
{"id":3348,"date":"2008-08-28T08:28:38","date_gmt":"2008-08-28T16:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=3348"},"modified":"2008-08-28T08:33:50","modified_gmt":"2008-08-28T16:33:50","slug":"hearken-the-words-of-the-fishmonger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/08\/28\/hearken-the-words-of-the-fishmonger\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearken the words of the fishmonger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/recentlya092808.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/recentlya092808.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by Valarie Schwartz\" title=\"recentlya092808\" width=\"113\" height=\"150\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Guilt drove me to write this story.<\/p>\n<p>A few weekends ago, after shopping at the Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market, I succumbed to the lure of fresh fish from the boys selling by the Short Stop on Main Street. The fish was fine, but what stuck in my craw was the fact that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d taken away business from our own local fishery \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Tom Robinson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Seafood on Roberson Street.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nSo I paid Tom a visit and learned (again) that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the kind of businessman who cares about the town that supplies him with customers. He grows persimmon trees on a farm in Chatham County, but he pays attention to local politics in Carrboro and isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happy about the vertical expansion that seems inevitable. <\/p>\n<p>Robinson can often be blunt. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to turn Carrboro into the hell hole they moved here from,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He sees the evening and weekend traffic as it backs up and almost gridlocks downtown. It happens on school mornings as well \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s before increasing the population to fill four five-story dwellings likely to soon be approved for development. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We need a new transportation paradigm,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Robinson said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How are we going to stop driving?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nThe wistful expression often found on his rugged face returns as he begins to talk about the loss of our train system, among many other topics upon which he is well versed. <\/p>\n<p>Robinson was born in Wilmington, where he lived through many a hurricane \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153my first memory is of Hurricane Hazel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d until earning more than enough money for his undergraduate education by cutting grass. He came to Chapel Hill like his grandfather (who graduated in 1917 and became a principal in schools along coastal North Carolina), and in 1975 received a bachelor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s of science degree with honors. <\/p>\n<p>But jobs were scarce. As the war in Vietnam finally concluded, the United States began easing out of its deepest recession since World War II. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was very similar to now, with a petroleum-based depression,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Robinson said. So he went to Norway. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I went to the University of Oslo and learned Norwegian. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great place to go to school \u00e2\u20ac\u201d there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no tuition.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Returning home to Wilmington, he found work building supertankers, audited classes at UNC-Wilmington and saved his money. After building a refrigerator truck (which he still has), he hit the road, selling fish fresh from the Carolina waters. Each time he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d find himself selling fish in Chapel Hill, he realized that it was where he sold the most. In 1977, he bought Perseverance Produce, a store started by four students on Rosemary at Church behind Colonel Chutneys (now Pantana Bob\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s). He made fish the main draw while working halfway through a master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s degree in environmental science before giving up everything but the fish. He was in that location for five years before moving into the concrete block building across the street from where the Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market was then held, where he continues to sell fish three days a week. <\/p>\n<p>When I confessed to Robinson about the fish I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d bought \u00e2\u20ac\u0153off the road,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he informed me that they might not have accurate scales and that besides not being regulated like he is (by the FDA, the NC Department of Agriculture, the NC Division of Marine Fisheries and the Office of Shellfish Sanitation) they also do not pay taxes of any kind. <\/p>\n<p>Nor could they have the kind of loyal customers who visit Robinson every week.<br \/>\nCharlie Wiss has been buying fish there since moving to Carrboro in 1993. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I came in by myself but now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m married and have kids,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wiss said. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kids go away to college who were babies when their parents started coming,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Robinson, 57.<\/p>\n<p>Alex Anderson moved here from Scotland via Jamaica with a 20-year stop in Florida. He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been coming here quite a few years.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He finds Robinson engaging. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I usually do the listening. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even look at fish anywhere else,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Anderson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guilt drove me to write this story. A few weekends ago, after shopping at the Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market, I succumbed to the lure of fresh fish from the boys selling by the Short Stop on Main Street. The fish was fine, but what stuck in my craw was the fact that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d taken away business from&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recently"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}