I Visit Kurtz's Fish Hatchery

A mélange of feisty fish - (Kurtz Fish Hatchery)

Aerial View of Kurtz Fish Hatchery

What a visit! KURTZ'S FISH HATCHERY has been in the neighborhood since 1958, and I never stopped by until the other day. They carry fish for stocking. While I was shown around their ponds, I just kept saying: "Wow!" Richard Kurtz just chuckled. He's still as excited about the business that his dad started so long ago as I was, there for the very first time. Must be catching. (Pun intended). Think about it, though - here was almost 100 acres of Bass, Bluegills, Stripers, Catfish, Crayfish, Tadpoles, Koi, and Aquatic Plants - all in 35 ponds, and I was just dumbstruck at the irony of it all.

Up on the adjacent hill I saw the very buildings where "Schooled Fish" and I used to stock our grain bins, and fan systems. I must've seen the place a hundred times, but never noticed it until now. I mean, this is where everybody around these parts goes to stock their lakes, ponds, and their own hatcheries - for going on 50 years now. I guess the whole Zen of the moment was from all that life. I've never felt that sort of vibrant electricity before. I feel like I'm writing another cheesy "advertorial" the likes of which I would be compelled do monthly for the paper, but I really am quite moved.

Closest feeling to this was flying my plane out of the whipcrack world of the Northeast corridor's air traffic controllers, at night, and waking up in the morning to miles and miles of grain fields, blowing to and fro in the wind, to travel in and around the small towns and businesses, visiting all the interesting people, doing our "human thing." Life there seemed less complicated, but always, somewhere in the background, was the subsonic buzz of all that life bursting forth from those fields that stretched out from horizon to horizon.

Then again, maybe it's that cough syrup I took after lunch.