Category: Packing List

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Oregon Packing List II

I had some random thoughts about Oregon that I didn’t know what to do with, so they’re going with my Oregon playlist.

Donuts

Baked goods are essential to fly fishing , and fried donuts are baked goods. Portland is famous for its donuts, Voodoo Donuts specifically. We went:  I wouldn’t go back. It is the donut equivalent of birthday cakes, more surface than substance. The counter help is there to move you through the line, the donuts, while highly decorated, aren’t anything special, and I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to contemplate a penis-shaped donut, not early in the morning, not any time. 

Blue Star donuts, on the other hand, is outstanding. It bills itself as adult donuts, and that’s fair. Generally I’m not so much a fan of cake donuts (which their donuts are), but that’s a quibble.  Blueberry bourbon donuts are a flavor to be beholden to, and are delicious.

Lesbians

For most places we’ve gone, there’s been a kind of unanimity of response from Houston folks.  When we said we were going to Annapolis, we were told eat the crab cakes. When we went to New Orleans in August, friends said it’s the best time of year to go: it’s no hotter than Houston and you can get restaurant reservations. For Portland, we were told my girlfriend’s lesbian daughter, or my ex-boyfriend’s lesbian aunt, or our former lesbian law school classmate is there.

It was never our gay nephew (or boyfriend’s gay son) lives there. It was never my girlfriend’s daughter. I’m sure there are plenty of gay guys in Portland, and plenty of straight daughters, but the lesbian response was just inevitable.

When I got back to Houston I found an older Gallup poll, 2015, on LGBT populations in US cities, and Portland ranked second after San Francisco for percentage of overall population. Portland might beat out San Francisco if there were some gay guys.

Fake News

You couldn’t have more confusion about Oregon fish facts if they were reported by Fox News. Ask a simple question, do steelhead feed? You will get many more contradictory answers than steelhead. The best answer seems to be that winter steelhead don’t feed, and that summer steelhead feed, but not a lot.

We heard that jack Chinook, which are undersized male Chinook salmon, are mature small fish that are biologically necessary for low flows, but that kind of begs the question: if low flows are blocking big males, why aren’t they blocking big females?  Why aren’t there lady jack Chinook? We heard that they were confused juveniles who were not sexually mature but were pesky. We heard that they were mature males that just hadn’t gotten big.

The best answer seems to be that they are sexually mature, but precociously mature: they’ve matured too soon.  The number of jacks may be higher among hatchery fish, which genetically doesn’t sound like a good thing.

We constantly heard that Deschutes steelhead are a different fish than Deschutes resident trout. One of the more interesting things I read was that out of any given trout or steelhead population, scientists can’t predict which fish will go to the ocean and which fish will remain resident. Which fish will which has more to do with nurture than nature. If the local environment isn’t optimal, Pacific Coast trout will head for the ocean. It’s the principal reason that trout and resident steelhead are considered the same species. It’s a lifestyle thing.

I could never find fish population numbers. Whatever they are, the future of Pacific Coast trout and Salmon looks pretty grim.

Where We Didn’t Go

I’d spent time in Oregon before. I’d seen the coastline, I’d crossed the Cascades, I’d been to Eugene and Bend.  I’d like to see the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.  I wish we’d had time to fish the Umpqua.

Conservation Groups

I’ve been making contributions to local conservation organizations, and their websites are more often than not the best sources of information about a fishery. You’d think with all that ecological consciousness there would be an obvious conservation organization to join in the Pacific Northwest.  There’s not, not that I could figure out anyway. We found the Deschutes River Alliance, and they make a great video, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they may not be right, and they get as much grief from locals as they get praise. 

Maybe Trout Unlimited is the right organization, but I’m surprised I didn’t find a more localized umbrella group for salmon and steelhead. Maybe the Deschutes River Conservancy would be good.

BattleFish

One of our guides on the Deschutes, Barret Ames, is on a reality show, BattleFish, about commercial albacore tuna fishing. It debuted Friday. The show is kind of brutal to watch, but the fish is delicious. 

Playlist

Dolly Parton wrote a song about Eugene. Jack White and Loretta Lynn recorded a duet about Portland. That right there is reason enough to visit.

  • The Decembrists, The Hazards of Love, Her Majesty, The King is Dead, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. I love the Decembrists. I thought I was being very au courant, until my daugher (who’s 32) told me that they were her favorite band in high school. I did get that song about the father murdering his children in my head for about three days, and I’d rather not hear it again anytime soon.
  •  Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Pastures Of Plenty. One of the Woody Guthrie Oregon songs.
  • Esparanza Spalding, Chamber Music Society, Radio Music Society. How a short black girl from Portland became a great jazz musician is a story worth contemplating.
  • She & Him. M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel. We had Volume 3, and found ourselves listening to it in high-stress situations, like when I’d tied my wet wading boots to the roof of the car to dry and Kris freaked out.
  • The Shins, Port of Morrow. 
  • The Kingsmen. The Best of the Kingsmen. Louie, Louie never cycled through, but they were just as bad as I remembered. 
  • Paul Revere & The Raiders. Greatest Hits. They were better than I remembered, but there must have been something in the Portland water in the 60s that churned out garage bands.
  • Todd Snider, Songs for the Daily Planet. 80s music. Dated. 
  • Woody Guthrie, Columbia River Collection.
  • Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out. I might get Sleater-Kinney in 30 years or so, or die trying.
  • John Fahey, The Portland Cement Factory.
  • Joan Baez, Portland Town. It took me a while to figure out this was Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine.
  • Johnny Cash, Lumberjack. They don’t make songs like this any more. It goes well with Sometimes a Great Notion.
  • Dolly Parton, Eugene Oregon. 
  • Carrie Brownstein & Fred Armisen, Dream of the 90s.  We watched a lot of Portlandia.  It’s addicting.
  • Elliott Smith, Alameda. 
  • Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell.  I’m not sure what this has to do with Oregon, but I liked the song. In 2005, Stevens announced he would record an album for each state, and he released Michigan and Illinois, but later he said it was just a promotional gimmick.  This is a man of my own heart. 
  • Michael Hurley, Portland Water. 
  • Steely Dan, Don’t Take Me Alive. The best driving song of the lot. Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon/Don’t take me alive/Got a case of dynamite/I could hold out here all night
  • Lorretta Lynn (feat. Jack White), Portland, Oregon.  
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Oregon Packing List I

We didn’t take many clothes to Oregon, and that was just about right.  Ok, we may have taken a few too many layers of polypropylene, and I took a pair of shorts I never wore, but here’s the most important thing you need to know about Portland: You can wear your nylon fishing pants into any restaurant in the City and fit right in. If the only clean shirt you have left for that elegant tasting menu restaurant s a mid-weight Patagonia underlayer pullover, it’s ok. It’s stylish. Stylish. One pair of Keene sandals, my running shoes, and a pair of wading boots would take me anyplace in the state unless I needed some other kind of technical sports shoes. Hiking boots, skiing boots, cycling cleats; those I might need. I wouldn’t need a dressier pair of shoes.

Oregon is an outdoorsy milieu. There are as many Subarus in Portland as there are F150s in Houston. There are a lot of Subarus.

Unlike New Orleans, I didn’t take a blazer, and unlike New Orleans I didn’t need one. I did worry that in a Nike town my New Balance running shoes might not be quite the thing, but Portland folk seem pretty tolerant.

The homeless like Portland, at least in the summer, but I don’t think it’s because they don’t need a blazer. Our first morning I took an early-morning run around the river. There were colonies of the young and ragged sleeping in doorways and camped on the riverside. Someone told me that much of Portland homelessness is about heroin, but I also think it’s some about accomodation. Portland has long been particularly tolerant of  the homeless.

When we first got to Portland we went to Portland Fly Shop. Ok, that’s not true. We first went and ate Pacific Coast oysters at Olympia Oyster Bar. For Gulf Coasters, Oysters on the West Coast are high dollar, about $3 each, but happy hour oysters were half price. They didn’t serve Saltines with the oysters, and I’m not sure they understood the value of salt and lemon or a classic mignonette, but the bread was good. The oysters were good.

So we went to Portland Fly Shop after the oysters and met Jason Osborn, who had helped me buy my 7 weight Beulah Spey rod long distance. Kris finally committed to a Spey rod, a Beulah Onyx 6 weight, and we bought some sink tips and some leaders. Here, though, is the bizarre thing about steelhead fishing:

To fish for steelhead, you honest-to-God could fish for days with two flies, one wet and one streamer.

If there are no tugs by the end of the swing, one doesn’t agonize about whether the fly is the very thing, you take two more steps downriver and cast again.  Changing flies ain’t in it. “Jason,” we insisted, “sell us some flies.” I’d tied a good two dozen flies getting ready for Oregon: multiple fish tacos in many colors, steelhead coachmen, skaters, black things, brown things, orange things. . . Jason seemed baffled that I wanted more flies. He clearly thought we had plenty flies enough. We insisted. He sold us some, but his heart wasn’t in it.

We only changed flies when the spirit spoke to us, or when the light changed.  In the morning or when it was overcast, we cast wets three-quarters downstream on Skandi lines. When it was full sun we cast streamers 90 degrees straight across the river on Skagit lines.  Then we did the two-step (or the four-step). The idea was to cover water. Maybe people who know what they’re doing change flies, but for us, what’s the point? Within the realm of decent steelhead flies one fly was as good as any other.

I was told that the Clousers I brought weren’t in the realm of decent steelhead flies.  What fish doesn’t like a Clouser?

As to other stuff we didn’t need, we took a bunch of trout rods. When we arrived at Maupin and met Travis Johnson, I said that I was in Oregon to catch one fish. He looked concerned and asked if I’d brought a single-handed trout rod, I think in part because trout are easier to catch than steelhead and in part because he worried that my casting would be even less competent than it was. Because I’d caught a Chinook the first day, I never took my single-handed rods or trout flies out of the suitcase. My fish was caught and everything after was gravy.

I took along a better guitar than usual, a 1973 Kohno, because I would be sitting by the side of a river for a few days and that deserves a better guitar.  The Kohno is a bit beat up, but has a lovely tone. My hands though were a wreck.  They were sore, I guess from the rod, and cracked and bleeding from the dry weather and the water.  I worked a bit on the Sor Variations on a Theme from the Magic Flute. I was playing it early in the hotel the first morning–we were running two hours ahead of everybody else on the West Coast–and the person in the neighboring room banged on the wall.  I’d never had that happen before, but they banged on the wall in the middle of the fast 6th variation, so maybe the song was a bit raucous.  Maybe they just weren’t Sor fans.

We spent a long time in Powell’s Books, which is one of the great bookstores. I bought Tom Robbins for Washington and Seattle, which isn’t scheduled, and replaced my copy of Sometimes a Great Notion. Mostly I was reading Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom, getting ready for Mississippi.

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Packing List – Maryland

Carl Van Vechten, Billie Holiday, 1942, Van Vechten Collection, Library of Congress

We’re not good at traveling light, but when we went back to Maryland we traveled about as light as we ever have. I didn’t take a guitar. We took no fishing gear. We didn’t take anything we couldn’t carry onto a plane, which did include a book about Northwest salmon and an iPad.  I still managed to take one too many pairs of shoes.

We had trouble getting the car because I’d  changed the plane reservation but not the car reservation and came in seven hours late.  Not only did I change the plane reservation, I had us going home the next morning while we were fishing, but Kris fixed the plane while I waited for Budget to take care of the car.  I use Budget for the fast break, but this time it wasn’t very fast. The Budget counter beat us up for better than an hour.

We never made it to Annapolis for the crab cakes on the harbor side that I’d planned.

As for places in Maryland I’d still like to see, we got the water-side tour of Annapolis, which I figure took care of the Naval Academy, but I’d have liked to see the Antietam National Battlefield: there’s something holy about Civil War battlefields. Along with the civil rights landmarks of the South they may be our only real places of pilgrimage. We didn’t make Antietam, and someday I’ll go back for it.

Driving from Baltimore to Annapolis we realized that Barry Levinson made four Baltimore movies we should have watched: Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights ( 1999).  Next time, or maybe this week.

We did manage to eat at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore for a second time. After we dropped off the car at the airport we took a beat-up and clanking metro train through the city, down past the 50s suburbs, past Camden Yards and the harbor into the hard part of town, the part of town that looks like a city with the nation’s highest murder rate, and finally to a stop in gentrifying Woodberry, one block from Woodberry Kitchen. The couple next to us at the restaurant said there were 220-odd separate neighborhoods in Baltimore, and we saw some from the train. After dinner though we took an Uber to our hotel by the airport. Chickens.

I’ve listened to the Maryland playlist now off and on for a year.  You can’t listen to enough Billie Holiday, and the Low Symphony by Phillip Glass is something special: it sounds like water.  I even liked Eubie Blake’s ragtime piano. Frank Zappa, on the other hand, is just not the thing.

I’m Just Wild About Harry, Eubie Blank and Noble Sissle, 1921, Indiana University.

  • Billie Holiday. Lots of it, but not nearly enough.
  • Bobby Bare, Streets of Baltimore. There’s also a nice version by Gram Parsons, with Emmylou Harris. It’s about an unhappy marriage.
  • Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. It’s about the murder of a servant.
  • Bruce Springsteen, Hungry Heart. It’s about abandoning your family.
  • Counting Crows, Raining in Baltimore. It’s about rain in Baltimore, and the need for a rain coat.
  • Phillip Glass, Low Symphony. I meant to download more Glass.  It sounds like the Chesapeake.
  • Eubie Blake. Ragtime.
  • Frank Zappa. There was a lot of it, and I listened to it, and wondered why we ever liked him. I guess we were all more juvenile once.
  • Hoagie Charmichael, Baltimore Oriole. There’s also a version by George Harrison, of all people. It’s about a prostitute. It’s used as Lauren Bacall’s musical theme in Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not.
  • Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Baltimore Fire. It’s about Baltimore burning. Like all McGarrigle music it’s terrific.
  • Little Feat, Feets Don’t Fail Me Now. It may be the only happy song of the lot, but Baltimore only plays a cameo role.
  • Lucinda Williams, Trying to Get to Heaven. It’s a Bob Dylan song about desperation.
  • Lyle Lovett, Baltimore. It’s about death.
  • Nina Simone, Baltimore. Written by Randy Newman, and he’s got a version too. It’s about how hard it is just to live.
  • Prince, Baltimore. It’s about police brutality.
  • Talking Heads, Mommy Daddy You And I. It’s about a family car ride, or train ride, or bus ride, or something. It’s one of the sillier moments for the Talking Heads. I hope I never hear it again.
  • Tim Hardin, The Lady Came from Baltimore. It’s a love song about a thief and a lady. It really is a love song though. It’s about poverty and social inequality.

I think I lost my favorite Corpus Christi Hooks cap.

 

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Packing List – Louisiana

Louis Armstrong, 1952, World Telegraph staff photographer, Library of Congress, no copyright known. From Wikimedia Commons.

Stuff we forgot, stuff that didn’t work, stuff I lost, places we never got to, and music. 

My flies weren’t big enough for our guide, Bailey Short, so we used his.  My leader wasn’t heavy enough, Bailey wanted at least 20 pounds, but that was easy, we just cut off the 16 pound tippet. He wanted 10 weight rods.  Oddly I thought I took a 10 weight rod, but when I got there I’d grabbed a 12, so I fished with his Orvis Helios 3D.  It was hard, but somebody’s gotta do it. What a nice rod.  I never touched my 7 weight and shouldn’t have taken it.

I’d tied up the leader with a 5’ butt section of 20 pound hard Mason monofilament.  I really liked how the leader laid out.  There was about 2.5’ of 20 pound Rio Saltwater Flourocarbon after the butt, so that’s what we fished after the 16 pound tippet was cut. It was about a 7.5’ two-piece leader.

We took insect repellent but I didn’t put it on until too late.  I fished barefoot in the boat and by the end of the second day my feet were covered with horsefly bites.  I guess they caught me when I was napping. And I did nap, especially the second day when I was hung over.  Otherwise I wore long pants and shirt and a buff and had no problems.

As for places, I really meant to go to the WWII museum but didn’t get there. I wanted to go for jazz in the afternoon on Frenchman Street but never made it. I wanted to see the plantations up the river road, especially some of the newer exhibits that cover slave life. There are half-a-hundred places I still haven’t eaten. I’d like to catch a bass out of a john boat near New Iberia in the Bayou Teche. That’s what I get for reading too much James Lee Burke.

Instead we mostly fished.

Now for the playlist. There’s some great music out of Louisiana, or about Louisiana.

  • Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Jerry Jeff Walker wrote Mr. Bojangles after a night in a New Orleans jail. I’d rather not spend a night in a New Orleans jail.
  • Louis Armstrong, including Louis Armstrong and King Oliver, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Red Onion Jazz Babies, Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, Johnnie Dodd’s Black Bottom Stompers, and Lillie Delk Christian & Louis Armstrong. Thomas Brothers’ Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, is as good of a book about early 20th century New Orleans and the birth of jazz as is out there.  His Louis Armstrong’s Chicago is also pretty great, and most of the recordings I have are from Armstrong’s in the 20s in Chicago.  Maybe there are earlier recordings in New Orleans, but I’m not aware of any.
  • Wynton Marsalis. I need to get some newer stuff by Marsalis.  What I’ve got is a bit lush. Hot House Flowers, from the late 80s.
  • Branford Marsalis. Renaissance, again from the late 80s.This was something I really ended up liking, especially Peacock.
  • Dr. John
  • Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Louisiana Rain.
  • Patti LaBelle, Lady Marmalade.
  • The Animals. You can’t go to New Orleans without House of the Rising Sun. 
  • The Rolling Stones. I don’t really like the Stones, and it’s mostly because of songs like Brown Sugar. I’m sorry, but that’s got to be the most reprehensible song ever written. Good riff though.
  • Count Basie, Louisiana
  • Buckwheat Zydeco
  • Arlo Guthrie, City of New Orleans. Ok, it’s about a train, but it’s a good song. 

Heinrich Klaus, Fats Domino playing in Hamburg Germany, 1973. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.  His stuff on Flickr is brilliant.
  • Fats Domino.
  • Lucinda Williams. Williams gets all the small town stuff, Slidell, Lake Charles. Louisiana claims her, but I say Arkansas. Still, there are Louisiana songs. 
  • Roy Orbison. Orbison was born in my home town, so he had an excuse for thinking bayous might be blue.  Linda Ronstadt is pretty great too. 
  • The Neville Brothers.
  • Randy Newman. Apparently Newman lived in New Orleans as a child. Who knew? Louisiana is the best song I know about cultural failure. I should have downloaded all of Good Ol’ Boys, especially Kingfish.
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival. They actually sang a lot about Louisiana for a bunch of California kids. 
  • Clifton Chenier.
  • Doug Kershaw & Rusty Kershaw.
  • Jean Knight. Everybody should hear Mr. Big Stuff one more time. 
  • Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the Flatlanders, Eddie LeJeune, Johnnie Allan, Jo-El Sonnier. All of these have versions of Jolie Blon, which is one of the great songs.
  • Tim McGraw. My only nod to the Baptist Louisiana north. It was kind of jarringly out of place.
  • Paul Simon, Take me to the Mardi Gras.
  • Steve Earle, After the Mardi Gras.
  • Johnny Cash, Big River.
  • Sting, Moon Over Bourbon Street.
  • Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man (which also means The Byrds), and with the Band, Crash on the Levee. 
  • Led Zeppelin, When the Levee Breaks.
  • Beausoleil. I always thought Bayou Cadillac was Buy You a Cadillac.
  • Allan Toussaint, Last Train.
  • Santana, Toussaint l’ouverature.
  • Benny Goodman, King Porter Stomp. Goodman famously feuded with Armstrong because he thought Armstrong a clown.
  • Mahalia Jackson.

 

Mathew Brady, Portrait of Louis Gottschalk, c. 1855, Library of Congress.

Some of these, Fats Domino, Clifton Chenier, the Neville Brothers, and the others with no comments, had a lot of songs and are so essential that I’ve got nothing to add. I need to go back and add Jerry Lee Lewis, Louis Gottschalk, and more Jo-El Sonnier.

On the guitar I was  working on a transcription of the Bach Fugue in A minor for organ. It’s better than I am. As for lost, it was a pair of reading glasses.  It was a nice pair, too.