Category: Gear

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On Abel Nippers

I watched a Facebook riot last week. I’ve seen internet kerfuffles before, and participated in a few: for years I’ve argued with Astros fanatics about first draft-pick Chris Burke’s place in the majors, the statistical value of OPS, and whether it’s important that as a catcher Brad Ausmus didn’t hit. Trust me on this. Fly fishing brouhahas are mild.

Lenny Bee started things off:

Notwithstanding Mr. Bee’s ambiguity, all of the 222 comments that followed assumed that the insanity referred to was the use of the Nippers by others, not that Mr. Bee was insane for not using the Nippers. The comments ranged from the practical (they cut 40 lb. leader like butter), to the sentimental (my wife gave them to me and I’m fond of both them and my wife–thanks Kris), to the manly (I use my teeth). There was plenty of righteousness, plenty of dismissal, some irony, some sarcasm, some frivolity, and finally, late in the day, one of my favorite internet arguments: “that’s stupid”/”no that’s stupid”/”you didn’t understand what I said you’re stupid”/”I did understand it and I’ve got a screenshot of it right here and you’re stupid.” Brilliant.

Of course Mr. Bee was being disingenuous. He actually had no doubt as to what drove the market for $85 Nippers: insanity. He says it right there, and I’ve got a screenshot to prove it! Ok, maybe he didn’t really think Nipper users insane, not clinically anyway, but there’s certainly the implication that anyone willing to pay for Abel Nippers is mentally deficient.

Other than teeth, the most popular argument against Abel involved nail clippers:

I’m assuming that nail clipper advocates aren’t using the costly but decorative “Fashion Clippers” on the left, and that they aren’t arguing that nail clippers are as aesthetically pleasing as Abel Nippers (notwithstanding their status as beauty tools). Compare the above photo of nail clippers to the photo of Abel Nippers below:

Theo Van Doesburg, Composition VIII (The Cow), 1918, oil on canvass, 14 3/4 x 25″, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Ok, not really. I’m lying. Those aren’t Abel Nippers. That’s an early modernist painting by Theo Van Doesburg. The pro-clipper argument is that cheap nail clippers function as well as Nippers, but I’ll concede the question of function. What I won’t concede is that Abel Nippers aren’t a good bit prettier than nail clippers, and that aesthetic pleasure can’t be its own reward. Nail clippers aren’t pretty.

There may be an ethical argument about spending $85 dollars on something as useless as Nippers, but I own fly rods, and I assume Mr. Bee owns fly rods as well, so it’s hard to argue the ethical virtues of frugality. Plus the economic argument runs both ways. I’ll stick to aesthetics.

Functionality

Ok, I lied again. A couple of thoughts on functionality. Able Nippers cut bigger stuff better, and that’s useful for saltwater, as is their aluminum construction. Cheap clippers rust. Besides that the lever on clippers would drive me nuts. I’d have dropped a good dozen rusty nail clippers into the bay fiddling with that lever.

As for using teeth, my teeth apparently gap at just the point they need to meet to cut leader. I can’t seem to cut 5x leader with my teeth, and I wouldn’t cut 16 lb. leader with my teeth if I could. I can’t whistle or roll my tongue either. Plus, if you cut leader with your teeth, your dentist is going to hate you. Who needs that?

Now on to aesthetics.

Abel Nippers and the Ancient Greeks.

Ancient Greek philosophers didn’t concern themselves overly much with questions of aesthetics, and the word hadn’t been invented yet anyway. They were worried about more pressing matters, like from whence is substance derived, and should we eat beans? Aesthetics were considered though, and the discussion generally followed three schools of thought.

Ancient Greek, Fish Plate, 350/330 BC, Campania, Italy, terra cotta red figure technique, The Art Institute of Chicago.

(1) Proportionality. The notion that beauty is derived from proper proportions is peculiarly sculptural and architectural: a head should be X, the forearm Y, and the torso X+Y-1. Notwithstanding its mechanical basis, there’s something intuitive to the notion of proportionality. An Abel Nipper that isn’t proportional to the human thumb and forefinger, that’s too tiny or too large, wouldn’t have much appeal. The same thing could be said though for a pair of fingernail clippers, so proportionality is ultimately a dead end. It can be admired, it can be necessary, but it’s not, in and of itself, the source of beauty, or even necessary for beauty. An El Greco is beautiful notwithstanding its figures’ proportions. A proportional statue of an old fat guy is still a proportional statue of an old fat guy. I know. I own a mirror.

It is fitting that proportionality held peculiar appeal for the Pythagoreans, what with their focus on the ontological significance of numbers. It was the Pythagoreans who first noted the proportional mathematics of music, and anyone who has to study music theory is still cursed by all those damned numbers.

Ancient Greek, Fish Plate, 400/370 BC, Athens, terra cotta red figure technique, The Art Institute of Chicago.

(2) Functionality. That beauty is derived from an objects’ appropriate function is peculiarly appealing. Abel Nippers are suited to their function, so they’re beautiful. But the notion that beauty is purpose-driven runs counter to our modern notions of art. Art doesn’t exist to carry out a function, it’s not a car bumper, or a sewing machine, or a banana slicer, it exists for its own aesthetic purpose. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, for instance, is decidedly removed from function. Decorative art may serve function, but high art is concept. And while our notions of high art are often absurd–as evidenced by said Fountain–there’s really no denying that aesthetic appeal can be derived from stuff that’s completely functionless. Just note Mr. Van Doesburg’s colored planes above.

Of course the argument for nail clippers is at least in part functional, and elevates functionality above aesthetics.

Ancient Greek, Fish Plate, 350/325 BC, Campania, Italy, terra cotta red figure technique, The Art Institute of Chicago.

(3) Formalism. Now I’m going all Plato on you. For the formalist, beauty exists as an ideal form, and an object derives it’s beauty from its proximity to the ideal. Notwithstanding its lack of proportion and its lack of functionality, a  lump of gold can be beautiful because of its proximity to the ideal.

I’ve always found Plato’s formalism strangely alien, but when you think about it it’s really not. Truth is beauty, beauty truth. Beauty is something possessed by the object, a sunset, a mountain stream, a lump of gold, independent of the observer. For the observer, it is his awareness that allows him to perceive the beauty that independently exists. Plato’s forms are only an explanation for that independence of beauty. For the artist, mimesis (the Greek’s word, not mine) of the beauty of the natural world enables creation of something beautiful because it derives its beauty from that which it mimics.  For the observer, awareness enables perception of beauty that independently exists.

Consider Henry David Thoreau, who possesses among other virtues and failings a decidedly Platonic streak. He goes to the woods to rid himself of daily intrusive quibbles, among other reasons because those quibbles block his perception of the Independent Beauty of Nature. At least part of Mr. Bee’s rejection of Nippers may be that they’re an intrusive and unnecessary sideshow that hampers his perception of the real source of beauty, and that he demands simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I would only note that Mr. Thoreau did not remove himself far enough into the woods to leave behind his mother’s baked goods, or to keep her from doing his laundry, and that one suspects he well knew that not all sideshows are worth abandoning.

If you’re interested, there’s a good introduction to Greek aesthetics here: https://www.iep.utm.edu/anc-aest/

Attributed to Iran, Kashan, Bowl with Central Fish Motif, 13 C., stone paste, incised and polychrome painted under glaze, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Abel Nippers and the Moderns.

The modern inquiry into the philosophical basis for aesthetics begins in the 18th century, and Immanuel Kant is usually considered its progenitor. I hope that terrifies you. Whenever one starts with Kant, things get complicated fast, and aesthetics is no different.

Briefly (and maybe even erroneously–I’m not vouching for my understanding of these things), Kant’s notion of aesthetic beauty is that beauty exists in nature independent of the observer. The perception of that beauty is the disinterested aesthetic judgment of the observer. It is disinterested in that we perceive the beauty inherent in the beautiful, not because we create its beauty because of our perception. Did I mention that Kant complicates things fast? To say it differently, like Plato Kant finds beauty objective rather than subjective, and the perception of beauty is driven by the fineness of the observer’s aesthetic judgment.

Pierre van Boucle, Flemish, Still Life with Carp and Pike, 1652, oil on canvas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Clive Bell, brother-in-law of Virginia Woolf, art critic, and all-around reprehensible human being, in his thoroughly Kantian Aesthetic Hypothesis, speaks of how Art, the combination of line and color comprising significant form, provokes the aesthetic emotion among those capable of aesthetic experience. It is the provoked emotion that allows us to recognize Art. Of course for Bell the aesthetic emotion is subjective, and there are a lot of other emotions, fear, love, awe, or whatnot, but the aesthetic emotion is separate and apart, arguably altogether finer, than all that other stuff. Assuming that the Abel Nipper is Art, Mr. Bee’s rejection of the Nipper, his rejection of the aesthetic emotion triggered by the Nipper, is a failure not of the Nipper but of his own aesthetic temperament. If his aesthetic temperament was properly acute, he would not need to own or use the Nipper to have the aesthetic experience: he would perceive the Art of the Nipper.

Of course if you live in the modern world you know where this is going: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Francisco de Goya, Spanish, Still Life with Golden Bream, 1806-1812, oil on canvas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 

The modern notions of aesthetic intention speak not to the quality of the object, but to the quality of the attention paid to the object. The object could be a painting, it could be sport, particularly baseball, it could be a hobby, it could be Nippers. The aesthetic attention paid to the object–let’s say in this case fly fishing–could be enhanced by the aesthetic attention paid another object, the appeal of a reel or a rod, the beauty of Nippers, depending on the observer. For me my Abel satin blue Nippers become a sort of touchstone: I think they’re pretty, my wife gave them to me and I’m fond of the gift and more than fond of the giver, they are part of my usual gear that I enjoy using. They don’t detract from my overall attention to fly fishing, they enhance it. Am I insane for my Nipper fondness?

Well of course I am, and I also have two Abel reels.

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Oklahoma Packing List

Stuff We Took

We took my car. It’s a 2012 diesel with 117 thousand miles. It needs the tires rotated and it uses a bit of oil. It ran great. For our other trips this year we’ve flown and rented, and we’re now pretty proficient at hooking the phone through the rental car radio (if they’re still called radios). We can hook into whatever Mitsubishi or Ford or Mazda mid-sized SUV the rental company gives us with minimal stress and only a few harsh words, but it’s still nicer to be in my car. 

I fished with a 10′ 4 wt. Kris fished with her Helios 3D 5 wt. that I gave her for Christmas last year. Chris the Guide wished it was the softer version, but she cast beautifully. Maybe she missed more strikes because of the hard rod, but man was it fun to watch her cast.  

There’s nothing else remarkable about what we packed except that I bought a bag of Cheetos. You can’t have a road trip without Cheetos, unless it’s a road trip with Fritos and bean dip. 

We ate two dinners the night we arrived, just to try things out: chicken fried steak at Abendigo’s and pizza at the Grateful Head.  Both were excellent, and the local beers were excellent. I no longer eat nearly enough chicken fried steak. We had leftover pizza on the river on Saturday, so two dinners was perfectly reasonable. We stayed at the Hotchatown Country Lodge, and had a breakfast burrito at Adam and Eve’s Coffee Shop before we fished on Saturday.  That place has good coffee. 

Beavers Bend is in the Choctaw Nation, but we missed most of the cultural stuff. We did take a photo of the casino. We also walked through the Forest Heritage Center Museum, which is peculiar, but there’s no doubt this is a lumber town. 

I now believe that forest science research is best carried out in white pumps. 

When we started planning Oklahoma, I asked an Oklahoma fly fishing group on FaceBook where we should fish, and here’s what I got:

• Sandies in the spring, but no specifics on places
• Bluegill, but no specifics on places
• Trout on the Lower Illinois
• Trout on the Lower Mountain Fork
• Smallmouth on the Upper Illinois in the summer
• Stripers on the Lower Illinois in the summer
• Carp, but no specifics on places

Personally, any of those could have been great, and I’d already thought about white bass. End of the day, the Mountain Fork was convenient. Kris already talks about Oklahoma more fondly than anyplace we’ve fished, and we were only really there for one day.

The other place I thought about was the Wichita Mountains. It’s the nation’s oldest wildlife preserve, and notwithstanding Yellowstone it deserves credit for preserving the buffalo. Hiking there once I looked up at a ridge line and watched a dozen elk watching me. They seemed to find me peculiar, and many share their opinion.There’s a series of ponds and small lakes spread through the refuge, and it would have made a good place for bluegill.

What I Didn’t Write About

The Cherokees, slavery, and the Confederacy. There are two recognized Cherokee tribes in Oklahoma. They seem to have split over the Civil War: the larger tribe supported the Confederacy, the smaller the Union. The Cherokee who owned slaves took them along to Oklahoma.

The 1909 Jim Crow amendments to the Oklahoma Constitution. Roosevelt refused to approve the Constitution for 1907 statehood until the Jim Crow provisions were removed, then the state constitution was amended in 1909 to put them back in.

Part of district burned in race riots, Tulsa, Okla, .American Red Cross, 1921, Library of Congress

The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. One of the bloodiest two day white riots in American history, it’s also known, appropriately, as the Tulsa massacre. Thirty-six African Americans died, and thirty-five blocks of the established African American Greenwood neighborhood were burned to the ground.

Tulsa burning, Alvin C. Krupnick Co., photographer, 1921, Library of Congress

Quanah Parker. I didn’t write enough about Quanah Parker. I didn’t write enough about the Wichita.

Boom Town, by Sam Anderson. It’s on the New York Times’ 100 notable books for 2018, and it’s a fine book about Oklahoma City. It had me checking The Thunder in the NBA standings, and recommending the book. Great book.

Ralph Ellison. Ralph Ellison is from Oklahoma City. I tried to re-read Invisible Man, but couldn’t. It’s a hard book.

The 2018 Elections. There’s now a Democratic congresswoman from Oklahoma City. There’s also a pretty interesting war going on in the Oklahoma Republican Party.

Playlist

I should have known Oklahoma had such great music, but I didn’t. I’ve already mentioned that Oklahoma was the home of five of the finest guitarists I know. And Woodie Guthrie. And John Moreland.

Bob Wills Publicity Photo, C. 1946, Wikipedia
  • John Moreland. In the Throes. I saw a review of John Moreland’s new album in Garden & Gun a few weeks ago, then ran across him in an inernet list of 10 Oklahoma bands you should be listening to now. If Bruce Springsteen sang Americana music he would be John Moreland. This is music about the Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, high school prom. Robin, take note: this is great stuff.
  • The Call. Some random songs. I didn’t pay much attention to them the first time around, and gave them short shrift this time. They probably deserve better. Or maybe not. 
  • Garth Brooks. I think I would like Garth Brooks, but his music is only available on Amazon, and I’m not technologically proficient enough to know whether I can download something on Amazon and listen to it on ITunes. 
  • The Flaming Lips. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. My daughter tells me that The Flaming Lips were one of her favorite bands in high school. Wayne Coyne lives in Oklahoma City, and is a central character in Sam Anderson’s Boom Town.
  • Woodie Guthrie. I’d been listening to Guthrie in Oregon. I downloaded covers of his songs from his 100th birthday celebration at the Kennedy Center and some other stuff. Billy Bragg and Wilco’s “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” is the best Woodie Guthrie song that Woodie Guthrie didn’t write.
  • Charlie Christian. Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar. Charlie Christian invented the electric guitar solo, and then died of tuberculosis at the age of 26. He made some fine recordings with Benny Goodman. 
Charlie Christian, Charlie Christian Family Archives
  • Leo Kottke. Acoustic Guitar once did a list once of the 50 greatest acoustic guitar albums. I don’t know where Kottke’s 6- and 12-String Guitar ranked, but I remember the review. The record came out in 1969, and they guessed that more joints were rolled in college dorm rooms on that album cover than on any other. I bet they were right. It at least ran a close second to Sergeant Pepper.
  • Michael Hedges. Hedges was New Age Music, which was once a thing. I had Hedges’ Aerial Boundaries because of that Acoustic Guitar list. He died in 1997 in a car wreck.
  • Roy Clark. “But I Never Picked Cotton.” He died last week. After a near 50-year interval I once again spent way too much time watching Hee Haw, this time on YouTube. His duets with Glen Campbell in the TV heyday were pretty amazing. 
  • Tuck Andress, of Tuck and Patti. Tears of Joy. Andress is such a fine jazz guitarist. He’s also St. Vincent’s uncle.
  • Jerry Jeff Walker, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.” She was, after all, born in Oklahoma.
  • Merle Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee.” The companion piece to “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.” Together the two songs form the yin and yang of country music.
  • Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Bob Wills–For the Last Time. Wills was born in Turkey, Texas, near my hometown, but the Playboys spent a good part of their career on Tulsa radio. I took that as enough of an excuse to include Bob Wills on the playlist. I don’t know how I’ll get him into the Hawaii list. There is a steel guitar. 
  • Cross Canadian Ragweed. Cross Canadian Ragweed. There’s an Americana sub-genre of country out of Oklahoma called Red Dirt Music. I picked Cross Canadian Ragweed because I liked the name, but there are several others, and I suspect some may be better. The Canadian River, by the way, is the longest tributary to the Arkansas River. It starts in Colorado, and crosses New Mexico, the Texans Panhandle, and Oklahoma. 
  • Chet Baker. Chet Baker Sings. Chet Baker is a cross between Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and James Dean. 
  • Jimmy LaFave. Texoma. More Red Dirt Music, LaFave left Oklahoma for Austin, and died last year. I can’t say enough good things about LaFave.
  • J.J. Cale. Troubadour. The guy who wrote “After Midnight.”
  • Jimmie Webb. The guy who wrote “Galveston” and “Wichita Lineman.” 
  • Hoyt Axton. The guy who wrote “The Pusher,” “Never Been to Spain,” and “Joy to the World.”
  • Leon Russell. Carney. I always figured “This Masquerade” was a cover of a much older song. It’s not. 
  • Blake Shelton. Red River Blue. There was absolutely nothing memorable about Blake Shelton, except Kris yelling turn him off every time one of his songs shuffled through. My daughter told me that this is a sub-genre of country known as Bro’ Country, which is mostly about drinking, driving pickups, and admiring young women. I did think the song about the honey bee was cute, but then Kris yelled at me to turn it off.
  • Reba McEntire. Reba. Reba has a nicer voice than I expected, and she handles her material well. Some of the material is decidedly mediocre. Some is pretty good. 
  • Gordon MacRae. “Oklahoma!” and “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’.” If you can keep from singing along to “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin”’ you’re a better man than me. That goes into my master road trip playlist, just for the joy of singing along. 
  • David Frizzel and Shelly West. “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma.” In 1981 this was number 1 on the country charts for seven weeks. It is a lovely song, and makes me pine for cold nights on a prairie country road in a pickup. Ok, it’s probably totally manufactured Nashville country, and you can’t go home again, but it’s still a lovely song. 

Guitar. 

I took the Kohno since I didn’t have to worry about airplanes.  My shoulder hurt by the end of the day, but my hands never did, so I worked on Mazurka Marieta by Tarrega. I memorized it a long time ago, and it was one of those songs I never seemed to forget, but then I forgot it.  Relearning went quickly though. 

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True Grit

Few things have messed with my head longer than True Grit, beginning with the 1969 movie starring John Wayne. I own a copy of the book, but I didn’t read it until we started planning our trip to Oklahoma. In 1969 I wouldn’t have imagined that the book was anything better than a Louis L’Amour novel. Of course then I couldn’t think of many things better than a Louis L’Amour novel. I might still like Louis L’Amour if I still read him, but I’ll save that for North Dakota. 

The problem with the John Wayne movie was that the geography was all wrong, and at thirteen I knew it. Everyone knows the plot. Fourteen year-old Mattie Ross enlists one-eyed Marshall Rooster Cogburn to go with her into Indian Territory to bring her father’s murderer to justice. Mattie picks Cogburn because she believes him to be a man of true grit. Comparing myself to Mattie and Rooster, I knew that I didn’t know much about grit, but what I did know was the geography of the movie. I knew Indian Territory was Oklahoma, and I had been in and and out of Oklahoma all my life. I knew the movie landscape was southwestern Colorado, and we went to southwestern Colorado and New Mexico from time to time for vacations. One didn’t get on a horse in Fort Smith, Arkansas, cross a river, and end up in Ouray, Colorado. 

I couldn’t believe that the moviemakers could be so stupid (at best) or dishonest (at worst). I even cobbled together an explanation: the Indian Territory of 1870s Oklahoma was bigger than current-day Oklahoma, and the San Juan National Forest was within its borders. That was wrong of course, but it never occurred to me that the moviemakers picked their locale because southwestern Colorado is prettier than northeastern Oklahoma, no slight at all to northeastern Oklahoma. Southwestern Colorado is prettier than just about anyplace.

The Coen Brothers version of the movie is impossibly true to the book, and its tone and language are altogether artier than the John Wayne version. The Coen Brothers version stars a brilliant 13-year old girl, not a 22-year old. It stars the Dude, not the Duke. But it also makes its nod to the original, and for me in the most confusing way possible: by filming in the same landscape.  The Coen’s choice messed with my head anew, even though by then I had realized that it was a matter of artistic choice, not reality.  

So I finally read the novel, and now it’s joined together with the movies to mess with my head.

Take, for instance, LaBoeuf. A part of me says that of course there is a Texan in this novel, just as there is a Texan in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If you’re going to write a novel about bravery, you surely do need a Texan companion to prove the act is not only brave, but extraordinarily brave. Matt Damon’s LaBoeuf (pronounced Lebeef) is excellent. In the original movie, however, Glenn Campbell (who was the very thing in his day, and who played guitar on Pet Sounds) is almost unbearably stilted. Did he know it? Is he such a bad actor? Was this art? I doubt it was purposeful, and then I doubt my doubts. It’s hard to understand such horrible acting.

Then there is the comedy. True Grit and Portis’s other novels are considered some of our best under-the-radar stuff. And the book and the movies are set in a real world with a real history. There was a hanging Judge Parker, and the incursions by Parker’s marshals into Indian Territory began the end of Indian Nation sovereignty. Portis gets his history right. Everybody thinks the novel is brilliant, and it is.

And everybody thinks the novel is comic.

I don’t really get it. Maybe to somebody who thinks southwestern Colorado is northeastern Oklahoma the novel is comic. I listen to Mattie Ross’s narration, fine as Portis has made it, and I hear a mildly exaggerated version of my  aunts talking. I watch Rooster Cogburn (who rode with Quantrill), and I see the righteous and the unrighteous, the just and the unjust, and the line is crossed back and forth from day to day, from moment to moment. Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross are forces in both opposition and harmony: unconscious Presbyterian rigidity and riding with Quantrill. Is Mattie comic? It’s a comedy that is hard to pinpoint.  Mattie doesn’t tell jokes. She isn’t amusing or witty. This isn’t a book of pratfalls, and it’s not picaresque like, say, Little Big Man. It is comic only in how Mattie’s uncompromising force collides with the world and overwhelms it. Maybe it is only the exaggeration (and in my mind the very slight exaggeration) that is funny.

So 50 years after I first watched John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn in a southwestern single screen theater on a little town square I’m still wrestling with True Grit. 

 * * *

I’ve been preparing for Friday’s trip to Broken Bow.  It’s 30 degrees outside, and I hope it warms up just a bit in the frigid north of Oklahoma where it’s even colder. When we went to Wisconsin in September the guide required studless wading boots to protect his boat, and I had dutifully removed our studs and put them away where I wouldn’t lose them. Then I promptly lost them.

In Oregon we’d waded with Patagonia River Crampons, and they worked great, so if I didn’t find the studs I wouldn’t necessarily need to replace them. Studs aren’t much. They’re short sheet metal screws that screw into the bottom of boots, but once they’re labeled with a brand name at a fly shop they get a bit pricey. Maybe they’re tungsten or aluminum or gold or some such. Since we don’t use felt-soled boots anymore, studs are the minimum needed to keep your footing on slick rock. 

The older I get, the more I worry about falls in rivers, and along with studs I now use a wading staff.  I’m a wobbly tripod in the watter, and in a few years I may drop the fly rod altogether and just carry two wading staffs. If a fish comes along I’ll point at it. The staff I use is a Folstaff, a shock-corded tent pole that with a bit of a shake snaps together at five joints. Putting it away is sometimes a bit of a struggle, and the first few times a joint got stuck I used a vice and some vice clamps to separate the sections. I’ve discovered over time that with a bit of wiggling the joints separate well enough, though not altogether easily, and having the separated sections get away from you and snap back together is almost as annoying and as common as a good tangled leader. 

I like my staff, with its collected scrapes and darkened cork handle, but largely because of the separation anxiety I found myself on Saturday eyeing a new Fishpond staff at the shop. It extended like a photographer’s tripod. I imagined that it wouldn’t take desperate measures to put it away, but that it also wouldn’t extend with that satisfying snap.  

Meanwhile Kris looked for the studs and didn’t find them either, but she reminded me that I’d put them in a plastic bag, not a box.  This morning I went right to them and they’re back in the boots.  Now I’d just like a bit warmer weather, and we do need to clean our boots.

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Wisconsin Packing List

We didn’t take any fishing gear to Wisconsin, except for waders, boots, and sunglasses. We didn’t wade, but on the day it rained I wore my boots instead of sandals, and Kris wore her waders and her boots both days to stay warm.  The temperature was in the 40s. It was arctic.

We used the guide’s rods, Orvis Recon 10 weights, and they worked great. We have 10 weights, but we don’t have cold water lines for them, and tropic lines kink in cold water. I could get used to not hauling fishing gear through airports. And as to Recon versus Helios most rods are better than I am.

When we were in Oregon, we asked a waitress what we should do while we were there.  She said she didn’t know, that she’d just moved to Oregon from Milwaukee, so we asked her what we should do in Wisconsin. “Eat fried cheese curds.” Our daughter added that we should also eat fresh cheese curds because they squeak when you chew. They do.

Cheese curds are curdled milk, cheddar in process, and not yet cheese. In the New York Times, Louisa Kamp once described the squeak as two balloons trying to neck. They taste a bit like cottage cheese, with more chew.

We bought a block of cheddar cheese which I stuck in my daypack and forgot about.  At least I forgot about it until the TSA lady pulled me out of the line at the Milwaukee airport to go through my pack. I’m pretty sure that in the scanner the block of cheddar looked just like C-4. “Do you have anything sharp in your bag? Anything that could stick me.” She was pulling on her proctology gloves.

“No . . . yes, wait. I have a block of extra sharp cheddar cheese.”  Wisconsin humor. She looked at me and then laughed. The Wisconsin TSA lady thought the joke was funny, and I’m not in prison.

Cheese

After the fur trade, Wisconsin’s first industries were timber and wheat. The wheat didn’t last, and I can’t remember why. Disease? Poor soil? Short growing seasons? Wheat worked in Nebraska and Kansas, but not in Wisconsin. So Wisconsin turned to dairy, spurred on by the efforts of the University of Wisconsin. I had always assumed that Wisconsin came to dairy because that’s where European dairy farmers immigrated, but no. It was the replacement crop because of the failure of wheat.

Where We Didn’t Go

There was a lot of Wisconsin we didn’t see. There is a peninsula, Door County, in the northeast, roughly paralleling the Michigan upper peninsula on the east side of Lake Michigan. Door County was somewhere referred to as Wisconsin’s Cape Cod. I haven’t been to Cape Cod, but Door County had some appeal to me. The pictures look genteel.

Historically northern Wisconsin was timber, not farming, and Stevens Point was the doorway to the pineywoods. I’ll have a chance to see the north country in Michigan and Minnesota, and it was a long way from Chicago (notwithstanding the draw of the giant fiberglass muskie in Hayward), so we didn’t go. We probably won’t.

The part of the state I wish I’d seen but didn’t was the southwestern Driftless Area.  It is apparently a very fine trout fishery, overlapping Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. It is also the part of the state with the highest concentration of organic farms and rural Democratic votes. It is geologically different than the rest of the state because the great sheet glaciers didn’t cover the Driftless, and consequently didn’t leave glacial drift, glacial drift being the trash left behind by glaciers after a picnic. Consequently there’s not much glacial rock.

There’s a lovely looking trout town there, Viroqua, and I’m a sucker for trout towns. I had already planned to fish the Driftless region in Iowa, so maybe next year I’ll hit them both.

We also didn’t visit the Milwaukee churches.  I’ll go back for that.

What I Didn’t Write About

Aldo Leopold. John Muir. Hank Aaron. The Art of Fielding.

Bud Selig.

Have you ever had someone be so unjust, perpetrate so many indignities, large and small, deliver so many insults that physically you react to their name? Bud Selig. If Fortunato had only been the Commissioner of Baseball, Montresor’s motivations in The Cask of Amontillado would stand revealed.

I’m glad I’m going back. I’ll write about Bud Selig.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bud_Selig_on_October_31,_2010_(2).jpg

Playlist

  • Bon Iver. It was the first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, that was so arresting, so beautiful. I can hum Skinny Love happily forever. I like the other albums, even the strange 22, A Million and side projects like Volcano Choir. But For Emma is beautiful.
  • BoDeans. I’ve listened to the BoDeans since a Stereo Review review of Home back in the 80s.  I miss Stereo Review, but I’m probably the only one. Red River goes into my car trip playlist. 
  • Steve Miller Band. I didn’t really care for them in the 70s, but they’re fun to listen to when your expectations are low.
  • Bruce Springsteen. Cadillac Ranch. Hey little girlie in the blue jeans so tight/Drivin’ alone through the Wisconsin night.  
  • George Jones, Milwaukee Here I Come. There’s also a version by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. If you never saw Dolly Parton on the Porter Wagoner Show on Saturday night, your education is incomplete. Dolly was 21. “Why Porter! You brung me flowers!”
  • Les Paul, The Best of the Capitol Masters Edition. Luckily he designed a great guitar, otherwise no one would remember him. If you never actually listened to Les Paul (which I hadn’t), don’t. 
  • Ella Fitzgerald, My Cousin in Milwaukee. Singin’ sweet about singin’ sexy. 
  • Smoking Popes, Welcome to Janesville. Paul Ryan is from Janesville. It’s a fine song, but I don’t think it’s about Paul Ryan. 
  • Jerry Lee Lewis, What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me). Lewis’s late country phase.
  • Brad Paisley, Alcohol. Paisley is from West Virginia, and should have been on my West Virginia playlist. He wasn’t, but only out of ignorance. I suspect he’s not my kind of country, but this is a strange sort of anthem, and probably fitting for the state with the highest alcoholism rate in the country.
  • Kimya Dawson, Tire Swing.  Didn’t know her, and still don’t. Wikipedia lists her genre as anti-folk. Ok then. 
  • Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Milwaukee is a port. 

Guitar

I took a guitar, my cheap travel guitar, and worked on Villa-Lobos’s Choro No. 1. I gave up on the Bach I’d been working on without really learning it. I did manage to play all the way through it though.