Tag: Bakeries

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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.

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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.

Shearwater Pottery.

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.

Tripletail, The Chimneys, Gulfport.

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.
Jimmie Rodgers, source unknown.

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.

Walter Anderson, Part of a Wall, Ocean Springs Community Center Mural, 1951.
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Mississippi Donuts

Sunday morning in Vicksburg we stopped for donuts at Donut Palace before we toured the National Battlefield. Donut Palace is a pretty basic donut shop, clean and well lighted, without pretensions or flourishes, and it seemed to have a reasonably steady stream of customers. The other donut shop in Vicksburg, Divine Donuts, was closed on Sunday morning, because the Divine always rests on Sunday.

I had a pretty involved conversation with two customers. Mississippi accents are richer than most, and theirs were money. They had stopped for donuts on the start of a seven-hour road trip to Throckmorton, Texas. I blurted out that Throckmorton was my home town, thought better of the exaggeration, and tried to explain that it was within my home territory. Throckmorton was a bout 70 miles from where I grew up in Vernon, and about 30 miles from where my mother grew up in Seymour. In those parts, that’s nearby.

We had a nice conversation about hunting quail and dove, and I wanted to ask them if they knew a nearby farm pond to fish but I didn’t. It was cold, and even at a farm pond the fishing would be hard, and secretly I didn’t want this to be my last trip to Mississippi. As for Throckmorton, Texas, it was named after James Webb Throckmorton, who was born in Tennessee, and in 1861 had supported Sam Houston’s attempt to keep Texas in the Union. He was one of six Texas secession convention delegates who voted against secession. He then enlisted in the Confederate army, ultimately serving as brigadier general of something or other which was not the army, and late in the War as the Confederate commissioner to the Indians.

Texas was a recalcitrant Reconstruction state, and Throckmorton was the recalcitrant first Reconstruction governor. He repudiated the 14th Amendment because Texans, meaning white Texans, didn’t like it, which meant that he refused to protect freedmen or Freedmen’s Bureau agents. He was removed from office by Phillip Sheridan. Throckmorton the City is the County seat of Throckmorton the County, but I reckon they weren’t named for Throckmorton’s dubious accomplishments but because of the sheer poetry of the name. Throckmorton. Doesn’t that just roll off the tongue? I figure his constitutional analysis was a fluke and he was the last Texan ever who thought that the 14th Amendment didn’t apply.

After the two guys Going to Texas had Gone to Texas, I asked the donut shop owners if they were Cambodian. They were, and had close ties to Texas donut shops. That means that Cambodian ownership of donut shops has now spread out of Houston through Louisiana into Mississippi. There were some other earlier minor migrations into Mississippi. Chinese immigrants arrived during Reconstruction, and there are Chinese restaurants here and there. Tamales came with cotton workers brought in from Mexico after the turn of the last century, and are a favorite of the Delta. Donut Palace was selling the sausage rolls that Texas donut shops call kolaches, and they sold that greatest of Cambodian donut shop inventions, the Czech-Cajun-Cambodian boudin kolache. Their boudin came from Beaumont. It was delicious.


Cambodian donut shops are family affairs, and the owners were charming. I mentioned to them that I had heard that Dallas donut shop owners were often Koreans, and they said yes, and that the Koreans worked very hard and even slept in their shops. They said that one Korean would often run a shop alone, and that they knew a Korean who had two shops that he ran himself. I couldn’t figure how that worked, and I didn’t ask, but it wore me out just thinking about it.

* * *

Yesterday we drove to Sattler to fish the Guadalupe. It was only the second time we’d been to the Guadalupe this year. It was crowded, and nobody we talked to was catching anything, including a guide and his clients in a raft. It was TroutFest again, and the same guys with beards were there again this year. Before we fished we ate lunch at The Real Pit Barbecue in Sattler, and in honor of the first Astros spring training game I had a Frito pie. Frito pie is Texan/New Mexican, consisting of chili spooned onto Fritos, sometimes in a sliced open single serving sack, and garnished with cheese and onion. Being a combination of salt, spice, beef, and fat they are delicious, and because I explained to the lady at the counter that the Astros’ season depended on my eating a Frito pie–I’m mildly superstitious about baseball (but oddly never about fishing), she, being an Astros fan, made me an excellent pie. The chili had beans, or at least there were beans added, but I didn’t complain. I’m no Pythagorean.

When we finally got into the water I spent most of my time untangling line or re-rigging and wondering how I could get my tippet, nippers, weights, forceps, sunglasses, readers, camera, wading stick, net, and flies ready to hand. I used to wear a vest, and then tried a different vest, and am currently using a sling pack. I’ve used satchels and hip belts and lanyards and chest packs, and they all have their problems, but yesterday was a real mess. It was that day when everything was always wrong. At one point I sat down on a limestone ledge and took everything off and started over. I also had to unwrap the fly line that had somehow twisted 20-odd times around my net.

Maybe I need a pack. I’ve never tried a pack.

Late in the day I caught a small trout on a red and black size 16 zebra midge under a bead head under some weight under a bobber, then hooked a nicer fish that flipped off the hook after a couple of jumps. I figure I need to eat a Frito pie every time I fish the Guadalupe. Not that I’m superstitious.

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Key West Packing List

Books

Short of England or Ireland or Manhattan there’s no island anywhere that’s the subject of more literary output than Key West. It runs from the sublime, Wallace Steven’s The Idea of Order at Key West, to the famously bad, Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, to the fine, 92 in the Shade, to the sublimely ridiculous, Dave Barry’s Trip to Key West.

But what Key West and Florida generally are best known for is crime novels. If Oxford, England, has the most literary murders per capita of anywhere in the world, Key West must run it a close second. In novels by Randy Wayne White, Carl Hiassen, Lucy Burdette, Laurence Shames, Tim Dorsey, James W. Hall, and Michael Reisig (and I’m surely leaving some scribblers out) there are folk committing murders and mayhem and whatnot at a fierce pace down in the Keys. I don’t remember any John D. McDonald or Elmore Leonard novels set in the Keys, McDonald was Lauderdale and Leonard Miami, but if there aren’t they should get busy and posthumously take care of that. The remarkable thing about Florida crime fiction isn’t that it’s very good (and some of it is), but how little of anything else good is written about Florida. God is causing the Keys to sink under the ocean either because he thinks all those novels are true, or maybe because they are all true enough.

So I listened to a bunch of crime novels, particularly by Laurence Shames. They’re all entertaining (if not quite the thing as travel guides). I also read Jack E. Davis’s very fine Pulitzer Prize history of the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf: The Making of the American Sea. I can’t remember where or when I bought the book. It was on my bedside table and I was thinking about Mississippi and Florida so I read it. It didn’t have one of those gold stickers on the dust jacket that told me it was important, and I was mostly through it before I realized it was not just any old book but an Anointed Prize Winner.

As much as I’d read and thought about Louisiana last year Davis highlighted my limits. I didn’t think about the destruction of the marshes or deep water drilling or inshore damage from chemical production or the great agricultural dead zone in the Gulf, which are things that should be first to mind. I hit my personal dead zone. For Houstonians the environmental damage to the Gulf is so personal, so much both a part of and separated from our daily lives and so much of our own damn fault that it’s forgotten. We trust oil and chemical companies because we are oil and chemical companies. I loved the first 300 pages of Mr. Davis’s book. I suffered during the last 200.

When I went to my annual physical this week Dr. White and I talked about the book. Last year we talked about the new Ulysses S. Grant biographies and David Brion Davis’s Inhuman Bondage: my annual physical is my annual book club. Anyway we talked about the devastation at the end of Gulf and he told me not to worry about it because he was convinced humanity was doomed anyway. It was oddly comforting. Don’t worry that we’re destroying the planet because it’ll sort itself out after we’re gone.

There were two other minor take-aways from Gulf: Davis (Jack E., not David Brion) quoted off and on from the poet Sydney Lanier, particularly his Florida travel guide but also from his poems, and he wrote at length about the apparently mad painter, Walter Anderson. Lanier I knew as a Confederate soldier because of a local school-naming kerfuffle, but Anderson I didn’t know at all. I’d like to know more about both, but thus far I’ve found Lanier unreadable. It’s something I need to work on.

Rental Car

In Florida we rented a Nissan Rogue from National. Before last September I rented cars from Budget, mostly out of habit and because I always remembered which rental counter to go to. After bad rental experiences in Portland and Baltimore I looked online for car company reviews. I switched to National. I didn’t think it would make much difference, but in Chicago, Hawaii, and now Florida, they’ve been remarkable. They’ve been what customer service should be, and I’ll pay the few additional dollars to National for the customer care.

Meanwhile the Rogue had adaptive cruise control, which unlike when it startled me in Hawaii I expected. For the drive from Lauderdale to the Keys it was the best thing ever. Ever. I’ve seen worse drivers than South Floridians, in Naples and Mexico City the drivers are lawless and remorseless and mad, but South Florida drivers are their own peculiar brand of awful. There seems always to be a septuagenarian cranking 45 in the passing lane while a 20-year old in a Dodge Whatnot screams right and left through traffic, and all of it bordered by lines of 18-wheelers. Plus general heavy traffic and road work. It’s special. The adaptive cruise control helped sort things out.

Fly Fishing Stuff

Given that this was nominally a fly fishing trip I should be telling you what gear we used. We took some reels. We took some rods. Our guide, Andrew Asher, tied a crab pattern onto the 10 wt., and then we didn’t use anything but a 10. We didn’t use any other rod or fly until late in the day when I tried to cast for barracuda.

It was a beautiful day. There was some sun. There was some wind. There was some clear water. I think I’ll go again.

Bakeries

Glazed Donuts on Eaton St. in Key West has great donuts, and if you buy six they give you a box (so of course one always goes for the free stuff). That’s a bittersweet dark chocolate, and the key lime is filled with key lime pie. Quite an accomplishment.

Playlist

You know the Beach Boys are from California, that George Gershwin was from New York, and notwithstanding his current residence in Hawaii Willie Nelson is from Texas. You know the Allman Brothers are from Georgia, but they’re not. The Allmans are from Jacksonville.

You know that Jimmy Buffett is from Florida (except that he’s from Mississippi), and he’s defined how Florida is supposed to sound (which really isn’t quite to my taste), and Arturo Sandoval sounds like Miami, but all in all there’s not much there there when it comes to Florida music. There are great musicians–the Allmans, Sandoval, the Mavericks, Tom Petty, Ray Charles–and travesties, NSync and the Backstreet Boys and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but other than what came out of Cuba or Buffett there’s nothing that says Florida.

The Allman Brothers Band, 1973, from Wikipedia. Those were the days.
  • Dean Martin, Powder Your Face With Sunshine. This really isn’t about Florida, but I found it on a Florida song list. This is what Florida should sound like.
  • Zac Brown Band, Toes. This song is the love child of Jimmy Buffet and Michael Franks performed by a Georgia country and western band.
  • Jesse Harris, Secret Sun. Pretty.
  • Frank Sinatra, Let’s Get Away from It All. A useful song that mentions every state except Nevada. Ok. I’m lying. It doesn’t mention Hawaii or Alaska either, since there were only 48 states when it was recorded.
  • Nanci Griffith and Mac McAnally, Gulf Coast Highway. This was on a list of Florida songs, and it’s lovely, but it’s about Texas. Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris cover it, which is the best,
  • Enrique Iglesias, Ballando. This is what Miami sounds like in the soundtrack in my head.
  • U2, Miami.  John Mellencamp, Miami. Counting Crows, Miami. They’re all different songs. The Counting Crows is the best of the lot.
  • Mel Tillis. Tillis is Florida’s most famous country & western singer, and he predates modern Nashville production. If you listen in the car you can pretend you’re driving a big rig coast-to-coast in 1969. For so long, I wanted you/To be my pretty queen./Now you’re mine, my purty one,/You filled my every dream.
  • The Allman Brothers. You can’t have enough Allman Brothers. I even made Kris listen to the entire 44 minutes of Mountain Jam. I think that will get us into the Guinness Book of World Records.
  • Tom Petty. You can’t have enough Tom Petty, but I did erase that song about zombies from my phone. What was he thinking?
  • Gram Parsons. GP. Everything’s better with Emmylou Harris.
  • Cannonball Adderly. In addition to Arturo Sandoval, Archie Shepp and the Adderly brothers, Nat and Cannonball, are from Florida. That’s pretty good jazz. I grew up with Adderly’s Work Song, and it makes me smile every time I hear it.
Nat and Cannonball Adderley, John Levin Enterprises-management/photographer-Bruno of Hollywood, 1961, reported on Wikipedia as public domain, but if not they can come get me.
  • Archie Shepp. Shepp was born in Florida, but raised in Philadelphia. I guess his connection to Florida is pretty tenuous, but that’s ok. So is mine.
  • Arturo Sandoval. I saw Sandoval and his band a couple of years ago, and he’s a master. He’s Cuban, and closely tied to Dizzy Gillespie. He sounds like Miami.
  • Jimmy Buffett. I’d rather not, but you have to. It’s state law, with stiff penalties for violation.
  • John Vanderslice, Romanian Names. Whenever Vanderslice came up on the play list I thought there’s nothing else in Florida that sounds like this. If I’d been playing a Brooklyn play list I would have thought, oh, another one of those guys. In some ways Florida is more mid-America than Kansas.
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd, What’s Your Name? This is why we should all despise Lynyrd Skynyrd. What a stupid idea for a song. It makes one think that Mr. Young was right after all.
  • Matchbox Twenty, How Far We’ve Come. This is why we should all despise Matchbox Twenty, if we have any clue who they are.
  • The Mavericks. Who knew the Mavericks were from Florida?
  • Ray Charles. Who knew Ray Charles was from Florida?

Coming back from Key West on the Overseas Highway we listened to Debussy’s La Mer (which was a bit oceanic for the calm seas) and two or three versions of Charles Trenet’s La Mer. It gave the drive a very French cast.

I took a guitar, but we went to bars instead.