Dead Fish

I read in today’s New York Times Metro section a story about a bag of dead fish that was stinking up the Upper East Side. Apparently the heat was making the fish nice and rancid and the stench was something fierce. Everyone who passed the bag feared that it contained a dead body and were afraid to go near it. Eventually the police, coroner and finally the sanitation department were called in to investigate.

This reminded me from my younger days when I used to do a lot of fishing out in Coney Island. A friend and I would go off the Jetties and catch dozens of porgy, Sea Bass and Black Fish. One day while I was driving home with a large bucket of these small fish, I had to stop short. The bucket tipped over and the fish spilled out all over the hatch back area of this crappy old Toyota Corolla I was driving. I cleaned up the mess as best I could and forgot about the incident. That is until several days later.

This crappy Corolla was a dark blue with dark blue vinyl seats and did not have air conditioning. During the summer months it would be hotter than a pizza oven. This heat started to bring out the smell of a putrid dead fish that apparently lodged itself somewhere between the seats of the car. The smell was so intense that after only 5 minutes of sitting in the car your clothes became drenched with the smell. Too bad I didn’t have the same services of the upper east side residents to get rid of it.