.kmkbooks.com.
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