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New Mexico, Part Dos

Spanish settlement in New Mexico dates from 1598, nine years before the English settled Jamestown and 22 years before Massachusetts got its Pilgrims. The Spanish had already been in and out of New Mexico for a while. Cabeza de Vaca wandered through about 1536 and Coronado came looking for Cibolo in 1540. Exploration was reasonably frequent after that. 

The Spanish left for a bit too. After the 1680 Pueblo Revolt drove the surviving Spanish out, they stayed out for 12 years, but they came back and picked up where they left off. Permanent European settlement of the 50 States really begins with the Spanish in New Mexico.

Settlers’ arrival in 1598 was two years before the birth of Diego Velasquez in Seville, twelve years after the birth of Cervantes, and the year that Phillip III, King of Spain, ascended as Phillip II to the thrones of Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and to the Dukedom of Milan. The Spanish Armada had failed to invade England only ten years before, but that failure was more an act of God than of man. New Mexico was the furthest settled edge of one of the 16th Century’s most powerful and sophisticated nations.

El Santuario de Chimayo, Chimayo, New Mexico.

The Spanish settlers brought with them Catholicism, government structures, laws, language, and culture, including folkways and a debt peonage system for poor Hispanics and out-and-out slavery for captured Navajos that were every bit as inhumane as chattel slavery. Both outlived adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment by a decade. 

Spanish communities persisted in isolation, preserving a culture with roots not in Pennsylvania or Virginia or Massachusetts, but in Spain and Colonial Mexico. Settlers adopted Pueblan crops–beans, squash, chilis, and corn were as important to the Hispanos as they had been to the Chacoans–but they also developed their own sometimes peculiar offshoots of Spanish culture–Los Penitentes come to mind, as does the possible existence of Crypto-Jews.

Jean Nicolas Du Tralage and Vincenzo Coronelli, Le Nouveau Mexique appelé aussi Nouvelle Grenade et Marata, avec Partie de Californie, 1687, The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections

In 1848 the United States took New Mexico from Mexico under the treaty ending the Mexican-American War. If they chose, then-Mexican citizens of New Mexico could either keep their Mexican citizenship or renounce it and become Americans. It was a mess. There were no real records of who renounced and who didn’t, and because Mexican citizens couldn’t vote or serve on juries, there were persistent questions as to whose vote counted. Some things don’t change. Questions of who was and who wasn’t a citizen persisted until statehood was finally granted in 1912, more than 300 years after the founding of Santa Fe. 

The American conquest of New Mexico was deeply distrusted by both Mexicans and Indians. The invading Americans disliked the Hispanos’ language and religion. The Hispanos disliked the Americans’ language and religion. In 1847, the allied Taos Pueblans and Spanish New Mexicans violently revolted. The territorial governor, the trader Charles Bent, was murdered and scalped, along with just about everybody else in Taos holding office under the American government. When troops came to re-secure Taos, the rebels took sanctuary in the Taos Pueblo church, which was promptly leveled. In a strange mis-labeling, 28 of the rebels were hung for the crimes of murder or treason, though strictly speaking they weren’t American citizens and were being hung for committing treason against an invasion.

Ruin of the Taos Pueblo church, 1881.

As an attempt to understand this jumble of cultures and prejudices, I’m particularly fond of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop , and every few years will re-read all or parts of it. I always wonder how Cather arrived at writing about a French Jesuit New Mexican bishop. She was not New Mexican, she was not Catholic, and she was not French. It’s a novel with not so much of a plot as a progression, the fictionalized life of Bishop Lamy recounted in a series of episodes, but Cather’s themes, Catholicism at the church’s margins and the intersection of New Mexican cultures, still hold true, though these days there are fewer donkeys.

In addition to Spanish and Chacoan descendants, Navajo, and Apache, New Mexico also has Anglos. Of the roughly 2.1 million people in New Mexico, 36.8% are white only, 49.3% are Hispanic, 11% are American Indian, 2.6% are Black, and 1.8% are Asian. It’s not a populous state; by population, New Mexico ranks 37th. By population density, it ranks 6th, less dense than South Dakota, but denser than Idaho. It is a Western state.

Eastern New Mexico shares the Llano Estacado with the Texas Panhandle, and driving the 335 miles from Clarendon, Texas, pop. 1,842, elev. 2,733 feet, to roughly Santa Rosa, New Mexico, pop. 2636, elev. 4616 feet, is a lesson in humility, a spur to daydreams, and one of the great challenges to ownership of an electric car. The drive from Fort Worth to Santa Fe is 620 miles, about 12 hours, and, depending on your taste, it is either magnificent or hell, or maybe both. 

Google Maps

It’s a drive I’ve made all or parts of hundreds of times, and I like it. The world changes west of the 90th meridian. Texas sheds more of its Southern heritage and becomes more Western, wet clothes dry faster, all those pesky trees are rarer–and in a lot of it trees just aren’t there. You can see mountains from Albuquerque, and there are mountains south around Cloudcroft and Ruidoso. The gaudiest beauty of New Mexico though is in the northern mountains, surrounding Santa Fe and Taos. Further west things generally flatten again, though it’s high desert, and certainly not flat by Llano Estacado standards. By the time you reach the far west of the state, Farmington’s elevation is 5,394 feet, Gallup’s is 6,468 feet, and even Anthony, just outside of El Paso, is 3,802 feet. Back in the Rockies near Taos, Wheeler Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is 13,167 feet. 

In recent years, New Mexico has tended Democratic, but it switches between Republican and Democratic governors fairly regularly. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried the state 48.26%, against Donald Trump’s 40.04%, but Gary Johnson, a home-grown Libertarian, received 9.3% of the 2016 vote (which probably hurt President Trump more than Senator Clinton). In a landslide, Joe Biden received 54% of the vote in 2020, and Trump stayed relatively flat at 43%. Oddly, while rural Eastern New Mexico lines up decidedly Republican, the state is not so clearly split between rural Republican voters and urban Democrats. There’s some of that, but some of New Mexico’s blue counties are decidedly rural. It’s almost as if the high country tends left, both geographically and politically. Maybe the Navajo and the Zuni vote blue. The Zuni are certainly mysterious.

KyleReese64, New Mexico 2020 Presidential Election map, Wikipedia.

Both United States Senators from New Mexico are Democrats, and both houses of the New Mexico legislature are controlled by Democrats.

So what about New Mexico Anglos? For 13,000 years, New Mexico has been a settlement magnet, and Anglo-Americans are just the arrivistes. American traders out of Independence, Missouri, first opened the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 to reach New Mexico silver. That makes Anglos a bit later than the Navajo and the Spanish, but even the Anglos are closing in on two centuries. 

National Park Service, Santa Fe Trail

What do New Mexicans like about Texans? We visit and then get out. We’ve invaded New Mexico twice, once under the Republic of Texas (while New Mexico was controlled by Mexico), and once during the Civil War (while New Mexico was controlled by the Union). Both invasions were disasters. Now Texans just go to New Mexico for vacations, or maybe to retire, which is a kind of extended vacation. 

What do New Mexicans hate about Californians? They come and then they stay. California stuff has proliferated, and now it’s a lot easier to find a good yoga class, or a cute restaurant, or decorative coyotes. Are there still decorative coyotes? I’ll have to check.

Millicent Rogers, 1940s, Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos. This image is almost certainly copyright protected, but is used under the fair use exception. I hope so anyway.

My friend Darrell used to insist that Santa Fe was a town run by rich women. What did he mean? I never knew, exactly, but it’s a statement I’ve pondered–Darrell rarely says things that aren’t worth pondering–and I think I kinda know. The culture of Northern New Mexico was shaped in part by women like Georgia O’Keefe and Millicent Rogers. It’s loaded with museums and opera and of cute and very expensive fine and traditional art galleries in Taos and Santa Fe. Oh sure, there are normal everyday folk in New Mexico. Still, it’s the influx of art beginning in the 1920s that’s so much a part of New Mexico’s appeal, and that gave women space to shape the culture. After New York and Los Angeles, Santa Fe is the States’ third largest art market. Maybe I just made that up, but the notion feels right: New Mexico is one of those places where not just manly industry but feminine high culture has its say.

Maybe that’s what Darrell meant, or maybe he just meant that the Santa Fe city council was stacked with rich woman. Maybe it’s all just sexist drivel. I’m not sure.

Beyond high culture, New Mexico is also poor. It’s per capita annual income, $23,683, ranks 47th among the states. Out there among the decorative coyotes, there’s real poverty. New Mexico’s alcohol-related death rate is the highest in the nation, and is highest among Native Americans. Española, New Mexico, a largely Hispanic town of 10,044 near Santa Fe, is regularly ranked as one of the most violent communities in the nation. In 2017, the violent crime rate in Española was 644.86% higher than the national average.  Traveling the 30 miles to Española from Santa Fe, you can turn right to go to Chimayo, left to Abiquiu and the San Juan, or continue northwest to Taos. You can’t get many places north of Santa Fe without going through Española, and there are plenty of places in the north worth going to. Española, maybe not so much.

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New Mexico, Part 1

My father first visited Santa Fe, in 1945. He was 22, an Army Air Corp flight officer stationed at Kirtland AFB as the war wore down. He borrowed a car and drove north until the road dumped him into the Santa Fe plaza. I suspect there was more to Santa Fe than he remembered, but he found a parking place on the Plaza, which may be the last time any tourist did.

From our West Texas home, I spent plenty of time in New Mexico growing up, and then more time later. Along with the the fine roads into the Rockies, the architecture, the cool summer nights and pleasant days, the smell of piñon, the inhabited Pueblos and the uninhabited Anasazi ruins, the clear cold water, the high desert, it was, and is, beautiful.

I caught my first trout in New Mexico, and my second and my third. Kris and I honeymooned in Santa Fe, and it was the first time I’d been to Santa Fe in the winter. Later, one late night driving down a washboard road to Chaco Canyon, my rearview mirror fell into my lap. In the village of Cordova, in a modest home off the high road from Santa Fe to Taos, I bought an unpainted hand-carved Santo of St. Michael and the dragon. As I left, the señora–she seemed ancient–gave me a small home-grown apple almost as wizened as she was. I was driving and camping, de-toxing after the bar exam, and had been backpacking for a few days at Bandelier National Monument. I probably smelled a bit ripe. I think she suspected I was spending my last dollars on her family’s carvings, and like as not I was. I still have the St. Michael bulto. Even more, I still have that apple’s kind intent.

Sammy Cordova, Cordova, N.M, St. Michael and the Dragon, 1984.

I joke that there are two kinds of Texans: Texans who love Santa Fe and Texans who love New Orleans. I’ve grown to like New Orleans well enough, but my heart is always with New Mexico. I have spent a lifetime pondering it, appreciating it, wishing I was there. I have never spent enough time there. I never will.

Beyond its physical beauty, there is no state where disparate cultures have coexisted for so long, or have been so studied, or have so preserved their own identity. There is a Navajo joke about the typical Navajo family consisting of a mom, a dad, four kids, and an anthropologist. Our country’s most irksome mystery, the 12th century disappearance of the complex pre-Pueblan cultures at and surrounding Chaco Canyon, reaches us after an earlier archeological progression of hunter-gatherers, basket-weavers, pottery makers, complex builders, farmers, hunters of mega-fauna . . . All traceable through a rich legacy of physical remains. People paint onto the abandonment of Chaco (or Mesa Verde, or Keet Seel, or any of the others) their own predispositions, whether they’re prone to the wacko or the scientific, whether they believe in alien invasions or ecological disasters; the mystery of the abandonment is large enough to accommodate and in their mind validate their notions, however peculiar.

I have a duffer’s understanding (maybe misunderstanding) of New Mexican Indian history. In the east the culture was Plains, Comanche and Kiowa I think, not so different from West Texas, and as far as I know none of that culture survives there except as artifacts. Along the Rio Grande and to the west there are 19 remaining Pueblos, dating from more than 1,000 years ago and reduced from the 100 or so inhabited Pueblos when the Spanish arrived. These are our country’s oldest continually settled communities. The remaining Pueblos are certainly (but somewhat mysteriously) connected to the abandoned pre-Pueblan sites, though they are divided among Keresan, Tewa, Hopi, and Zuni language groups.

The Navajo and Apache were relative latecomers, and speak a closely-related Athabaskan language. They arrived in what is now New Mexico and Arizona late, in the 1500s, and the Apache remained hunter-gatherers. The Navajo changed. They borrowed from everybody–they made pots, they built stone defensive structures, they farmed, and after the Spanish arrived they stole sheep and became nomadic shepherds. They even borrowed religious practices from the Hopi, the Hopi being top-notch at getting rid of witches. Among both the Pueblos and the Navajo witches are commonly believed to be a source of many of the world’s evils.

The Navajo seem to know how to absorb: not always, not too much, but plenty enough for us to recognize and identify with their relative plasticity. The Zuni, the most remote and traditional of the Pueblan cultures, will remain mysterious to almost everybody but the Zuni, precisely because of their adherence to tradition. Navajo culture on the other hand makes a lot of sense. After all, every Navajo family has its own anthropologist.

Stella Chavarrio, Santa Clara Pueblo, carved jar, 1984.

Through the 19th century, the Navajo fought with everybody–the Utes in Colorado and Utah, the Pueblo settlements, the Spanish, the Mexicans, and then the Americans. They didn’t completely appreciate the concept of property ownership, and all of those other folk were kinda like the supermarket. When in August 1846 during the Mexican-American War, General Kearney led American Troops to take Santa Fe from Mexico, the occupation was extremely unpopular, but at least at the time it was bloodless. Among other things, Kearney promised to end Navajo depredations. He didn’t. The Navajo pretty much did what they wanted until violent and destructive campaigns in the 1860s forced many of the Navajo to walk nearly 300 miles to the Bosque Redondo reservation at Fort Sumner in Eastern New Mexico. The exile to Bosque Redondo, the Long Walk, was a brutal disaster, and is still a bitter memory among the Navajo. In 1868 the Navajo were allowed to return to their traditional lands.

The territories of the Utes and the Navajo were divided by Western New Mexico’s most certain source of water, the San Juan River, John the Baptist River, or in Navajo Są́ Bitooh, Old Man River. The San Juan feeds into the Colorado, and before it was dammed it was broad, slow, and muddy. It was a catfish river, and still is in its warmer parts. In its colder parts every fly fisher knows the San Juan. In Pennsylvania, sitting with a group of anglers at a picnic table at Fisherman’s Paradise, someone asked where we’d go next. I said I thought New Mexico. Two people immediately offered that they knew where we could fish in New Mexico, the San Juan. It’s now one of the Southwest’s glamour rivers, a clear, cold, nutrient-rich tailwater offering big trout for even the most incompetent. Being among the most incompetent, I’ve fished the San Juan a few times, and it deserves its reputation. We won’t go there.

Navajo, wool weaving, 1990.
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Crawford State Park, Kansas, June 18-19, 2021.

Google Maps tells me that it’s 9 hours and 51 minutes and 617 miles to Crawford State Park, near Girard, Kansas, population 2,707. Google Maps is lying. The 617 miles is true enough, but map apps don’t account for gas breaks, walking the dogs, road work, slow traffic in the left lane, and side junkets and side bets, even if you drive a reasonable five miles faster than the speed limit for most of the distance. If Google Maps tells me that it’s 23 minutes from my house to my office in downtown Houston, that’s pretty close to right. On the other hand, if Google Maps tells me its 2 hours, 45 minutes from Houston to Austin, it’s short by 15 or 20 minutes after I stop at Hruskas for gas and kolaches. It took us about 11 and a half hours to drive from Houston to Southeastern Kansas, notwithstanding the map app’s 10-hour claim.

Pro Tip #1: If you’re driving from point A to point B and you drive the speed limit or a bit over, add about 20 minutes to the app time for every 200 miles you drive. Add another 45 minutes for lunch. 

We picked Southeastern Kansas because (1) I still needed to catch a fish in Kansas, (2) the reservation site claimed that Crawford is one of the most beautiful state parks in Kansas, and (3) the dogs could go. Plus it was Juneteenth weekend; you gotta celebrate Juneteenth. I made a reservation to camp three nights at the park. We stayed one night. 

Google Maps

This was our third trip to Kansas, fourth if you count a weekend trip to Kansas City in 2016 to see the Astros play the Royals (that whole Missouri/Kansas thing with Kansas City confuses everybody who isn’t from Missouri/Kansas, but I think we drove through Kansas City, Kansas, on the way to the airport). In 2020 we drove to Wichita in the dead of winter to get donuts, and last October we drove to Mead State Park and the Cimarron National Grassland. Cimarron National Grassland is sparsely magnificent, and standing on the Santa Fe trail in Western Kansas is one of those things that everyone should do, especially if they love New Mexico. Mead State Park is also very pretty; notwithstanding the internet, I thought it prettier than Crawford State Park. Kansas was bitter cold in February though, and our October trip was unexpectedly cold and fishless. 

Crawford Lake is smallish, about 150 acres, which makes it easier for fly rods, but it was bigger than I thought it would be. We were on the upper right-hand finger of the lake, out of the wind–the wind blew hard on the lake’s main body–but it was also hot. Really hot. Even in the evening when we got there, when it was supposed to be cooling, the temperatures were in the 90s, and I was sweat-drenched by the time I’d set up the tent. I thought about fishing when we got there, but by the time I’d set up camp I was too beat to take the kayak off the roof rack.

The park was packed with campers in RVs and tents, though everybody was reasonably quiet, self-contained, and polite–this was Kansas. Still, living outside with a crowd makes me feel a bit too displayed and on-guard. 

Pro Tip #2: Nobody camps at state parks on a summer weekend. It’s too crowded. 

Early Saturday morning I put in the kayak and fished for about an hour down the sheltered bank. I started out fishing a size 8 BBB fly, and used a 9-foot 7 weight rod and a floating line with a 9 foot leader and 16 pound tippet. At least I fished a 16 pound tippet until I broke it off in a tree. Then I fished a 7 foot leader with a 20 pound tippet–I’d left the spool of 16 pound in the car. I stayed in the protected finger of the lake where we camped. I didn’t catch any bass. but I did catch this typical Kansas sunfish. 

A typical Kansas bluegill. Photo courtesy of Nick Denbow, Western Caribbean Fly Fishing School.

Ok, I lied. That’s neither a sunfish nor in Kansas. It’s not me either. This is what I actually caught:

Clearly I needed the 20 pound tippet. In an hour I caught six of them, all about the same size, one after another. I tossed the fly close to the weeds by the bank and let it sink, and the blue gill would take it. 

I love catching blue gill. I love their aggression, I love their iridescence and colors when brought to hand. When the next overlord tells me I have to give up catching every fish but one, blue gill will like as not be the fish I choose to keep. Plus if I’d glued all six of my Kansas fish together I’d have had a pretty good-sized fish.

I was off the water in a bit more than an hour. Kris didn’t want to go out in the kayak, so we packed up the car and left. We didn’t want to suffer the afternoon heat and the crowd didn’t lend itself to park exploration. 

We didn’t go straight home. We were across the Kansas/Missouri border from Branson, Missouri, and Carolyn Parker of Branson’s River Run Outfitters had been on Tom Rosenbauer’s Orvis podcast the week before. It was only 70 miles away, so we drove to Branson. 

Branson is Las Vegas for devout Southern Baptists who don’t drink, gamble, or watch cavorting showgirls. It’s is in the heart of the Ozarks, and in lieu of neon the countryside is devastated by Branson billboards. There are shows, Dolly Parton’s Stampede, Presley’s Country Jamboree, Amazing Pets, The Haygoods, Legends of Country at Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Theater, illusionists and magicians and comedians, JESUS at Sight and Sound Theater (there’s an illusionist, magician, and comedian joke there, but for once I’m exercising restraint) . . . . There’s a big lake for bass fishing, golf courses, and a tailwater. There are lots of 50s diners in Branson, and I suspect a Golden Corral.

We originally thought we’d spend the night there, so we stopped at a visitor center–there are lots of visitor centers in Branson, but I don’t know if any are official. I asked the lady at the counter to suggest a hotel where we could take the dogs, and she said what kind of hotel, and I said a hotel with a bar. She told me there weren’t a lot of bars in Branson, but she called a hotel with a bar for us. The hotel was full–she said that on summer weekends Branson is packed, but I’ll always suspect that the hotel was full because of its bar. 

Kris wanted to stay and fish, but I just couldn’t do it. We didn’t have any trout rods; we could have used the shop’s rods but I was looking for excuses. The guys at the shop told us that the river was particularly high because of dam releases, so I used that as well. Bottom line though, all those Southern Baptists on holiday made me nervous.

Pro Tip #3: On a summer weekend, if you’re a devout Southern Baptist out for a good time, Branson, Missouri, is for you. 

We drove on to Bentonville, Arkansas, home of WalMart, where I had a decidedly un-Baptist Manhattan at The Preacher’s Son, an upscale place with ties to the Waltons built in a former church. There was no show, but I guess religion was the day’s motif. 

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Pennsylvania Packing List

Gear

We took waders, boots with studs, and wading staffs, and we used them. Kris fished with her 10’6″ Orvis H3 3 weight that Trout Unlimited sent her for her intelligence, beauty, and patience. I fished a 9-foot Winston Pure 5 weight that I got from Trout Unlimited because they felt sorry for me.

On the third day, trying to tight-line nymph with a medium-length leader and only a foot or so of fly line out of the rod tip, I couldn’t control the short casts of the leader. Some of it was unfamiliarity, but whatever it was, my casts were mostly big looping air balls with minds of their own.

Dom recommended that I pick up the line earlier, before the leader passed me on it’s way downstream. With the increased line tension I could get a better back-cast, and that helped, but I’ve wondered since if one of the longer, lighter rods used for Euro-nymphing–like the Orvis rod Kris was using– wouldn’t have made those casts easier? That if an advantage of the long, light rods is that the greater leverage and limber tip section make short casts of light lines easier? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be curious enough to try it and reach a conclusion, or maybe not.

We fished Dom’s flies and Dom’s leaders, or Jim’s flies using pretty standard trout leaders. I don’t think we fished anything smaller than a 5x tippet, which is good since anything lighter than 5x tippet has to be manufactured by captive fairies in Celtic sweatshops. It must have been ok. We caught some fish.

Penns Creek

Other than being a pretty great place to fish, Penns Creek holds an oddly significant place in American history. In 1755, a group of Lenape massacred 14 Irish and German settlers on Penns Creek, and took another 11 captive. While William Penn lived, the Lenape and Penn’s Quaker-controlled government had good relations–maybe the longest-lasting good relations between Europeans and Native Americans in the British colonies–but after his death the English pushed the Lenape out of their historic territory into territory controlled by the Iroquois, and then the Iroquois joined the pushing. The Lenape struck back at Penns Creek.

The Penns Creak Massacre kicked off the Western Pennsylvania colonist/Indian conflicts of the French and Indian War, and as a direct result of the massacre, Pennsylvania assemblyman Benjamin Franklin led the effort to fund a common defense. Military funding was something that the Quaker-controlled Assembly had previously refused to do, and still because of their religious convictions didn’t want to do. Franklin won. In response, the remaining Quaker assemblymen resigned from government. It represented the end of Pennsylvania Quaker dominance, a broader divorce of religion and government, and a spasm of self-governance that arguably spurred Franklin toward the Revolution. That’s a pretty heavy load for a little crick.

Moccasins, Probably Lenape, history unknown, purchased 1908, National Museum of the American Indian.

The colonist/Indian conflicts in Western Pennsylvania were particularly violent. The Indians, encouraged by the French, fought a bloody no-holds-barred war against settler families. The English, encouraged by the English, offered bounties of $150 for Lenape men’s scalps and $130 for women’s. In the end, after the French surrendered, the Lenape were pushed out of Pennsylvania further into Ohio. Ultimately the largest groups of the Lenape–now known as the Delaware–settled in Oklahoma, with tribal governments in Bartlesville and Anadarko.

Irony of ironies, when I was 10 I shook Roy Rogers’ hand in Anadarko.

Knife sheath, possibly Lenape, 1780-1820, National Museum of the American Indian

Gettysburg

The Battle of Gettysburg, together with the concurrent fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the end of the Confederacy, even if they wouldn’t admit it for another two years. Gettysburg was Lee’s greatest military blunder, other than rebelling in the first place. We called too late to get Segway tours of the battlefield, which sounded pretty fun, but we did find a horse-drawn wagon tour, which was probably better since it was too cold and windy to go zipping around on Segways. There were about twelve of us huddled in the wagon, not counting the horses, and it was a wee bit awkward being the only Southerners. I’m not sure that it helped that I was the only person who could answer the Guide’s question about which president besides Lincoln was born in Kentucky? It was Jefferson Davis, who hardly seems to count as a president, but I knew the answer so I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

Because we were going to Gettysburg, I was reading Ty Seidule’s Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause. Along with the rest of his army career, General Seidule is the former head of the West Point history department. He rightly touts his Southern, military, and historical bona fides. I don’t have any military bona fides, and barely any historical, but I certainly have Southern: five of my great-great grandfathers fought in the War, four for the Confederacy, one for the Union, but even the Yankee was a Southerner, having migrated from Eastern Tennessee to Missouri. During Gettysburg all of my great-greats would have been somewhere in the West, not Gettysburg, but still, notwithstanding family ties, it’s Gettysburg that captures attention. There’s a lot more romance in Pickett’s Charge than in siege starvation at Vicksburg.

I suspect that many of us white Southern boys of a certain age are reckoning with our Confederate legacy. It’s hard to tell four of your ancestors that morally they sucked, even if the conversation is only in your own head. My great-greats were mostly privates, but I don’t really doubt that they knew they were fighting for the preservation of slavery. They may have made treasonous choices for indefensible reasons, but like as not they weren’t unaware of the reasons the War was fought.

I suspect too that General Seidule’s book has a limited audience–old Southern white guys with a moral conundrum; their early reverence for the South smacking up against their delayed realization that the Confederacy doesn’t deserve reverence–but it’s an audience who will be comforted by General Seidule’s authority and certainty and urgency. I appreciated it anyway.

As an odd aside, I re-read the Gettysburg Address before we went to the battlefield. In Pennsylvania it finally registered that Lincoln was only memorializing the Union dead. Only the Union dead were buried in the new national cemetery. The Southern dead were left on the field and then buried in mass graves, and Lincoln’s words didn’t extend so far. It was a startling realization, that unlike what came after the end of Reconstruction the memorialization of the War didn’t always include the South, and that Lincoln’s consecration said nothing ennobling about the Southern dead. That’s tough stuff for a Southern boy.

Philadelphia to Pittsburgh

It is further than 70 miles from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. Who knew?

In Philadelphia we ate. Yeah, yeah, we saw the Museum of Art, and the Barnes Foundation collection, we walked around the preserved Colonial part of town and looked at the Liberty Bell through a window. It was all fabulous, but mostly we ate. Then we ate some more. Then we ate.

Of course I consulted my friend Tom, font of all trustworthy food suggestions. “Tom,” I asked, “Pittsburgh? Philadelphia?”

Tom didn’t know anything about Pittsburgh. About Philadelphia he was certain:

DO go to Zahav, Michael Solmonov’s paean to Israeli/Middle Eastern food. Great food. Great service. Great cocktails. And contrary to everything I say, it’s ok to order the set menu here – for two. Lots of appetizers, salads, entrees, and dessert.

Getting a reservation to Zahav is a bit like going fly fishing. It takes preparation, memory, some luck, and a credit card. Still, it’s worth it. It is an unflinching barrage of food, fabulous food, the kind of food that wears you down and leaves you drained and unhappy that you can’t eat it all, and thrilled that you ate what you ate.

There is also the Reading Terminal Market, where we ate roast beef and roast pork sandwiches at Tommy DiNic’s, then went back the next day to eat Philly cheese steaks at Carmen’s. Since it’s the only Philly cheese steak I’ve had, I can attest that it is, as far as I know, the best in Philadelphia.

We failed to get the Amish donuts at Reading Terminal Market on Saturday because I didn’t know the owners were Amish and I didn’t want to stand in line, and then they were closed on Sunday. It’s a lot of God to ask us to give up donuts for the Sabbath, so instead of the Amish donuts we went to Federal Donuts and Fried Chicken. I’m sure the fried chicken is excellent, but I really regretted missing my chance at the Amish donuts. Our daughter says they’re outstanding.

There was a very good market in Lancaster, the Central Market, which had lots of Amish goods but I recall no donuts. After visiting the Lancaster Market we ate lots of pickles. It’s a great place to buy pickles, plus after Philadelphia we needed some kind of a purge.

As for Pittsburgh, there were vendor stalls all over the Strip District, but as a market it was not so good as Reading Terminal Market, and while Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art is very fine, it’s not so good as the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I screwed up and we didn’t see the Pirates at PNC Park, which is unforgivable because the park is beautiful and I like the Pirates. The Pirates are far more likable than the Phillies.

The Pittsburgh airport is remarkably inconvenient. It’s hard to figure out where near the airport to stay, and Uber rides from downtown to the airport are ridiculously expensive. We did eat the famous local sandwich at Primanti Brothers, which for some reason is stuffed with French fries, and on Saturday night ate at a good Italian place, Picolo Forno.

The French-fry stuffed sandwich is not so good as the Philly cheese steak.

George Catlin, Ambush for Flamingoes, c. 1856-57, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Feathered Hook

We stayed at some good places, and a lousy airport Holiday Inn Express in Pittsburgh–it was advertised as an airport motel but it was seven miles from the airport and its airport shuttle was shut down for Covid–but best of all we stayed at the Feathered Hook in Coburn, which is a fly shop on Penns Creek with an attached bed and breakfast. This is not a romantic bed and breakfast decorated with period gew-gaws and serving artisanal breakfasts. This is a place for anglers to sleep when they fish Penns Creek. It’s decorated with fly fishing gew-gaws and second-hand furniture that might be antique someday but more likely will be discarded as junk, and there is a bit of a college frat house vibe about the place, that is if the college frats were 60-year-old fly fishermen. Kris was the only woman there, so if it is considered a romantic getaway it’s romance for a decidedly niche clientele.

Breakfast at the Feathered Hook is bacon and sausage and eggs and toast; three eggs, however you want them (though probably not poached, and certainly without any hollandaise). I guess that could be considered artisanal among the same niche that goes to The Feathered Hook for romance.

Coburn itself consists of The Feathered Hook, a main street with a few dozen raggedy clapboard houses, a bridge over Penns Creek, some vacation homes, and four Trump 2024 signs. The fly shop at The Feathered Hook is very good, and they have a fine selection of handmade bamboo fly rods. I have no reason to own a handmade bamboo rod; there’s no fishing I commonly do where I could enjoy a handmade bamboo fly rod, and they’re expensive–even for fly rods–so of course I’ve long wanted one. They’re pretty. If The Feathered Hook had put prices on the rods, I probably would have bought one, but I didn’t want to ask because then I would have been committed and Kris would have been aghast. I would probably find as many uses for an English riding saddle.

I’ve long wanted an English riding saddle.

We stayed at the Feathered Hook two nights, and the first night we drank whiskey in the kitchen with the Antietam Fly Anglers of Maryland. There was a very funny story about one of the members, a doctor, who had organized a trip to Argentina, and then a couple of days before the trip he collapsed and had to have immediate heart surgery. His friends, some of whom were at the kitchen table–as I recall it is a fine formica and chrome table that perfectly matches the decor, but memory is tricky and it may have been deal–went on to Argentina to fish for golden dorado without him. Ok, that’s actually not a very funny story. Maybe it was a funnier story because of the whiskey.

Anyway, the next day the members of the Antietam Fly Anglers were gone and were replaced by members of Long Island Trout Unlimited. They were good to drink whiskey with too, and I think that maybe Kris told them the heart bypass story, though in her version I bought a handmade bamboo rod for an extravagant outlay before I collapsed after she brained me. I can’t remember if in her version she went fishing for golden dorado without me.

Playlist

The Pennsylvania playlist was particularly fine, especially the jazz. Art Blakey, Keith Jarrett, Melody Gardot, Stanley Clarke, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Billy Eckstine, Joe Venuti, Joe Pass, and Stan Getz are all from Pennsylvania. Three of the great jazz pianists, Errol Garner, Billy Strayhorn, and Ahmad Jamal, all attended Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh. I could listen to that music forever.

I hadn’t listened to Jim Croce in years, or Todd Rundgren or Labelle or the O’Jays, and I’m a fan of them all. Henry Mancini grew up in Pennsylvania and was the composer of the soundtracks to the movies of my childhood, and you know what? It’s terrible music, almost unlistenable. The two best songs, Peter Gunn and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, just can’t do enough to make me forget the Theme from Hatari! or Love Story or Dear Heart. If Mancini had been all we had to listen to, I couldn’t have left Pennsylvania fast enough.

Did I mention that Joe Pass was from Pennsylvania? And also Joe Pass?

Hans Bernhard, Joe Pass and Ella Fitzgerald, 1974, licensed under Creative Commons attribution.

Taylor Swift is from Pennsylvania, and Pink and Christina Aguilera and Joan Jett and Ethel Waters. Chubby Checker, Frankie Avalon. Fabian, and the Stylistics are from Pennsylvania. There’s also a pretty good classical orchestra in Philadelphia, and the Curtis Institute, and lots of new young bands. It is, all in all, a pretty great state for driving around listening to music.

Here’s a recording of the Guarneri Quartet with Emmanuel Axe playing the single best piano quintet ever written about trout, and brown trout specifically. All but one of the Guarneri Quartet studied at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute.

Guitar

I took the Kohno, and played a good bit, though I don’t remember playing anything in particular; some Bach, some Villa-Lobos, some Sanz. I almost certainly worked some on a guitar transcription of Pavane for a Dead Princess. I always work some on a guitar transcription of Pavane for a Dead Princess, and never remember any of it beyond the first couple of pages. Too bad there are five pages. Ravel, by the way, was not from Pennsylvania, but I bet he would have liked it.