One more "Career" to add to the "many".

The year was 1974 and I had about 6 months of Tropical Fish Keeping as a hobby.  We lived in South Minneapolis and there was a nice little Aquarium Shoppe in nearby Bloomington that we (Pat but mostly me) were relying on to get our hobby on with a firm foundation.  As we had, to use a lousy pun, just gotten our "feet wet" in the hobby, I was in the Shoppe, learning and loving the hobby, when I was asked what I thought about being a manager of an Aquarium store that they had just bought that was located on the other side of the city.  Seems it needed someone that could build it and since the two brothers that bought it had their hands full with the "south shop", they evidently liked my enthusiasm and offered me the job which included Pat as well.  I went home, told her of the offer and after discussing it all night, took them up on the offer.   We had full reign of the store, with putting in what we felt was needed (within reason of course) and were responsible for the purchasing of the live stock and hard goods, wages, rent, and utilities, and they would pay the taxes that businesses accumulate.  THAT was a great offer and we drove up north of the city to a place called "ROBINSDALE" and started a new life as managers of The Fish Pond.  It was fun, but scary at the same time.  Eventually, we moved closer to the North Side of Minneapolis, that cut our travel time to about 10 minutes to drive to work.

The first time we saw the store it was pretty bleak with a store full of empty (except for the water and gravel bottoms) aquariums and empty walls full of empty product hooks.  Within a few weeks that store was packed with not only aquariums full of fish, but customers full of excitement and, at times, packed shoulder to shoulder wanting to have tropical fish in their living rooms.  What a great time that was!

We had three kids at the time and Pat would be home seeing them off to school and day care, while I would get across town and get the fish fed, tanks cleaned and things ready for Pat to come up by about 8:00 or so. She would get the register ready and we would have breakfast a couple doors down at "Merwin Drugs" as they had a wonderful small eatery that fixed great breakfast and lunches.  The store opened at 9:00 and off and running we would go.  Pat would leave about 3:00 or so to be home when the kids got out of school, and I would get home after the store closed at 9:00pm and after I fed those that needed some overnight "snacks".

Being new to the hobby ourselves, it just so happened that there was a resource available that I used quite a lot to serve our customers with their fish choices.  Auto parts stores have those catalogs on a vertical rail type thing, kind of like books on tracks.  We had the tropical fish version of that book. It had the names, temperament, feeding habits, bad habits (fin nipping, etc.) size that they grew to, temperature and condition of the water, and lots more of information. I used that resource a lot!  By doing that with a customer, they had the confidence of not throwing their hard earned money away on buying a fish that would eat what was in their aquarium already or vice versa!  That would have been quite discouraging to say the least.  We never sold a tank and related equipment and the fish at the same time.  They had to get the fishes home set up and ready with right ph, temperature and looking good before they brought the fish home.  So that meant Saturday was a pretty big day for us, but Sunday afternoon was quite often a HUGE Day!  Since we had to feed the fish anyway, we opened at noon on Sunday until four or five.  At times, it was shoulder to shoulder with customers waiting to be helped, or standing in line while Pat would check them out!

As I remember it, the store front was only about 20 feet, or so, wide, and the showroom floor was about 50 or 60 ft. long with a back room for storage, cleaning tanks, and a bathroom and small area for the kids (on Sunday afternoon) to play when people were in the store.  They could come up front when the crowd was minimal. They loved selling fish too!  Small people, especially ours, are pretty smart!

This was a 100 gal aquarium in front of the entrance door....hard goods on left wall, aquariums along the right wall

Lousy quality pictures, but WONDERFUL memories of customers who became friends.

 Our "hard goods" wall.  This was an aquarium only store.  Except for one private story, no rodents, snakes or birds....Tropical Freshwater FISH only.  Ask me about "Grover".

Facing to the back of the store, this is the right hand wall.  The aquariums had two double (back to back) rows coming out into the center of the store.  More 10 gal tanks with guppies, and small fish along the back wall.

There are a lot of stories that come to mind, like the time our 12" black piranha "Killer" decided to vacate his 15 gal, extra high aquarium rapidly when I was showing a customer what a piranha looked like close up.  Seems it was a little too close because as Killer decided to leave, he popped his lid, even though there was about 2-5lbs of rock on it, and slid down the customers leather jacketed arm to flop wildly around the carpeted floor.  Somehow the customer vanished like a light was flipped off ... that quick...and his wife and small child too!  I shouted to our part-time worker in the back room to bring out the step stool while I scooped Killer up with 2 - 12" nets, stepped two steps up the stool and dropped him back into his home.  The nets were shredded along with my pounding heart!  Killer was alive and well after about a week healing in the darkness and quietness of a paper wrapped tank so nobody would spook him again.  I fed him 6 goldfish every night as normal, and he and his blood red eyes fully recovered to thrill those that came in to see him once again . . . with more rocks on on his tank lid.

We had fun while we were there, but with everything else it seems, this was but a season in our lives and we moved on after a while when the store was sold to new management because one of the brothers passed away and the remaining brother had just completed Law School and we refocused on other important things.  So we moved on and still look back fondly on our time, serving people who loved what we did and made a lot of friends and had lots of positive experiences. There are many more stories I could tell, and may some day or if we see each other, over coffee and a donut some day, I love to talk about a hobby that is wonderfully diverse in the many styles and types of fish and other aquatic creatures to explore.  Bet you never saw a Freshwater Stingray!  I hand fed one I had in my store.  Ask me about it, it's a good story.

God has many creatures, big and small.  He has given them to us to take care of and to protect.

Keep singing, keep smiling and keep laughing

Blessings,
Gary