From the Porch
Fish are smarter than rock 'n rollers
Dwight Otwell

It was cooler with the fish than with the musicians.

Maybe fish are smarter than rock and rollers. They know how to get out of the heat.

On the first day of our twoday Atlanta sojourn, we visited the new Georgia Aquarium, home to whale sharks, beluga whales and many other varieties of sea life. That evening we visited Chastain Park Amphitheater, home to rock and rollers, blues musicians and other assorted musical types.

The aquarium was air conditioned, which was a big attraction as the temperature on Atlanta's sidewalks rose to over 100 degrees. Billed as one of the largest aquariums in the world, the Georgia Aquarium didn't disappoint us. We spent several hours there admiring an underwater world as different from our land existence as it would be to live on Mars.

We even saw an animated 3-D show - they also called it a 4-D show. I don't know the difference but I love these shows where the objects in the flat screen seem to come out into the audience right in front of your face. I would even watch a toothpaste ad in 3-D or 4-D.

We left the aquarium at 3:30 p.m. as Atlanta reached its high for the day of 101. It was much hotter than that in the sun, surrounded by cement. The sun's heat seemed to drive off the sidewalks into our bodies. It was refreshing to get back into our air conditioned car and drive to an air conditioned hotel.

However, after a couple of hours of glorious cool, we ventured out into the furnace again. We had tickets at Chastain Park to hear and see the Doobie Brothers and Peter Frampton. We reached our seats by 7 p.m. and the show was scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.

We have attended Chastain concerts twice before and we enjoy sitting outside in the evening listening to music from old pop, folk and rock musicians. We previously heard Peter, Paul and Mary and Art Garfunkel.

However, it wasn't near this hot at the other shows, and I'm not talking about the music. It was so hot that every other seat in the amphitheater had a little fan, complete with two batteries. However, the whirlwind started by the rubber blade was so minute that I put the fan so close to my face that the blade hit me and flew off into the mass of sweltering humanity. It was so hot that people began to steal the cheap fans from empty seats.

As dark fell, it got a little cooler. It probably finally fell below 90 degrees. Peter Frampton is a great guitarist. He was also accomplished at playing extremely loud. The Doobie Brothers sang a variety of their hits and songs. I especially liked their numbers "Jesus is Just Alright" and "Black Water".

Next week I'll tell about our second day in Atlanta, when we again visited two attractions. Again, one was air conditioning. We paid good money for a couple of hours of advertisements about a famous Atlanta product. Our second venture was again out in the heat wave that seemed to have splashed