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September 13, 2019September 14, 2019

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.

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.

May 31, 2019September 17, 2019

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.

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.

April 19, 2019November 15, 2019

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.

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.

March 15, 2019August 20, 2019

Mississippi Packing List

Redfish, Shearwater Pottery.

Gear

For a long weekend fishing Ocean Springs, we took a Loomis Asquith 7 wt with a Tibor Back Country Reel (which are now discontinued–why did they do that?), an Orvis HD3 9 wt with an Orvis Mirage reel, and an Orvis H2 flex tip with a Tibor Riptide reel. All the lines were floating. We fished both the 9 weight and the 10 weight quite a bit, and I caught the black drum on the 10 weight. That was probably for the best. We never touched the 7. I love that 7, but guides generally don’t. We fished with Richard Schmidt.

Over time I keep adding random bits and pieces to my leaders. Richard shortened them because he said it was hard for him to track flies on long leaders, and the fish weren’t leader shy. The leaders were probably about eight feet after he’d finished. They all ended with 16 pound tippet. Or 20. Something more than 6X.

What we didn’t take was bug nets. I’m covered with welts from gnat bites. The good folk from Magnolia Fly Fishers swear by Gnaughty Gnat from Marina Cottage Soap Company as a gnat deterrent. There should be signs on the state border. There’s a version of Gnaughty Gnat with an spf 50 sunblock. I ordered some. If I could go back in time I’d order some then.

Flies

Not gnats. We used Richard’s, and it was purple Clousers or Clouser derivatives all the time. Dark skies, dark flies. They were big flies, maybe a #2 on the 9 and a 1/0 on the 10. Not muskie big, but two to three inches long for the largest.

I’ve never fished purple flies before. Live and learn.

Where We Stayed

We stayed at Front Beach Cottages, which I found online in an article in Coastal Living. We were in the Key West Cabin, and there’s irony in that. It was a lovely little place, within walking distance of the cute shops and restaurants, and even closer to the Walter Anderson Museum. It’s a good place.

Talk

Everybody in Mississippi is up for a conversation, so bring your A-game. In a cute shop (Ocean Springs is chock-a-block with cute shops) I had a long conversation with the proprietor about what it was like to be gay in Mississippi, living in Houston, and living in San Francisco. At dinner the people at the table next to us struck up a conversation that went on and on, and after they left their replacements never missed a beat. I can’t even remember what we talked about, but this is not only a world class fishery it’s a world class place for conversations with strangers.

Shearwater Pottery

Shearwater Pottery is in a kind of raggedy compound in Ocean Springs. It was founded by Walter Anderson’s oldest brother, Peter, and all three brothers, Walter, Peter, and James, made their living out of the pottery. It’s now run by descendants, and according to locals some of them still tend towards the eccentric. Richard said a descendent did magnificent tattoos, so if you’re in the market it’s a consideration. Some of the pottery is incredibly beautiful, and I guess because of the influence of Sophie Newcomb Memorial College there is a lot of innovative and interesting decorative and functional pottery made in Mississippi. The Museum of Mississippi History/Mississippi Civil Rights Museum store in Jackson has a great selection of potters from around the state, including Shearwater.

Books

I listened to a bunch of stuff, and read some. There is so much great literature out of Mississippi, it’s baffling. Here’s my booklist.

Faulkner, The Hamlet. I read The Hamlet 40 years ago and it’s amazing how much of it I remembered, especially the Texan with the spotted horses and Eula Varner. She’s the world’s most literary pinup girl. We listened to it driving back and forth from the Guadalupe River and to Ocean Springs. It’s Faulkner at his happiest, which for other writers is their most grim.
Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!, I probably read this 40 years ago too, but I didn’t remember anything if I did. Faulkner originally wrote this as a children’s book, with illustrations, but then he drank a bottle of Four Roses or ten and things got muddled. Not really about the children’s book, but there probably was some Four Roses. It’s usually compared to James Joyce’s Ulysses, without the humor, and the plot is announced early so you always know what’s coming, but when Henry Sutpen finally kills Charles Bon to stop him from marrying Judith Sutpen it is still stunning, Maybe the most stunning murder ever written, even though you knew from chapter one that it was coming, and the reason: not that Charles is Judith’s half-brother but because he has black blood. It’s perfect Faulkner, perfect.

Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1. I know the Civil War reasonably well, and I thought I could listen to this. I had to re-listen to the same stuff so often that I’d probably recommend buying the book. Where Foote shines is in his anecdotes about the big personages: Lincoln and Davis, Lee and Jackson and the string of Union Generals. He doesn’t have much to say about the small folk, and his descriptions of battles were usually where my mind would wonder. I missed the entire Seven Days Campaign and had to go back to re-listen.
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi. I’d read it before, so I listened this time. Twain’s observations are so acute you have to trust them, even when he’s at his most outlandish.

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones. Ward has now won two National Book Awards, and her first was for this. She’s on every list, but I was dubious. I invested in a listen and it was stunningly good. Can an old Texas white guy identify with a pregnant black 15-year-old whose brother has a fighting pit bull and whose father is an alcoholic? I reckon. It’s riveting, and the description of Katrina is as gripping as Faulkner’s murder of Henry Bon. She claims Faulkner as one of her influences, and I think he’d be proud.
Thomas Merton, Lectures on William Faulkner. Merton did a series of lectures at the Abbey of Gethsemani on Faulkner and some other stuff shortly before his death in 1968. His description of Easter in The Sound and the Fury made me wish that we didn’t drive cars to church. These are great to listen to, and each lecture is about 15 minutes long. I didn’t re-read The Bear (though I had intended to), but I got Merton’s description which may have been better.
Eudora Welty, Why I Live at the PO. I read more stories by Welty than just the one, but it was that one that every Mississippian seems to mention. I read it, but after a few drinks in our little cabin in Ocean Springs we played a YouTube recording of Ms. Welty reading the story. It’s worth doing both, and Kris suspects every Mississippian mentions the story because listening to Ms. Welty was the high point of 10th grade English. The talkative store owner said his sister’s cat was named Stella-Rondo, which I vow to appropriate if I ever own another cat.
Mark Childress, One Mississippi. I read this when it was published, and started listening to it but never quite finished. Parts of it ring true, parts don’t, but what Childress does catch is the 1970s. That’s pretty much exactly how I remember it.
Greg Iles, Natchez Burning. This is the first of a trilogy, and it’s a pretty engaging road trip listen. By volume two it’s just a bit too outlandish, even for Mississippi. I think Kris listened to all three. I got bored.
Westley F. Busbee, Jr., Mississippi: A History. It’s a college textbook so it’s pretty dry, and only got to the Civil War. I’d like to read through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement, and maybe I’ll get there when we go back for Kris’s fish.
Elijah Ward, The Blues: A Very Short History. This is a personal beef of mine: If you’re going to produce an audio book about music, why not do it right and include snippets of the music you’re writing about? It seems like the best of all possible media. The book has a particularly good chapter on Jimmie Rodgers.
Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto. I love books like this, and it was apparently a New York Times bestseller when it was published. It’s a memoir of an English literati who moves to the Mississippi Delta with his then girlfriend, now wife. Grant is a careful and sympathetic observer, and he likes pretty much everybody and makes them likable, notwithstanding flaws. I’m guessing he’s a lot like Mississippi, but I wish he’d mentioned the gnats.

Donuts

Tatonut Donuts in Ocean Springs is the best. The donuts aren’t elaborate, but they’re still warm and if you eat in the shop you can get coffee in a real ceramic mug. Every donut shop should do this. We had a second breakfast at Phoenecia Gourmet, and that was pretty good too. On the road trip we also hit both a bakery and a donut shop in Lafayette, Louisiana, which may have more real bakeries per capita than anyplace in the world short of Paris. And I’ve yet to run across a donut shop in Paris.

The dozen oysters we ate at Charred in Ocean Springs before dinner were uniform and plump, as good of Gulf oysters as I’ve eaten, and Richard explained that they were farmed. At Vestige where we actually ate dinner the other diners were memorably talkative. Mary Mahoney’s Old French House in Biloxi feels like it’s 30 years past its prime, but the Chimneys in Gulfport is outstanding. That was the best sauced tripletail I’ve ever eaten.

Where We Didn’t Go

We still haven’t been to Oxford, and we haven’t been to a juke joint in the Delta. We haven’t caught a sunfish or a bass or a catfish in freshwater, and of course Kris didn’t catch a fish. Did I mention I caught a big fish? Let me show you a picture.

Music

There is so much great music out of Mississippi. Here’s a list of who was on our playlist, and I’ll only talk separately about stuff that was particularly interesting to me. Albert King, Mississippi John Hurt, Elvis Presley, Mississippi Fred McDowell, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Faith Hill, North Mississippi All-Stars, Cedric Burnside, Jimmie Rodgers, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Cream. It could have had a dozen more.

Johnny Cash & June Carter, Jackson. This was very popular when it was released in 1967. Kris had never heard it. She’s a lot younger than me.
Cedric Burnside. This was a surprise. When you listen to Burnside you hear bands like the White Stripes and the Black Keys. He should be as well known.
Faith Hill, “This Kiss“. I originally downloaded a bunch of Faith Hill, then I got rid of everything but “This Kiss.” It’s an infectious song, but listening to Hill made me think less of country music than of a Broadway musical without the complexity of a Broadway musical plot. I couldn’t take it. She did record the theme song to Lilo and Stitch, which is one of the strangest movies ever.
North Mississippi All-Stars. This is a current band, and a band I’d go out of my way to see.
Jimmie Rodgers. I think I’d always confused Jimmie Rodgers with Governor Jimmie Davis from Louisiana, who may or may not have co-written “You Are My Sunshine“. I had never listened to Rodgers, who’s considered one of the foundations of country music, but is just as important as a white guy singing the blues. On “Blue Yodel No. 9” Louis Armstrong on trumpet and Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano accompany Rodgers on the blues and where the heck did that come from? With yodeling? Elijah Ward says that Howlin’ Wolf said that he howled because he couldn’t yodel like Rodgers, which if true may be the single wittiest thing anyone has ever said.

Movies

O Brother Where Art Thou. There’s a cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “I’m in the Jailhouse Now.”

Mississippi Burning. Mississippi had more than its share of Civil Rights Movement confrontation and violence. Richard Grant tells a story about pulling up to the collapsing store in Money, Mississippi, where the Emmett Till tragedy started. The tag line is basically that the folk of Money were exhausted: the murder of Emmett Till was the only thing they were known for. I suspect a lot of Mississippi, black and white, feels that way and wants to move on. I thought Mississippi Burning was no worse than it should be, but I suspect moving past that story line is the real story about modern Mississippi.

Guitar.

I took the Kohno, and sat in front of our cabin and played Bach. Another guest asked if I was hired or a guest which was flattering, but I should have told her I worked for tips.

Tag: Bakeries

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