Tag: Bakeries

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Michigan and Ohio Packing List

I’m lumping these two states together. It’s hard to do them together, but it’s even harder to do them apart, and they do sit next to each other. So they’re lumped.

Gear

Our guides in both states wanted us to use their rods, which helps them because they can come to the launch with the rods rigged. We didn’t take rods at all. Lance in Michigan fished with 4-weight Winston rods, which meant that I was fishing with slightly lighter versions of what I would have lugged to Michigan anyway. Katie in Ohio fished with 7-weight G Loomis NRX or Sage rods, so I was fishing with different brands of the 7-weight that I would have lugged to Ohio.

In Michigan we used floating lines, same for Ohio except for a wee bit of sinking line fishing. I can’t imagine that anybody actually likes to fish with sinking lines. To cast with floating lines you just have to pick the line up off the top of the water. Now mind, that’s no easy task, and a good line pick-up is the heart of the cast, well, that and about a half-dozen other things that are also the heart of the cast, but with sinking lines you have to get the line to the top of the water before you can even begin to pick it up, and sinking lines are not known for casting easily anyway. The whole process is fraught with peril for everyone standing near me.

We also fished out of boats in both states, so in addition to not packing rods and reels we didn’t pack waders or boots. No waders, no boots, no rods, no reels . . . I did take some flies, and used a couple, but the guides had those too. It was the easiest packing ever.

Detroit

Detroit was a joy. Parts of it are still beat up, but I’ve never been in a town where people were prouder of their city. The first night at dinner at Alpino we asked our waiter if there was something in particular we should see, and he wrote out a page-long list of places for us. He recommended places for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He listed don’t-miss destinations and neighborhoods just to drive through. It was good advice, too. We spent parts of three days in Detroit, and could easily have spent three more, and we didn’t deviate much from our waiter’s advice.

The one place recommended by everyone we asked was the Detroit Institute of Art. We spent three hours there before we left for Grayling, and could have spent another four. We barely got off the third floor, which is the smallest floor. As museums go, it’s about as good as anywhere, and should be on everyone’s list of American art museums. I even fished while I was there.

Greek fish dish, between 340 and 330 BCE; Roman fish mosaic, 4th century A.D.; Detroit Institute of Art.

Detroit has a large Middle Eastern population, with estimates of over 300,000 people. Apparently the growth was a combination of the growth of the auto industry and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which is pretty serendipitous if you ponder it, and was then spurred by the lifting of restrictions on Arabic and Asian immigration by the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1965. The signage in Dearborn, for instance, is doubled in Arabic. We went to Dearborn for afternoon baked stuff at Shatila Bakery. No donuts, but a good bakery anyway.

Our Alpino waiter had suggested lunch at the Yemen Cafe, which was a diner in a fairly beat-up neighborhood. The cafe was busy with African Americans from the neighborhood and Yemenis in fairly traditional dress, including one guy wearing a jambiya dagger, the dagger that Peter O’Toole wears in Laurence of Arabia. Open carry.

Our waiter brought us free glasses of Yemeni tea to try. We ordered slabs of hot Yemeni bread, chicken gallaba with hummus, and lamb fasah. We were taking the advice of our Alpino waiter and didn’t know exactly what we were ordering, but sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Detroit was at it’s peak of wealth and industrial might in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Art Deco buildings from its heyday are magnificent. Our Alpino waiter suggested the Guardian Building and the Fisher Building, both of which have been preserved in fine form. It’s kinda like visiting the Sistine Chapel. You don’t so much comprehend it as just stand around and gawk. There were great mosaics in the Fisher Building, though I saw no fish.

Guardian Building, 1929

Fisher Building, 1928

The first morning I went for a run along the Detroit River, and when I tripped on the sidewalk and sprawled, customs officers offered me a bottle of water. The guy running in front of me came back to make sure I was ok. Detroiters are not only proud of their city, they’re friendly.

We took the Detroit Windsor Tunnel to Canada, and no matter what you may have heard I didn’t go there to buy Cuban cigars. Windsor looks like a good place to go if you’re in the market for cannabis, or a tattoo, or Cuban cigars. Cigars are heavily taxed and expensive in Canada, not that I would know.

We didn’t get to see the Tigers play because they were on the road, and I’m kinda glad. it gives me an excuse to revisit Detroit.

The first night we picked Alpino for dinner because it was the kind of Germanic high cuisine that we don’t really get in Houston. Alpino serves food from the Alps, which is German tinged with Swiss tinged with Italian, which makes for a nice combination. The food was good, our tour guide/waiter was great.

Our second night in Detroit we ate at Buddy’s Pizza, which first served Detroit-style pizza. Buddy’s was a Detroit bar, a former speakeasy, and it started serving pizza as a bar snack in the 40s. Square pizza is Sicilian, and the first pizzas were baked in liberated drip pans from the plants. I like to think of the pans as liberated anyway, though in truth they were apparently purchased from auto suppliers. Liberated drip pans just has a nice ring to it.

There are now multiple Buddy’s in the Detroit area, and I’m sure they’re all fine, but the original location reeks of authenticity. On the way in we asked an employee standing near the back door which pizza we should get. He told us his favorite was the Detroiter. Well of course it was.

He was a waiter but not our waiter, but before we left he went out of his way to visit our table and make sure we liked the pizza. Like I said, everyone was proud of their city, and who wouldn’t be? We really liked Detroit.

Cincinatti

After a day’s fishing in Ohio we spent two nights in Cincinatti. We went to a Reds game. We visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. I ate a hot dog with Skyline Chili and cheese, and we sat on a nice downtown square and listened to a lively band during Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest. We ate dinner at a completely forgettable restaurant, then we ate dinner the next night at another completely forgettable restaurant. We went to Graeter’s Ice Cream, and visited in line with two American Airlines flight attendants flying out of Dallas. It was nice enough, but it suffered in comparison to Detroit.

Skyline Chili, by the way, is actually a Greek ragu sauce usually served on spaghetti. It was dubbed as chili during the nationwide chili craze in the early part of the last century. It is not chili, and for Texans, calling it chili is heresy. It has cinnamon in it, and chocolate. I’ll just note that the Cincinnati Reds in recent years have consistently beaten my Astros, so eating Skyline Chili was debasement in hopes of appeasing the baseball gods. It’s no wonder that I didn’t enjoy Cincinnati as much as Detroit.

Of course Detroit then knocked my Astros out of the wild card round of the playoffs. Did I mention that I hate Detroit?

Hotels

In Detroit we stayed downtown in the Shinola Hotel. The room had lots of Shinola accessories, there was a Shinola watch store, and the downtown location made getting around Detroit easy. We walked to dinner at Alpino, and had the Tigers been in town we could have walked to the stadium.

In Cincinnati we stayed downtown at the 21C Museum Hotel, and were able to walk to the Reds game. There was plenty to do downtown, and we didn’t take the car out until we drove to the airport our last morning.

In Grayling we stayed at the Gates Au Sable Lodge, which sits on the bank of the Au Sable River, has a good fly shop and guide service, and has a good restaurant where we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every meal. The Lodge has also collected all of the possible trout fishing bibelots produced in its 50-year history to adorn every available decorative niche, as if it had hired an interior decorator from the classified ads at the back of an old copy of Field and Stream. There were rod racks on the wall above the bed, and wader hangers by the door to each room. There were framed flies and fish prints and mounted fish, and Au Sable boat-shaped light fixtures. I was especially fond of our room’s trout fishing carpet.

Playlists

There are a lot of similarities between my Ohio and Michigan playlists. They seem balanced, as if the two states took turns producing songsters, and they share a kind of rock and roll grit that you just don’t always find in other states. In Ohio there are the Black Keys, in Michigan Jack White. In Ohio there is Josh Ritter, Marc Cohn, and The National, in Detroit there’s MC5 and Fountains of Wayne. Of course it’s hard to top Detroit’s Motown. With Motown you get Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Aretha Franklin, the Spinners, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5 . . . Ohio does have the O’Jays, the Isley Brothers, and the Ohio Players, but Motown is Motown.

In Detroit there was Motown music playing everywhere. Well of course there was. It was like Hawaiian music in Hawaii. These people love their city.

The Supremes, The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS Television, 1966.

They really are good playlists, amazing playlists. Devo, Madonna, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Rare Earth and Grand Funk Railroad. Roy Rogers, Dean Martin, and Nine Inch Nails. Tracy Chapman and Doris Day. The Foo Fighters. They are great lists full of great music, and I won’t report you if you skip Kid Rock or the Amboy Dukes. No one has to listen to Kid Rock or the Amboy Dukes when they can listen instead to Stevie Wonder. Or Roy Rogers.

I had vowed I’d hum Baby Love every day in Michigan, and I did.

Guitar

I took the Kohno. I worked on Bach.

The Tyler Davidson Fountain, Cincinnati.

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Illinois Playlist

What we took.

We packed to skip the baggage claim in Chicago. We flew in early on Saturday, and spent the rest of the day looking for things we’d never seen.

The only specialized fishing gear we took were polarized lenses. Our guides, Midwest Waters Anglers, provided all the gear, and it was great gear.

What I lost, Where we didn’t go.

I lost my beloved Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Yeti thermos. I really liked that Thermos.

I wish we’d had time to go to Springfield for the Abraham Lincoln Museum. We could have easily spent more time in Chicago.

What we ate.

By some measures Houston is now the most ethnically diverse city in the US, but that’s somewhat disingenuous. It treats all white people as a lump, which is like treating all Asians and Asian Americans as a lump, or treating all Africans and African Americans as a lump. Chicago’s story is in part a story of 19th and 20th century first-generation Irish, Polish, German, Italian, Welsh, and Jewish immigrants, white immigration that wasn’t from England via New England–the immigrants in The Jungle are Lithuanian. In 2019 the nativist impulse is aimed at immigrants from Mexico and Central America. In 1850 it was the anti-Catholic No-Nothings opposed to Irish and German Catholic immigration. Things never change.

Uncle Sam’s youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing, lithograph, 1854, Sarony & Co., lithographer, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. American political prints, 1766-1876. From Wikipedia. He looks a lot like Lord Byron.

As of 2010, Chicago is 31.7% non-Hispanic whites, 32.9% black or African American, 5.5% Asian, and 13.3% Hispanic, and 16.1% mixed or other, but there are lots of ethnic traditions not covered in those numbers. We wanted Chicago ethnic food, and got a list of restaurants from our friend Tom, who knows these things. He said that there were three great ethnic food cities in the US, New York, Chicago, and Houston, and that the hard part of the list for Chicago was coming up with stuff we didn’t have in Houston. It’s a great list, even if we only made it to three of the places. Some of Tom’s notes are included in quotes:

  • Min Hing Cuisine – “great dim sum for breakfast (6 kinds of shrimp dumplings is good enough for me).” We went there straight from the airport. Chinese are about 1.6% of Chicago’s population, and first got there before 1860 with the railroads. The population boomed in the 1950s and 60s.
  • Parachute – “fusion Korean American, in the best way.” This place has a Michelin star, and seems to be everyone’s favorite restaurant, Alinea be damned. Make reservations in advance. We didn’t make reservations, and getting in on a Saturday night without a reservation might be harder than catching steelhead. We didn’t catch any Illinois steelhead either.
  • Shokran – “Moroccan kebabs and salads, also tangines and couscous. Cash only. BYOB.”
  • Staropolska or Lutnia Polish – About 6.7% of Chicago is Polish, with Polish the third language, after English and Spanish. We ate at Staropolska, just around the corner from St. Hyacinth Basilica. The young blonde waitress with the Polish accent was proud that it was the oldest Polish restaurant in Chicago. It could use some freshening, but that might ruin the vibe, and the food was great and the service was great.
Staropolska, cabbage rolls and potato pancakes. That red sauce seemed to be heavily paprikad, and was outstanding.
  • Jibek Jolu – “dumplings and noodles . . . Uighur.”
  • Sayat-Nova – “Armenian. Typical middle eastern fare . . . ” It was also in the middle of the Miracle Mile, and we went on the Sunday night of a long weekend when there was still plenty of shopping to be done. After some terrified driving we found a parking garage ($26 for a bit more than an hour, and well worth it). Kris loved Sayat-Nova, and said I have to ask Tom for recommendations wherever we go. I wish Tom could have helped out in Pittsburg, New Hampshire.
Sayat-Nova. Lamb meatballs in yoghurt and mint sauce.
  • Little Bucharest Bistro – “quality Central European food, excellent service.” Romanian. We didn’t go, but the descriptions on the internet were great. It wasn’t far from Staropolska.
  • Birrieria Zaragoza – “fast casual Mexican all about goat.” The Mexican population is the fastest growing population in Chicago, so it made sense to include something, but it broke Tom’s rule, sort of. I don’t know of anyplace in Houston that specializes in goat.

The best thing about ethnic Chicago restaurants? Other than the food of course. I could wear my stylish fishing clothes, the ones designed by the fashion-forward stylists at Patagonia, to any of them, which I did.

If that wasn’t enough of a list, Tom provided a supplement: “Ghareeb Nawaz Indo-Pakistani. San Soo Gob San-Korean. Galit-Israeli-Middle Eastern. Kaboobi Persian Grill (North side – our favorite). Cabra Peruvian (Rooftop restaurant). If you have time for breakfast before you leave, make it to Dove’s Luncheonette….”.

Books, Movies, TV.

There are tons of movies from Chicago, and we watched The Blues Brothers, The Fugitive, and The Untouchables. Pretty good Chicago movies. We never watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I may be too old for it now.

Mostly I read about Lincoln. I wonder how he managed to govern so well without Tweets. This is a good time to ponder Lincoln, and there’s a ton of stuff out there. Sometimes we get better leaders than we deserve. Sometimes apparently we don’t.

I read Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Auggie March. I had tried to read Bellow before, but didn’t quite get it. This time was better. I tried to read The Jungle, but found it too painful. I listened to a lot of Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski novels, but never did figure out how to pronounce Warshawski’s name, which is a weak and obscure joke about the inevitable unlikable character trope in every novel. If they can’t pronounce her name, they’re almost certainly the villain. I listened to some Dresden File novels by Jim Butcher, but didn’t think they were nearly as amusing as when I’d listened to them years ago. Michael Harvey wrote some good Chicago mysteries, and I listened to those when I got tired of the others.

Donuts.

We picked up Polish pastries at Kurowski Sausage Shop, pretzel-like crescents lightly filled with an unidentifiable jam, but I was too intimidated to brave the meat case. On Sunday morning we made a quick drive to Oak Park for Donuts at Firecakes Donuts and a quick visit to the Frank Lloyd Wright studio. The donuts were just fine, and I wish we’d had time to look at the scattered Wright houses. Next time.

There are Dunkin’ Donuts everywhere in Chicago. Chicago should do better.

Playlist.

This was a long list, so it’ll be pretty general.

Chicago’s population is 32.9% non-Hispanic African or African American. The percentage of African American population in Houston, a Southern city with significant historic black communities, is only 22.9%. For the Houston metropolitan area, Houston plus the suburbs, the number drops slightly, to 21%, but for Chicago 32.9% plunges to 17% when you add in the suburbs.

The two cities are of roughly the same size, but their largest growth occurs about a century apart. The historic African American population in Houston has its origin in slavery, but much of the dispersion from the city into the suburbs occurred after the Civil Rights Movement, and Blacks apparently moved out to the suburbs in about the same numbers as they stayed in Houston. In Chicago, the boom in African American population occurred in the great migration, from 1910 to 1960, and plenty of movement to the suburbs occurred largely before the Civil Rights Movement. Blacks apparently stuck to (or were confined to) the City.

Why this is kicking off the music playlist may not be obvious, but there is a lot of great music out of Chicago’s African American community. There are three cities most responsible for the origination of jazz: New Orleans, Kansas City, and Chicago. The earliest migration of the Blues was from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago. This is Great Migration stuff, and stuff that shaped us profoundly.

Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, 1925, Chicago

There’s another odd thing about Illinois music, there’s a surprising number of good folk/country/Americana musicians out of Illinois. Illinois is our second flattest state after Florida, tucked in as a drainage between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi. It hides all that flatness with a combination of skyscrapers and trees. Anyway, all that flatness makes for great farmland, and except for Chicago, this is Midwest farm country. It’s no surprise that farm country makes for country music and Republican voters.

Jazz

I probably should have done better, but Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Armstrong’s first recordings are from Chicago. The singers Dee Alexander and Johnny Hartman, and Herbie Hancock.

Blues

Of course the Blues Brothers was set in Chicago. Where else would it be? All of these musicians were from, cycled through, wrote about, or sang about Chicago: Robert Johnson, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Jimmy Rogers (no, not that Jimmie Rodgers), Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Little Walter, Luther Allison, Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Son Seales, Otis Rush, Sonny Boy Williamson, James Cotton, Magic Sam, Lonnie Brooks, Earl Hooker, Freddie King . . . Is Bo Diddley the Blues? We talked about going to a blues bar on Saturday, but we’re old, things start late, and fishing starts early. Next time.

Dovydenas, Jonas,  Muddy Waters, Checkerboard Lounge, 423 E. 43rd St., Chicago; Chicago, Illinois, 1977, Library of Congress, Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection.

Folk/Country/Americana

John Prine, Allison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Son Volt, Wilco, Steve Goodman.

Has there ever been a sadder song than Steve Goodman’s A Dying Fan’s Last Request? Not only was Goodman in fact dying, he was a Cub’s fan. There is nothing more pathetic than the Chicago Cubs, but it’s still one of the best baseball songs ever.

Scattered and Inconsisten Rock

In early adolescence, I thought Chicago was the greatest band ever. I liked the brass, I liked the politics, I liked the guitar. I hadn’t listened to them since. Color My World was probably the first song I learned to play on the guitar, though in my defense it was probably before it became the most important high school prom song ever written. I still think 25 or 6 to 4 was a pretty great song. Pretty good song. Ok, I still like it.

Reo Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins.

When Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville came out in the 90s it got great reviews and I bought a copy, probably without actually reading the reviews. We were on a family car trip and I started the CD in the car. Some song came on, Flower? Fuck and Run? Anyway, it was really not age appropriate, either for me or my children. This trip was probably the second time I’d listened to it. It’s pretty raw in a “I grew up in Chicago suburbs and graduated from Oberlin” sort of way. It may be age appropriate for my children now, but it’s still not age appropriate for me.

Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville.jpg

Random Stuff

  • Allister, Somewhere Down on Fullerton.
  • Mobstability, Crook County (Bond Crusher Mix).
  • Rhett Miller, The El.
  • The Lawrence Arms, A Guided Tour of Chicago.
  • Andrew Bird, Pulaski at Night. Good song.
  • Common, Chi-City.
  • Frank Sinatra, My Kind of Town.
  • Graham Nash, Chicago/We Can Change the World.
  • Sufjan Stevens, Illinois.
  • Dan Fogalberg, Illinois.
  • Ben Folds, Effington.
  • Twista, Crook County.
  • Kanye West, Homecoming
  • Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah, Lake Shore Drive
  • Jim Croce, Bad Bad Leroy Brown.
  • Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Mahler, Symphony #9 in D. The Chicago Symphony Center Orchestra Hall is magnificent.

Guitar.

Didn’t take one. A guy in the airport told me that he always checked his guitar, and convinced me that I could do the same with a good enough case. Kris thought that was a great idea. Stuffing a guitar in the overhead is a pain. I got back to Houston and ordered a new case.

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Alabama

For each destination state I’ve written at least one blog entry before the trip, but we went to Alabama on the spur of the moment so it didn’t get done. Usually they were evidence of my preconceived notions, and sometimes they were out-and-out wrong. For Alabama I started to skip it because it’s supposed to be a precursor not a post-cursor. I can’t quite bring myself to waste a perfectly good postcard though, so I’ll tell some stories from our trip.

Alabama doesn’t quite match Mississippi for music and literature. There is the one book, lots of people’s favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Fannie Flagg is enjoyable, but neither Ms. Flagg nor Harper Lee are Faulkner or Eudora Welty or Jermyn Ward. There’s some important blues like W.C. Handy and Ma Rainey, and there’s Hank Williams and Emmylou Harris, but it’s not the almost endless list of musicians from Mississippi. There’s Muscle Shoals though. That’s pretty good. And don’t tell Kris but I’ve had a crush on Emmylou Harris since I was 17.

Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, and Satchel Paige were all from Alabama. Maybe they played on the same high school travel team.

And there’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” Ok, that’s harsh, Lynyrd Skynyrd wasn’t even an Alabama band, but the song is embraced by the state, there’s even a sweet home proclaiming sign when you cross the border from Louisiana, but the song’s resentment and outrage never seemed like quite the thing to me. It’s a catchy tune, but dang it’s pissy.

*

It’s fitting that we did Alabama and Mississippi in the same year. Mississippi and most of Alabama were ceded to the United States by Spain in 1798. Mississippi was admitted as a state in 1817, and Alabama was admitted two years later in 1819. In the 1820 census, the Alabama population was 127,901. and some of my second and third great-grandparents lived in Alabama in the 1820s.

Alabama and Mississippi are a weird counterpoint to two other matching states, New Hampshire and Vermont, so going to the four in the same year has a weird resonance. The pairs of states are different, sure, but get rid of the state line and we could easily be back to 48 states without much change in the national character. They really are matched sets. There’s a lot more difference between, say Northern California and Southern California, or West Texas and East Texas, than between Alabama and Mississippi, or Vermont and New Hampshire.

Alabama has 4,887,871 residents, so it’s almost 2 million people larger than Mississippi. It’s also richer than Mississippi, but not by much. Mississippi now ranks ahead of West Virginia at 49th in median wealth per household, with $43,529, Alabama 45th, with $48,123. Alabama and Mississippi are also essentially white and black, with Alabama 68.5% white and 26.2% black, and Mississippi 63.5% white and 35.6% black.

Alabama Presidential Election Results 2016.svg
Alabama Presidential Election Results 2016, Wikipedia, US gov – derivative work: Ali Zifan.

In 2016, Alabama voted 62.08% for President Trump, and 34.36% for Hillary Clinton. Like most states, there is a rural/urban split, with Montgomery and Birmingham voting for Clinton, but like Mississippi there is a black majority in the rural historic cotton counties, the rich-soil agriculture region that belts the south-central counties of the state. In Mississippi it’s the Delta along the Mississippi River. In Alabama it’s the Black Belt. Where 150 years ago the majority of residents were slaves, 150 years later the majority of the residents are black.

*

I have never been a particularly devout alumnus of the University of Texas. I don’t belong to Texas Exes or go to football games or answer the phone when the fundraising calls come in from Austin, but still, from time to time I check the football scores, and if I ever drive cross-country I’m going to stick the largest longhorn I can find on my rear window out of a strange mix of perversity and pride. Kris went to Rice, so her experience doesn’t really embrace the goofy. Hook ’em.

On the way out of town Sunday morning downtown Montgomery was deserted except for one family, African American, standing on a corner looking mildly lost Two were wearing burnt orange tee shirts and one of the tee shirts was clearly decorated with a white longhorn. I was overcome, rolled down the car window, flashed the hook ‘em horns hand sign and screamed hook ‘em! They were startled for a second, long enough for it to dawn on me just how stupid I was being, and how a black family in Alabama might not expect friendly gestures yelled from passing cars by white guys, but then all four of them flashed the hook ‘em horns sign and yelled hook ‘em! I was feeling pretty satisfied.

Except that Kris was beating on me, not just any mild sort of beating either. She was pounding on my shoulder just as hard as she could.

“Why did you yell fuck ‘em at those people!”

*

Earlier in May the Alabama legislature approved legislation that effectively banned abortion in the state. Alabama was followed by Missouri and Georgia. I think Louisisana’s legislation is on the governor’s desk.

I get it. Abortion is a difficult issue, and it should be. In Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court didn’t conclude that these questions are no-brainers, and that the litigants were wasting their time. I’ve been mulling the issues raised in my undergraduate Philosophy 101: Moral Philosophy: Abortion class for 40-odd years. It is an extraordinarily subtle and morally ambiguous question, which I admit I weigh out for the most part on the side of women’s rights, but there was a particularly gleeful screw-you totalitarian current to the Alabama vote that seemed to have more to do with political positioning than a thoughtful moral stance.

By happenstance after the trip a Republican congressman who I particularly like visited our office. He was not optimistic for his party for 2020, though he, a Republican in one of the most Democratic districts in the country, named a litany of party failures. He noted that 30% of the 2020 voters would be millennials, and that their first concern is climate change. Ok, climate change and college debt. He talked about the failure of both parties to adopt a sensible immigration policy, and how if legislation wasn’t adopted before the fall it wouldn’t get done because the parties needed it as an electioneering punching bag.

He said that in 2018 his party had lost 20% of its educated suburban women voters. He asked if we could think of what the party had done to recover that vote. “Georgia and Alabama,” I said. I forgot Missouri and Kentucky and Louisiana. It wasn’t only a mean-spirited choice by the states, it was a choice that given the 2018 election and what’s coming for the Republican Party in 2020 was incredibly naive.

*

Notwithstanding what goes on in the capitol building, Montgomery is a pleasant place to visit. We did lots of stuff in our short stay: ate at a recommended restaurant, Central, saw part of a Montgomery Biscuits baseball game and even better went shopping in the Biscuits’ store, the Basket, and instead of donuts had excellent Sunday morning biscuits, the baked good not the ballplayers, at Cahawba. We also visited The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the national African-American lynching monument. It’s reminiscent of the Vietnam monument in Washington, and is incredibly effective.

It’s the African American lynching monument, but it’s probably worth noting that not all lynching victims were black. In the period from 1882 to 1968 there were more than 1200 white victims, and more than 3400 black. Most African American lynchings were in the South. There were 347 recorded lynchings in Alabama: 299 African American and 48 white victims. Mississippi lynched 589 African Americans. Texas lynched 352 African Americans (and 141 whites, though that number is likely to include Mexican Americans). The monument signage says that African American lynchings included levels of torture and brutality that were generally not part of white lynchings, though I suspect South Texas Mexican Americans might raise issue with that. Black lynchings in the South were in part, maybe in big part, to control political authority, and in part to enforce the codes of racial etiquette that were thought to be required for a moral society. Irony is so ironic.

*

The University of Alabama is in Tuscaloosa, 80 miles north and east of Selma. We didn’t make it to Tuscaloosa, but we did drive from Montgomery to Selma on Sunday morning. Selma could be a graceful Southern town, with pretty churches and handsome early houses, but it’s not. Driving around it looks beat up and ragged, with a lot of public housing and a lot of boarded businesses.

When we got home I talked to a young friend, a graduate of the University of Alabama, who said Tuscaloosa would look just like Selma if it weren’t for the University and the Mercedes plant. Would you put your Mercedes plant in Selma? Sometimes it seems the sites of such extraordinary racial conflict never really recover, and whatever the notions are 50 years later the places are still battlegrounds. I felt sorry for Selma, black and white, but I wouldn’t put my Mercedes plant there.

*

Floating the Tallapoosa on the long Memorial Day weekend there were other users, though it was never crowded. Where roads, not much more than tracks really, came down to the river through the hardwoods there were bank encampments of families and friends. They could be pretty elaborate, with multiple tents and pop-up shelters and dogs and children and pickups and boats and every kind of cooking gear imaginable, and, one suspects, plenty of beer. All of it seemed a bit slovenly, but a fun way to fill the weekend. Backwoods is a derogatory term for Alabama whites, like cracker in Florida and Georgia, or hillbilly in Arkansas, or redneck for anywhere in the South, and we were clearly in the backwoods. Our guide Craig made jokes but said they were his people, and I reckon they were some of my people too, though like I said none of my ancestors have lived in Alabama since before the War. Cousins.

There was an assortment of guys drinking beer and bait fishing where we took out of the river, a big guy came over to tell us all about himself. While Craig was loading the raft he talked, and he talked, and he talked. He told us about the tuna he caught while he was in the merchant marine, and his grandmother’s Irish potato salad, and where in those hills there was gold that could still be found. Craig thought he might have already drunk a bit of beer, but there was also a bit of the Boo Radley about him. Craig said that every time he came off the river there was always some weirdness. There was some weirdness, though the potato salad sounded pretty good. He ate it on Saltines, just like boudin.

*

It had been way too long since my last Moon Pie, and in Alabama they were two for a dollar. You can get two Moon Pies and an R.C. Cola for two bucks. Inflation.

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Reno, Nevada Packing List

What We Took

If you’re fishing with a good guide he will have good equipment, and dragging rods and reels and flies to the Territory almost seems pretentious. Still, we do. We took Kris’s 8 weight, my 7 weight, and two 5 weights. We took 5 weights for the Truckee River, and never took them out of the luggage. We fished the 7 and 8 weights some the second day. We took 250 grain and 350 grain and intermediate sinking lines, which we didn’t use, and floating lines, standard trout lines, which we did use but which we didn’t like as much as the guide’s Orvis Bank Shot lines.

Maybe we drag stuff because of familiarity, but I suspect it’s mostly pride of possession. Part of the fun of fly fishing is the esoteric gear, the rod cases, the well-made reels, the lines, and most of all the small bits of fur and feather, and there is always the notion that even with a guide we may sneak off to fish for a quiet evening and need our own stuff.

I tied flies for the trip and never touched them, and I felt bad about it, but it was my fault. They weren’t bad flies, either. At least the balanced leaches will be used. And the worms, but I won’t admit that I’ll use the worms.

I hate tying those squirmy things, not because I’m squeamish but because the squirmy part won’t stay straight. They also melt if they get Super Glue on them. Aiden at Reno Fly Shop said he now ran them through a bead head that he then ran onto a barbless hook. He never touched them with thread.

Casinos

I had never been into a casino. Some people find that odd, but there are none in Texas, and I never went out of my way to get to one when I traveled. I don’t understand the attraction of gambling. If I lose I hate losing and if I win I only feel lucky, not skilled. We looked around the Reno Circus Circus, which I hope is the worst casino in the world, because if it’s the best I’m baffled. This wasn’t James Bond playing baccarat, it was just kind of dismal. A friend said that he loves casinos because even though he doesn’t gamble he loves the people watching, and that the dismal is the point. He says that you can measure how upscale a casino is by the height of ladies’ heels: when you get to the place with stilt-like stilettos you’re in the upscale casino. I didn’t notice the heels in Circus Circus, but my guess is they were pretty flat.

Restaurants

We had one memorable meal, Louis Basque Kitchen, where Kris had the sweetbreads and I had the lamb. Everything was served family style at communal tables, though you ordered your entree. It was great fun, and one of the high school football coaches sitting next to us said that when we went to California we should hire his nephew at AC Fly Fishing as a guide. He was really proud of his nephew, and how could we now use anyone else? When we get to Redding it’s Anthony at AC Fly Fishing for us.

There’s a lovely French place, Beaujolais Bistro where we ate Friday, and I like a lovely French place. The last night we shared prom night in the suburbs at a place called Twisted Fork. The best part of Twisted Fork was the prom dresses and, oddly, the boys’ hair. Boys’ hair in Reno in prom night is magnificently well-coiffed.

There’s a surprising number of German bakeries in Reno. We went to one, The results were excellent. They also have a restaurant and a dance floor.

Pronunciation Guide

Nə-væ-də, as in banana, not Nə-vah-də, as in Prada or nada or whatever, the “what” part. In Spanish it means “snow covered.” I’m pretty sure that the correct Spanish pronunciation is not Nə-væ-də, but I’m from Houston, and you should hear the old-timers here pronounce San Felipe, or New Yorkers pronounce Houston. If you say Nə-vah-də then Nə-væ-dəns will cringe. At Louis Basque Corner it was the first thing our communal table mates told us. I have to admit that here in Houston Sæn Fɪl-ɪ-pee has pretty much gone by the wayside. I’m sad to see it go, so I’ll try to say Nə-væ-də.

Playlist

Crime Novels

I looked for mystery novels set in Nevada, but couldn’t find anything I liked. There were plenty of mystery novels, but the crimes were so despicably unpleasant that I couldn’t stomach them. I don’t think that’s an accident. What other kind of crime could get any attention in Nevada? I decided that the appropriate crimes for Nevada would be blackmail and theft. The threat of something not staying in Vegas, either secrets or money, might be pretty believable. All these serial killers get old.

Playlist

I found two musicians from Nevada, an operatic mezzo-soprano, Emma Zajick, and Panic! At the Disco!. I liked the opera singer.

So instead of native born music I listened mostly to songs that mention Reno or Las Vegas, and Vegas Acts. There are a lot of songs that mention Vegas.

Louis Prima
  • Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas.” I liked the 80s, and nobody says the 80s like Sheryl Crow.
  • Sara Bareilles, “Vegas.” I didn’t know this song, or Sara Bareilles. Apparently it was kind of a big deal when it was first released. Its a good song.
  • Panic! At the Disco, “Vegas Lights.” I guess this the kind of music Vegas would produce if left to its own devices.
  • Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Cowboy Junkies “Ooh Las Vegas.” Things always go better with Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, and the Cowboy Junkies.
  • Elvis Presley, “Viva Las Vegas.” This song needs an exclamation point after Viva!
Heinrich Klaffs, Johnny Cash, Bremen, 1972.

Songs that mention Reno are different I think. They are generally stranger.

  • Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues.” This is one of the great songs, it’s impossible to say “Reno” without thinking “I shot a man . . .” There are actually two mysteries about the song. First, why would shooting a man in Reno, Nevada, put somebody in prison in a California prison? The usual internet answer is that the singer also committed a crime in California. Second, why would a train going through California end up in San Antonio? That’s one long haul. I figure these mysteries are like the creation of the world in seven days: poetic truth doesn’t need to be literal, and neither God nor poets are confined to mere facts.
  • REM, “All the Way to Reno.“
  • The Stone Foxes, “Reno.” I learned from this song that Casinos are built without windows.
  • Dottie West, “Reno.” This has nothing to do with the city.
  • Jonathan Richman, “Reno.” I thought this the best of the lot, except he doesn’t go fishing.
  • The Whiskey Gentry, “Reno.” You now know almost as much as I do.
  • Bruce Springsteen, “Reno.” This is the worst song Bruce Springsteen ever wrote. It’s about the additional price a prostitute charges for anal sex. I suspect Springsteen likes to write about places, and he’s good at it, but in Nə-væ-də he ran into the same problem the mystery novels run into: run-of-the-mill grittiness just don’t signify. So he wrote this. He shouldn’t have.
  • Beck, “Loser.” “I’m a loser baby/So why don’t you kill me.” That may be the strangest ear worm ever written.
  • Grateful Dead, “Friend of the Devil.”

And then there are the lounge acts: Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, Charo, Liberace, Celine Dion, Lois Prima, Bobby Darin, Wayne Newton, Elton John. There are some great songs in this songbook, “That Old Black Magic,” “Mambo Italiano,” “Everybody Loves Somebody,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” and the first time I listened through it I was so excited, and the second time I was a little weary with much of it, and on the third day I wondered who ever listened to a steady diet of this? And Celine Dion, what’s up with that? We never made it through a single Celine Dion song, and she’s been in Vegas for 17 years straight. Celine Dion will never be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because she will still be playing Vegas.

I promise Kris that when Celine came through Houston on her new world tour I’d get tickets. Man was Kris excited.