The December is usually a slow month for AKA Business Newsletter's Fish & Egg listing, owing to the weather and seasonal distractions. However there was a nice ad from Argentina, listing over a dozen different wild Cynolebias spawns. Send the nine or ten dollars per spawn to Jeronimo Chiecchio or Jose Martinez. I smiled at the first name, thinking how common in probably was in Spanish speaking countries and how unusual in this land of gringos. With that I returned to the whirl of all those things which occupy us in December (one of the nicest being the GWAS party at Don Frestel's).
Not long afterwards I received an e-mail from an old friend and occasional AKAer - Joe Gardner. Joe has spawned fish I have never even heard of and walks with God with a closeness I look at wistfully. He is also very persuasive, having conned me into driving through Southern Michigan to do another February program.
Joe was all excited about an egg deal he had arranged with a guy named Jerome. Ahh the wonders of the internet and the limitations of it! Jerome, of course, is the English rendering of Jeronimo. Joe and Jerome had arranged for the eggs of four Cynolebias species to go to central Michigan. Oh yes, Jerome was coming to Chicago over Christmas and would I take delivery on them and bring them with me to Michigan?
Curious if there would be any trouble bringing eggs into the country, I put out the question on two killie related internet mailing list. Naturally some wise guy immediately started bombarding me with hints like, "put them in the bottom of toothpaste tubes" or "put them in small containers and swallow them..." (His initials are Alf Anderson.) Also, naturally, right about then, Jerome's e-mail provider went down and last minute suggestions were lost.
When my winter break did begin, a good friend from the AKA (Ron Coleman) passed away and very faithfully Jerome called up from his grandmothers in Kennilworth, Illinois. It was a strange Sunday afternoon calling people up first about wakes and funerals, then mentioning that there was this gentleman in from Argentina and could I bring him over to their fishroom?
Almost everyone called was going to be out of town or very busy with family. When I did line up one very gracious host, Gerhart, for a Monday visit, Jerome's family had made plans. Facing the prospect of inviting him to our place with its fishroom (and house) in disarray (at least all of the fish were back in their tanks from the GWAS show), we made arrangements for a Tuesday visit and I ran through all the spare seasoned water.
I admire Jerome's courage in taking on an American expressway for his first stateside driving experience. On the other hand I-57 chose to be benign.
We were a little intimidated about having an international traveler (staying in Kennilworth, before flying off to Fort Lauderdale to see Mom and then taking off for a European tour) visitng the poo' folks on the South Side.. He set us at ease when I uttered the mandatory apologies for everything being in disarray. I don't know who I expected, but we got a 20 year old engineering student who could have walked out of a movie (as Lyn noted was tall, dark and handsome) and who was bright, articulate in a couple of languages and on top of that, was curious and modest - in other words all the things I'm not. We got along famously.
We asked Jerome how he had gotten into the killifish hobby. Jerome's mother was affiliated with a very fine hotel in Buenos Ares, which was preparing to host the visiting Japanese Emperor Akihito. It turns out that this gentleman has quite an interest in biology and was even familiar with the annual killifishes of Argentina. The suggestion of setting up a custom tank of those killies then ensued and when the question, who would be able to assemble such a tank was raised, Jerome's mother offered that her son had had an aquarium. Despite the fact that it had been a community aquarium featuring the favorite fish of Argentinian aquarists (you guessed it - angelfish!) and despite the fact that final exams at his university loomed large and near, Jerome was prevailed upon to set up such a tank.
Wisely he immediately went to Jose Martinez who ran a local fish shop and was conversant in all manner of aquaria and fishes. Indeed he had listed killie eggs in the AKA listings in the 1980s and knew collecting spots.
Together they assembled a 150 liter tank with a wood base painted gold and a six inch deep top (again trimmed in golden wood) which contained all the lighting and filtration items out of sight. They also then caught several species of Cynolebias and some magnificent Pterolebias longipinnis, which proceeded to patrol the tank's front and center.
Not content to leave well enough alone, just before the Emperor's arrival (and during those exams), they called in a professional photographer and endured a crash course in fish photography while assembling a personal photo book of the tank's residents. (A few extra negatives got purposely left in Park Forest.)
The aquarium was a hit with the Japanese Emperor who called in the hotel manager to personally thank him for the tank. It was also a hit with the area's newspapers who published quite a collection of articles and photos of the event. And then in Jerome's 19th year...
Out of this traumatic introduction to annual killies came Jerome's involvement with annual killies and a visit to Park Forest. In turn we toured the friendly if disorganized confines of my fishroom. Diplomatically he opined that it was everything that he expected a fishroom would be. (That will work until he sees a real one.)
This left us room for lots of talk about his adventures, the wild fish and how people kept killies and other fishes here. Late lunch at the local Baker's Square allowed Lyn, Jerome and I to explore a lot of cultural and culinary similarities and differences between our countries. We finally found out what original Italian pizza was (like hamburgers, originally poor people's fare). Even the resturant staff was stopping to ask questions. By the way this is his summer vacation. People there have Christmas BBQs by the pool.
Nine hours fled like the winter's daylight and it was time to send him on his way. Not however before promises of video tape trades (local fish rooms for collecting shots) were made. And next year? Expect a phone call...