Catfish Corners

I ate so much catfish last night. I was craving it all day, and I didn’t consciously know why. I did an internet search for best catfish in Chicago, and found a restaurant in East Garfield Park that had a perfect score. It was called Wallace’s Catfish Corners. I called Etta and we headed over. The catfish was fried with quality breading, but there were bones in all the fillets. The catfish fillets were of a strange shape, the shape of cephalopods. The tails were like spiral arms. I ate so much catfish and put all the bones in a little dish. An old man at the next table was preaching, but I couldn’t understand him. I could not comprehend his words, though they were obviously religious words, as he was preaching. I picked the bones. Later I had a sundae at Tastee Freez.

In waking the next morning, I analyzed my dream and understood why I had wanted catfish. In my dream, pink river dolphins were tortured to death, and there was an ominous, incomprehensible religious speaking baby doll. I would call it a nightmare. I remembered an article I had read in Sunday’s paper about how fishermen in South America were using chopped up river dolphin meat as catfish bait. Using this contraband bait they caught unbelievable quantities of catfish. I have always been fascinated by river dolphins and all fresh water dwelling mammal beings who are on an intelligence par with human beings. I wonder whether such creatures ever lived in the Great Lakes. And catfish is one of my favorite fish to eat because in North America at least it is farmed sustainably, or sometimes noodled wild. It makes me angry that people are killing rare river dolphins that probably won’t exist on Earth soon to catch catfish. Apparently and paradoxically, this makes me hungry for catfish.

-for further reading, Fishermen in Amazon See a Rival in Dolphins, by Alexei Barrionuevo