DO THE FISH EVEN HAVE A CHANCE?Sunday, 8:15 AM. 56 degrees, wind SSW, light. The sky is cloudless and the barometer predicts partly cloudy weather. It is a gorgeous day.
The beach was crowded this morning, cars, fishermen, boats. At first I thought the fish run must have started, but after a while I concluded that it was a really nice Sunday morning.
Ten years ago, just before I retired, Joan and I took several of my employees on a botanical junket to the Pacific Northwest. In Vancouver we went to a Chinese market, and while there bought a strange fruit which we could not understand the name of, nor what to do with it. Weighing about ten pounds and the shape of a football, it was enclosed in a spiny, hard husk. We took it back to the motel and it took me a long time attacking it with a butcher knife to force it open, whereupon the most amazing odor escaped from it, perhaps akin to a mixture of natural gas and rotting manure. The motel owner actually came running and knocked on the door to ask whether there was a gas leak in the room. I don’t remember what I told him, I was laughing so hard.
The following quotes from the early Twentieth-Century botanical exploration book I am reading solved a mystery which had persisted for over a decade: “No Durians (Durio zebethinus) were allowed in the hotel." "You’ve been eating Durians…Get out of here and don’t come back until the stench wears off’.” "Borneo tribesmen will commit murder for this fruit" "People have been killed or seriously injured by the falling fruit." The sweet, custard-like taste of the Durian is considered a delicacy in China and Southeast Asia, I have since fund out. It evidently is an acquired taste.
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