NPR’s wonderful illustration of this wonderful installment of “Krulwich Wonders” blog, looking at an old urban myth — a Manhattan fish tale, if you will:
In a letter to The New York Times published on Aug. 22, 1971, (Jack) Gasnick describes how in the summer of ‘55, there’d been a hurricane, Hurricane Diane, and a stream, he says, that flowed under his Second Avenue building had swollen and flooded the basement. To his surprise, he wrote, “When the flood receded, there was left in its wake two or three flapping fish.”
Curious, he looked and found a hole, covered with an iron grate, on the basement floor. Using a crowbar, he and his brother lifted the grate, and when he peered into the darkness …
… fifteen feet below I clearly saw the stream bubbling and pushing about, five feet wide and upon its either side, dark green-mossed rocks. … With plumb-bob and line, I cast in and found the stream to be over six feet deep. The spray splashed upwards from time to time and standing on the basement floor, I felt its tingling coolness.
One day I was curious enough to try my hand at fishing. I had an old-fashioned dropline and baited a hook with a piece of sperm-candle. I jiggled the hook for about five minutes and then felt a teasing nibble. Deep in the basement of an ancient tenement on Second Avenue in the heart of midtown New York City, I was fishing.
He doesn’t say how long it was before he felt something on his line, but …
Feeling a tug, I hauled up in excitement and there was a carp skipping before me, an almost three-pounder. I was brave enough to have it pan-broiled and buttered in our upstairs kitchen and shared it with my brother.
Sound fishy to you, fishy?
