Tag: Books

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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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Leaving Las Vegas

C.S. Fly, Orient Saloon at Bisbee, Arizona, Faro Game, c. 1900, National Archives.

Generally I distrust generalizations, but I’ve got this generalized story-line in my head about what happens in Nevada. Think of two of the state’s three important books :

  • Roughing It, Mark Twain, 1872, illustrated by various artists. Twain’s semi-autobiographical romp through the silver mining towns of Nevada, set in 1861. It includes a wild stagecoach journey west with his companion, an attorney, various wild scrapes and outrageous cultural observations, and the author’s ultimate retreat from the territory in dubious circumstances.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson, 1971. Illustrated by Ralph Steadman. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical romp through a Nevada gambling town, including a wild journey east in a convertible with his companion, an attorney, various wild scrapes and outrageous cultural observations, and the author’s ultimate retreat from the state in dubious circumstances.
First Edition, from Wikipedia.

The third important Nevada book, Basin and Range, 1980, by John McPhee, is about geology, but even it has a Harvard geology professor who goes west in part to look at road cuts and in part to look for silver. Everyone goes to Nevada to get rich, along with other wild and crazy stuff. Basin and Range also has long discussions about the history of the science of geology, and the nature of geologic time. It’s really the most depressing book of the lot, given how insignificant we are, and how certain it makes it seem that this will all end badly.

Maybe that’s the Vegas story line after all. More on that story line later.

Almost nobody living in Nevada comes from Nevada. They never have. In 1860, Nevada’s population was 6,857. It’s largest population over the rest of the century was in 1880, with 62,266. That’s a growth in 20 years of 808%. Since in 1860 there were only 760 women in Nevada, I’m guessing that the population increase wasn’t solely caused by the birth rate. That would be a lot of labor for 760 women.

That’s not the last time Nevada boomed. Between 1900 and 1910 there was another mining boom, almost doubling the population from 42,335 in 1900 to 81,875 ten years later. This time mining was accompanied by labor violence and the rise of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, in the Nevada mines. That was the closest Nevada ever came to an industrial-syndicalist utopia, though it did come close to a Mormon utopia back before silver was discovered. That didn’t turn out well either. I’m not sure whose utopia it is now.

Like Hawaii, Modern Nevada wouldn’t exist without airlines. On a random Sunday in May I can choose from six nonstops from Houston to Vegas on Southwest Airlines. If that’s not enough there are another 15 Southwest flights that will take me to Vegas with a layover, and United has four additional nonstops. If I want to get to Vegas I can get to Vegas.

And the combination of airplanes and sin is unbeatable. In 1940, the population was 110,247. Over 30 years that’s not really much different than the 81,875 population of 1910. Between 1940 and 1960, the population grew 158 percent, to 285,278. That’s a pretty good increase, but then things really took off. Between 1960 and 2000 Nevada was the fastest growing state in the Union, with growth of 600 percent, to 1,998,257. The population estimate as of 2018 is 3,034,392, another 51 percent.

Airplanes. You can’t have modern Nevada without airplanes.

By population Nevada’s not a particularly big state. It ranks 31st, after Iowa and before Arkansas, and this in a state that is 7th in area, after Arizona but before Colorado. Western states are just bigger.

Like everyplace else Nevada’s population isn’t evenly distributed, but Nevada’s can be peculiarly uneven. An estimated 2,112,436 people live in Clark County, the site of the former railroad town known as Viva Las Vegas! That’s almost 70 percent of the total state population. Another 15 percent live in and around Reno. That puts 85 percent of Nevada’s population in roughly 13 percent of its area.

Jim Irwin, Population Density Map of Nevada, 2010, GNI Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons,

Nevada is a vast state, with a lot of vast emptiness. Seven counties, White Pine, Pershing, Lander, Lincoln, Mineral, Storey, Eureka, and Esmeralda (which is Spanish for Emerald) have populations smaller than 10,000 people. That puts less than two percent of the population in about 30 percent of the area.

Population distribution might be affected by federal ownership of 81 percent of Nevada land, but I suspect it’s just not very hospitable land. Federal ownership of land is one of the radical Western conflicts, giving rise to Nevada’s Cliven Bundy’s and endless constitutional theoretics. All I know is that I’m not excited about giving up my share for the Bundys, and I like national parks. Get over it.

Only about 24 percent of Nevadans are born in Nevada, but the transience tends to be urban. A higher percentage of residents are native born in the hinterlands, there’s just not enough population in the hinterlands to make much difference. The biggest source for immigration is California, but foreign-born immigrants, legal and otherwise, comprise about 19 percent of the population. It is a diverse population, about 67 percent white, 8 percent Asian, 9 percent African American, and 10 percent other. Of the total population approximately 34 percent is Hispanic.

David Vasquez, Welcome to Las Vegas sign, 2005, Wikimedia Commons, 2005.

Sorry, this is getting down in the weeds, isn’t it? Summary, Nevada has grown fast. Everybody in Nevada pretty much lives in Vegas, or maybe Reno. At least in Vegas and Reno it’s pretty diverse, and about a third of the population works in leisure, hospitality, or food services. There are strong unions in the service industries, one supposes because of mob/union ties back in the 60s, but it’s no longer the Wobblies.

Like everyplace we’ve been but Mississippi, that rural/urban split plays out in the state’s politics. Red rural, blue urban. Republicans controlled state offices from 2015 to 2018, but in the 2018 elections they lost control to Democrats. Both US senators are Democrats, as are three of the four members of congress. Its six electoral college votes have gone for the Democrat since Barrack Obama’s first election. In 2016, the state went marginally for Clinton, 47.92 percent to 45.5 percent, with the Reno and Vegas urban counties voting Democratic while all or the rural counties voted red.

2018 US Senate elections in Nevada by County, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikipedia.

I’m down in the weeds again. Summary: Nevada currently leans Democratic, with the usual rural/urban split.

But back to the Nevada story line in my head. I’ll tell the story this time through song. Sing along if you’d like.

  • I’m going to Las Vegas, I’m going to have a good time/get drunk/win a lot money/get laid/get married/get divorced/see Elton John/turn 21/and my life will be something better than better. “Vegas,” Sara Bareilles. “Gonna sell my car and go to Vegas/’Cause somebody told me/That’s where dreams would be . . . ” “Reno,” R.E.M., “You know who you are/You’re gonna be a star.” “Viva Las Vegas.”

Bright light city gonna set my soul
Gonna set my soul on fire
Got a whole lot of money that’s ready to burn,
So get those stakes up higher
There’s a thousand pretty women waitin’ out there
And they’re all livin’ devil may care
And I’m just the devil with love to spare
Viva Las Vegas, viva Las Vegas

From Roughing It.
  • Have mercy Jesus what have I done. “Ooh Las Vegas,” Gram Parsons. “Ooh, Las Vegas ain’t no place for a poor boy like me/Every time I hit your crystal city/You know you gonna make a wreck out of me.” “Vegas Lights,” Panic at the Disco. “We’re swimming with the sharks until we drown.” “Waking Up in Vegas,” Katy Perry.

You gotta help me out
It’s all a blur last night
We need a taxi ’cause you’re hung-over and I’m broke
I lost my fake id but you lost the motel key

  • It’s time to leave now. I’ve done the damage get me home. “Friend of the Devil,” Grateful Dead. “Leaving Las Vegas,” Sheryl Crow.

I’m Leaving Las Vegas
Lights so bright
Palm sweat, blackjack
On a Saturday night
Leaving Las Vegas
Leaving for good, for good

From Roughing It.

Meantime in Houston it’s time for the warbler migration, when the warblers leave the Yucatan and fly across the Gulf heading to warbler sex and parties at their summer place in Ohio. Kris drives most every day to Galveston an hour away to watch for the birds. These guys like the warblers too.

Agkistrodon piscivorus, water moccasin, cottonmouth

I’m always dubious about identifications of cottonmouths, because to Texans every water snake in or near the water is a cottonmouth. This is a no doubt proper identification, and Kris was probably wise not to walk on by. It’s cousin the copperhead also likes the wee birdies.

Blackburnian
Indigo Bunting
Hooded
Prothonotary warbler.
Northern Parula
Worm-eating
Brown Thrasher
Black and White

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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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Ocean Springs

Walter Anderson, Detail, Ocean Springs Community Center Mural, 1951.

We fished Saturday and Sunday. That seems like a small thing, we fish lots of Saturdays and Sundays, but so far this year I have caught a tiny bluegill (which was all I caught in January) and two small rainbows (which were all I caught in February). Meanwhile we’ve fished at Key West, Oahu, on the Texas Coast, and in the Hill Country. Since we were in Mississippi to try for another state things were bound to go wrong.

And last Saturday was bad even for March fishing on the Gulf. it was overcast and there was a 20+ knot wind from the south–which meant if we had just stood still and held our arms out we could have visited Memphis. To get to the leeward side of Horn Island we had to quarter the wind eight miles through three-foot slop, the kind of scary slop that in our skiff by ourselves would have left us alternately screaming at each other and clinging to each other in terror, hoping we didn’t die.

Our guide, Richard Schmidt, ran the right boat for the water, a Hell’s Bay Marquesas with a 90 hp Suzuki, and we were always perfectly safe. But Richard was pretty dubious about taking us out in that weather, and my jokes about us being casting impaired didn’t help any. The high wind coupled with the low chance of enough sun to see fish left things pretty sketchy, and when Richard suggested that sometimes his customers were casting challenged, I chimed in that he’d be well prepared for us. The joke fell flat. This was not a funny day. I was worried he was going to turn the boat around.

Instead he took us on to Horn Island. He had boiled crawfish and beer in the cooler, so whatever happened we were going to have a good day, and I would have gone to Horn Island just to see it.

Walter Anderson, Turtle Diptych, Walter Anderson Museum, Watercolor on Two Sheets of Typing Paper, c. 1960.

Horn Island is part of the Gulf Coast Islands Seashore, and it’s a national treasure because, while it’s pretty enough–eight miles of sculpted pines and sugar white sand and dune colors–it’s Walter Anderson’s subject. I kept saying it was beautiful because, well, it was, but it was also beautiful because my eye had been prepared by Anderson. It’s hard not to see Anderson everywhere on the island.

I had never heard of Walter Anderson until I read The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea. Jack Davis spends pages talking about him, and having read Davis the first thing I asked the lady at the front desk at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art was whether he was really crazy? “No,” the nice lady said, “He was just eccentric.” Mississippians being polite have eccentric, us Texans being harsher have crazy.

At dinner Friday Kris and I had talked mostly about Anderson–the lady at the desk said she personally thought he was bipolar, and that may not be crazy all the time but it’s at least eccentric. There were so many things to talk about, about how he lived apart from his family but how still from time to time new children would appear, about how he tied himself to a tree on Horn Island to experience Hurricane Betsy, about his long trips rowing the eight miles to Horn Island to live and sketch, and about his genius. Mostly about his genius. His work is so brilliant, so evocative of the place and more than a bit madly obsessive. How do we all not know Walter Anderson as well as we know Van Gogh, as well as we know Picasso? At least as well as we know Donald Judd?

And Horn Island is exactly what you see when you see much of Anderson’s work. Plus, right off the bat I caught a fish.

It wasn’t a very big fish. It was a 16-inch red that took my fly when I blind-cast to a place that to me looked fishy. The fish was silver, not red or bronze, with the bluest tail I’ve ever seen. Everything in Mississippi has the blues. After that Kris camped out on the casting platform and pretty much stayed there. I napped and ate crawfish, so I was happy, mostly. Kris hooked a redfish, too, a good 20-pounder, but the leader broke. Wind knot? probably a wind knot. There wasn’t a pig tail, so it wasn’t a badly tied connection, and anyway I’m sure that all of my knots are always perfect. The tippet was Rio fluorocarbon so even though the spool was a few years old it shouldn’t have snapped without some cause. Wind knot.

Otherwise while Kris fished I tried to take photos of the bald eagle and the ospreys on the island, and when I walked up into the dunes for a rest break I saw raccoon and seabird tracks in the sand. There was a moment when I was allowed a brief, very short stint back on the casting platform and watched hundreds of schooled sheepshead streaming down the beach, aggregating for their spawn. It is such a living place. We got some sun, and when we did we saw fish. We got some shots.

Sunday the problem wasn’t wind. There was no wind so instead we got fog, heavy fog that Kris and I wouldn’t have braved alone and that nobody else did either, and gnats. Gnats from hell. Gnats that we breathed, and ate, and that searched out every small bit of exposed and un-sprayed skin for a good feed. I was on the platform at one point and I looked down at a bit of hand I’d missed with bug spray and there were at least 200 gnats a’swarming. I have gnat bites on my bald spot. I have a raccoon-ring of welts around each eye where the Buff didn’t quite meet my sunglasses, and where I had avoided spaying bug spray for my eyes. Driving home Sunday, about the time we reached Louisiana, the gnat bites started itching. They were still itching 24 hours later.

Richard ran the boat 30 minutes through fog into the marshes out of Pass Christian, which is pronounced “Pass Christy-Anne,”with just a hint of “-ch-” between the “t” and the “y”. The water wasn’t clear, it had been better when we’d fished the day before, but Richard said that even in the marsh it usually was clear on the east side of the Mississippi. The Corps was diverting freshwater out of the Mississippi River through Lake Pontchartrain into the Gulf to avoid flooding downriver from New Orleans, and it killed the clarity. Apparently it also kills the oysters.

Richard said that beginning in May he guides mostly for jack crevalle on the flats and triple-tail near the crab traps. Kris never did catch a fish, so I’m thinking that means we need to go back. I’ve never landed a big jack crevalle. I’ve never fished for triple-tail. Plus the Mississippi Coast may be as pretty a place as I’ve ever fished.

And on the second day, late in the day, Kris let me on the platform just a wee bit more and I saw a swirl in a couple of feet of water and made a magnificent 90-foot cast to set my fly on the nose of the new world-record black drum. Ok, I’m lying, it isn’t the new world-record black drum, but it was one huge black drum–in the Gulf Coast parlance a big ugly. Richard thought it weighed somewhere between 40 and 50 pounds, so it was at least 60. And of course it’s growing.

And ok, I’m lying. It wasn’t a magnificent 90-foot cast, it was more of a rod-lenth flick. The fly was purple, with barbell eyes and it probably traced its lineage to a Clouser. I was fishing a ten weight Orvis Helios II and a Tibor Riptide (it’s probably important that you know that the Tibor was blue and that my shirt was sea-foam green). People always say black drum are blind, and maybe they are, but this drum made a six-inch rush to my fly, ate it, and I strip set. I really did. I strip-set.

Then everything stopped. The big drum pondered a bit and started to mosey away. It stopped, started moving again, realized it was hooked to something, and then it did something black drum don’t do: it ran. Their cousin the redfish will run, but black drum usually hunker down and make you pull them out. Ok, it didn’t run wild and fast like a permit or a jack, it didn’t twist and jump like steelhead, it ran like a train, straight and hard and purposeful and surprisingly fast, all the way into my backing: bubble-gum pink by the way, I’d never seen it before from that angle. Then when it stopped and figured out it was still hooked it ran some more. And then it ran some more. Richard polled in its direction which helped, but every time I started bringing it back it ran some more. It was big and it ran.

It didn’t take that long to land, less than a quarter hour, but it was some work. When I brought it boatside and Richard lipped the fish with his Boca Grip the hook fell out. We got some pictures, though they didn’t do it justice. Look at those shoulders! That color! That tail hanging halfway to the deck! It may not have been a world record, but it was without doubt the handsomest big ugly ever landed. It probably would have shown better if I’d held it up in front of us, arms extended, but I’m not sure I could have lifted it.

We fished a couple of more hours, and would be fishing still if it were up to Kris and Richard.

I loved fishing Ocean Springs. I have rarely been to a prettier place. Richard was a fine guide, plus he brought crawfish, and once you get past the Biloxi casinos the Mississippi Coast is charming. And did I mention? I caught a big fish–the black drum of the world, the most beautiful black drum ever landed and for that moment I was the handsomest gnat-infested angler who ever landed a fish. There just aren’t better places.