Nathaniel Gold - The Diary of Henry Chimpman

Disclaimer

H enry Chimpman is a chimpanzee who lives in the zoo. He lives there by himself and is pretty lonely. He spends most of his time writing and telling stories about his past, and I spend most of my time drawing them.

S ome of these stories might seem farfetched for a chimpanzee. Is Henry telling the truth? Well, thats for you to decide

1

Henry Chimpmans Diary Entry

D ay 1,811

W ell , here I am in the city zoo again. Another day of eating bananas and humans staring at me. Another lonely day with no chimps to talk to.

I t has now been one thousand eight hundred and eleven days that I have been in the zoo but at least I have my memory. I can still listen to the conversations of the humans who visit the zoo and remember what it was like to walk among them and my fellow chimps so many years ago.

T oday I heard a kid talking about going fishing with his father. I used to go fishing with my father too. When I was a kid we actually caught one of the biggest fish ever to be caught in Florida, and it made us famous.

S it back and I will tell you the story

2

A Little About My Father

F ishing with my father was basically my only chance to ever talk with him. He managed a produce market, and that job kept him very busy. He was a strong and silent type of guy, though he always told me to follow my hearthe was forced to do what he did for a living and he didnt want to see that happen to me.

M y father had wanted to be a famous jazz drummer. Sometimes he felt like a failure because he never made it out of the produce store but when he looked at my mother, sister, and me he knew he was doing the right thing. How can I be a failure when I have so much, he would remind himself.

B ut that was the type of chimp he was. He worked seventy hours a week for his family. Unfortunately that meant we hardly saw him, but when I was a young chimp we went fishing every Sunday morning from May through October, weather permitting

3

A Photo with My Mind

W hen my family first arrived here from the forests of Africa, my father was forced to do any job that he could find. He was as hard a worker as youd ever find, but it wore him out. He always seemed to look years older than he really was.

I have vivid memories of waking up at 5:30 in the morning to see him walk out the door to go to work. I would hide in the living room, crouched down behind the sofa like a spy. The room would be pitch black because the sun hadnt risen and because he left the lights off so we wouldnt wake up. But for a brief moment when he opened the front door the streetlight would shine on him, creating a silhouette in the doorway. I would take a photo in my mind and carry it around all day.

T his was the only time I saw him on Mondays through Saturdays because he wouldnt come home and have dinner until way after I had fallen asleep.

4

The Sunday Ritual

E very Sunday my fathers only day off from workhe would go fishing early in the morning and I would pace the floors waiting for him to get back. Then he would clean up and we would all have lunch.

I asked him once why he went fishing since he always threw back what he caught. Its the thrill of the catch and the satisfaction of the release, he told me.

I didnt really understand that. All I knew was that I wanted to go fishing with my father in the worst way. He always told me that I was too young, but the summer after my tenth birthday I was no longer too young and he finally invited me to go fishing with him.

W e would leave before sunrise while I was still half asleep. We would pack a lunch the night before, which we would eat around eight-thirty in the morning. On our very first trip thats when my father taught me the two most important rules of fishing:

Fishing Rules

1) Time does not exist out on the water.

2) The most important thing on a fishing trip is what you pack for lunch.

5

The Miss Meliss

W hen I first started going fishing with my father he had this rusty little skiff of a boat. It was just pushing eight feet long, basically a rowboat with a small engine.

H e named the boat the Miss Meliss after my sister, Melissa, but ironically he never let her on it.

We would drive with the boat attached to the back of the car to Ricks Bait and Scrambled Eggs and pick upyou guessed itbait and scrambled eggs. My dad was a two-cups-of-coffee kind of chimp and I was a chocolate milk kind of kid.

F rom Ricks we drove the one and a half miles to the bay and launched the boat from the same place every time.

6

How to Fish

M y father was a very patient fishing instructor. He taught me how to bait my hook by putting the barb through the eye of the spearing (the small fish we used as bait).

M y father also taught me how to tell whether my hook was on the bottom of the sea or not. First you get a sinker, a little teardrop-shaped metal object with a loop on top. You tie your fishing line around the sinker with enough line left over for your hook. If the water was rough you used a heavier sinker.