REVENGE OF THE BUTTON FISH

By Christopher Parker

The spring in Lake Hopatcong came into being each year the way the water might have sprung from the springs right under the lake.  You could tell from whence those springs ‘leaked in’ when you swam.  You’d be in water, your skin adjusted to one temperature, and suddenly you’d be in an invisible bowl of colder water, goose-bumps trying to jump right off your skin to get out of the water!  

They were cold springs.  No doubt cold because they came from melted snow.  And they stayed cold from resting underground before they sprung.  It’s always 52 degrees, I hear, three feet under ground.  I wonder if I could hear water under the earth. 

In the summer 52 degrees is cool, in the winter that is warm enough not to freeze.  In the spring the temperature is in-between, like the whole season itself: a changing point.  The spring in Hopatcong was a changing point because it took some time to manifest itself as a pleasant spring.  Yet you could see and, perhaps more importantly, feel things change.  New sprouts in the dirt and on branches; mud sticks to your clothes like a sign that tells secrets about you.

We read in the town weekly paper that there was a spring fishing contest to take place not too far away on the Morris Canal.  The Morris Canal was not the lake but rather a man-dugout line of water that was used to transport big barges.  These barges transported supplies, just like trucks or trains do today.  But these barges were on water.   This allowed donkeys and horses to pull tons and tons of products like stones, metal, glass and food. 

Still, even in my childhood the Morris Canal was no longer an aqueous highway. But it was stocked with fish.  That meant the county people put baby fish in the canal, small-fry, so that they could grow and you could catch them.  Lake Hopatcong had fish too.  But this was the spring fishing contest. 

Uncle Barry had entered us into the contest and took us to the part of the county where the competition was being held.  Even though we didn't catch a fish of merit (everyone else seemed to catch a prizewinner except my brother Jon and I) Uncle Barry encouraged us to keep on fishing at home.  So maybe I wasn't a good fisherwoman. 

I thought I needed another involvement with nature.  So I went into agriculture.  It wasn't too late in the spring to plant a few vegetables.  Dad let me have a patch of dirt in the back yard.  For five cents I bought a pack of tiny radish seeds.  They grew underground.  I liked the idea of that. 

My grandmother visited us from Brooklyn every other week.  Once we went to a flea market and Grandma searched through boxes of junk for the bits of things she could use.  Like buttons.  Grandma collected buttons as if they were gold nuggets, and hoarded them in little jars. But it wasn’t only buttons.  She’d pick up anything, it seemed.  Once in a while you might catch Grandma picking a piece of paper off the ground, or from under the craft table.  She would examine it for a second, fold it up and put it into here purse.  I suppose she thought she might use this piece of paper some day.  Maybe to wrap up some buttons. 

Speaking of buttons, one day, at our dock at home, Uncle Barry caught several sunnies, perch and pickerels.  But before he threw these fish back into the lake he sewed buttons onto their dorsal fins. Plastic diamond buttons, white shirt buttons red buttons; all small enough to be carried by the fish. 

He told us "You can probably catch some of these same fish again.  When you do I'll give a prize of one quarter of a dollar for catching a fish with a button on the fin.  And anyone who catches the blue gill, with a diamond button, will be awarded fifty cents.  Of course, we'll throw each fish back in the lake so they’re up for grabs again!"

            There were ads on television at that time for the Buttoneer®, “an instant, simply-click button tool”.  You placed a button on one of the plastic chords, which looked just like the plastic things that holds a price tag to new clothing. You know that piece of plastic chord with a foot on the end, so you can’t pull it off the clothing without damage.  Then, you trigger the little plastic machine and the button is clipped into place.  It's not as pretty as thread, but it's fast. And that's useful, especially when working with twisting fish.  “Just click and the button is attached,” the commercial sang in my memory.

My friend Netta, (whose real name was based on the Lene Lenape Indian words for Skilled Advisor, or neta-wata-wes) watched Uncle Barry sewing on the fin of a fish.  Netta felt she had to tell him something.

"When you change nature," said Netta, "you have to live with the changes."

"I know," said Uncle Barry, "If button on fish, then win money!"

"That's not what I mean," Netta replied.  "It's like you change a fish and nature seeks a kind of revenge."

"But we throw these fish back," Barry retorted.

"Yes," Netta continued.  "But they are no longer fish, then.  They are button fish."

"Revenge of the button fish?" Uncle Barry questioned slightly sarcastically, tossing a buttoned, flapping blue gill onto the surface of the lake, the sound of it like a smack in the face.  Then the fish was under water again, out of view.

As we watched Uncle Barry sewing buttons onto sunnies Grandma was on the patio near the dock.  She bent down to take something out of the gravel.  As she stood she held her finding up to the sun to examine it.  The light hit the diamond in the small button held between her thumb and forefinger.  Uncle Barry must have dropped it there with all his moving like a cowboy fish herder.

The diamond glittered like a jewel in the sun then sunk into the darkness of Grandma’s black leather purse.  Then she tossed the purse onto her shoulder like a Marine, the black purse hanging from he shoulder like a saddlebag on a Harley.

It took weeks sometimes to catch a button fish.  I suppose Uncle Barry could only sew so many of them, even though he seemed to fish every morning at the lake.  So we were feeling like we did at the county fishing contest, catching nothing of value!

Maybe I did not have the patience for fish but I did have patience for farming and ideas.  And while I waited for bites on my bait I thought. I thought that the only way to identify an award winning fish was with the button sewed on the back.  And here I was catching sunny after sunny and the occasional perch or blue gill.  What if I was to simply take my mom's Buttoneer and click one of Grandma’s buttons onto the fin. 

Well Uncle Barry was off playing golf that morning.  Maybe this was an opportunity to try my . . .idea.  I did not think of this so much as cheating at the time but as inventing something interesting, another part of the game.  

Up in the house on the top of the hill overlooking the lake my brother Jon and I searched through grandmothers sewing box for buttons.  We found a baby food jar filled with white, red, black and even one diamond button.  So down we trod to the dock with bait, buttons and Buttoneer ready to catch and tag our own award winners.  And sure enough we did catch several sunnies -- without buttons.  Then we caught one big blue gill. 

This was the one to sew a button onto, we thought.  I stroked my fingers through Grandmas button jar, like searching through a box of Cracker Jacks for a prize.  I pull out the diamond button! 

"You can't use that one," says Jon, blue gill writhing from the hook on the end of the fishing line, as if it were trying to fly.  "That's one of Grandmas jewel buttons."

"She collects so many buttons she'll never miss it.  Besides a diamond button on a blue gill is worth fifty cents in this game, brother!  So hold onto that fish Jon," I commanded, preparing the Buttoneer for injection.

My brother was afraid to hold the flapping fish in his hands for fear that the fin bones would poke into his fingers.  So Jon pressed his foot gently on the fish, Keds saving his toes from fierce fins.  Then I positioned the button on a plastic chord and tried to trigger our little mechanism.  But even though the fish was held down by rubber soles the fins still wiggled too much to get an accurate aim.

"Hurry up," exclaimed Jon.  "The blue gill is stinking up my new Keds.  Besides the fish can't be out of water this long."

So under pressure I pulled the trigger on the Buttoneer.  It clicked like a lock in a prison door.

"You’ve put the button too close to the back of the fish!" hollered Jon. "Uncle Barry will know this was not one of his fish.  He puts the buttons on the top of the fin."

"Oh well," I said.  "Let's give it a try."

So I threw the fish in a metal bucket filled with water and left the catch on the dock.

Later that day Jon said to me.  "Uncle Barry is taking a long time playing golf.  You think he'd want to come out of the sun."

Jon was right.  It was a long time.   And the sun that day was fierce.  I looked out the window. There was the bucket on the dock.  Sun was glaring off the light gray planks and glimmering on the metal bucket.

"You'd better check on that fish,” Jon suggested.  "He's been in the sun for hours."

So we went down to check.  The fish was sideways in the water; gills still like a soccer ball with no air.

"It's dead," I solemnly reported to Jon.

"You probably killed it the way you put that button on," Jon accused.

"I don't think so," I replied confidently.  "It could have been the sun, no fresh water in the bucket and the age of this blue gill.  Obviously a big one.  And look at the holes in its lip!  This thing has been through years of fish hooks, some that caught, some that did not."  I thought I sounded like a true fisherman.

"Maybe we can still get fifty cents for it?" Jon proposed.

"No, I don’t think so.  We have to be able to throw the fish back in so it’s possible to catch it again," I said.  "Otherwise it is not a winning fish.  That's Uncle Barry's rules."

"Maybe Netta was right," Jon added.  "We changed the fish and it was no longer just a blue gill.  And at its old age it could not handle the change."

"That could be.  No, we do have to get rid of this thing."

I stood up with the bucket.  There, far across the lake, I could see what looked like Netta on her own dock.  She seemed to be looking at us.

I carried the fish to my little radish garden for burial.  Jon troweled a shallow hole in the topsoil.  I tossed the blue gill in, on its side.

"Out of respect, why don't you bury the fish the way it swam, dorsal fin up.  Also, the diamond button can stick out of the dirt and be our little, secret grave stone," suggested Jon.

So we did that, checking on its "progress" amongst the radishes every now and then.

I did not feel the same way about catching Uncle Barry's button fish any more.  It could have been fun.  But now I felt ashamed of what I had done, or tried to do.  Sometimes I threw button fish back in the lake without collecting a quarter.  Sometimes I gave the fish to my little sister, who at three, never seemed to catch anything herself.

Later that summer, deep into August, we were having a big family reunion at the lake.  Grandma was there, Uncle Barry and many other uncles, aunts, and cousins. 

Mom calls Jon from upstairs.  "Jon get up here and clean up your room before everyone comes.  Also, something stinks like dead fish in your closet.  I think it's your Keds.  What were you doing?"

Then, back down in the kitchen, mom was making a salad.  She says, "Marie, are your radishes ready?  I could use them for this salad"

Wow, I thought, my own farm it providing food for the reunion! I was so proud. 

"Yeah, I think they are ripe.  I haven't checked them in a couple of weeks.  But according to the instructions they should be ready."

"OK," said mom, "Grandma likes to pick up things.  I'll send her out for a few radishes."

So out went Grandma to my little farm in the back of the house and to pull out radishes one by one.  She held them up, examined them and tossed the mature ones into her apron pocket.  Grandma was ready to pull up another radish by the stem and leaves when she saw something in the soil.

Oh, a little diamond button, she thought.  I wonder what this is doing here?  Probably fell off a child's sweater.  I'll put it in my jar of repair buttons.

Grandma, placing thumb and forefinger on the button found she was unable to lift it.  So, hands already soiled, palm in humus, she grabs the button wholeheartedly.  She had to pull.  It seemed more difficult than a radish.  So when the button came out of the dirt, Grandma had been pulling so hard she fells over backwards.  There, hanging from her farmer’s hand was one diamond button attached to the decrepit remains of our old blue gill.

From the kitchen mom and I heard a coyote howl that sounded like Grandma. 

"You better go out and check on her," said mom.

Grandma was fine, a bit shocked by her discovery, but fine.  She did not talk to me all that day.  So what could have been a totally great day was just a bit marred by something I had chosen to do several weeks back.  Truly this was, as Uncle Barry said a while ago, the revenge of the button fish.

Questions for Inquiry

Is it ethical for Uncle Barry to sew a button on the fins of the sunfish?

Is it wrong for Maria to do so?

Is there anything else unethical with Maria’s actions?

What wrong things occurred as a result of Maria’s button fish?

Should we contemplate all the possible wrongs resulting from an action?

Are there instances in which we do what we initially thinks id good but which causes problems, loss, difficulties for others?

What categories of ethics were manifested by Maria’s button fish?

Where did the ethical conflicts begin?

            Was it at the very thought of Maria making her own button fish?

            Were her thoughts ethical?

Where did Maria’s ethical failures end?

Where did they go despite her?

What was Maria not ethically responsible for?  To what percentage was she responsible?

Was Netta ethical?  Did Netta undertake all necessary ethical actions?

Was Maria responsible for anyone else’s ethical failings?

Is it our ethical responsibility to think of these ramifications?

What is the ecology of the fish, of Uncle Barry, of grandma?

What is our responsibility to the ecology?

How does one thing effect another?

Is that science?

 Copyright 2013 by Christopher Parker