Tag: Books

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Silver Creek, Idaho. September 21, 2019.

We fished Silver Creek because it’s required, like going to Wrigley Field if you like baseball. Going to Wrigley doesn’t mean that you like the Cubs: Who likes the Cubs? It doesn’t even mean you like Wrigley. It’s a dump full of drunk Cubs fans, hard tiny seats, obstructed views, cold cold wind off Lake Michigan, and was once the home of the Federal League Chicago Whales. The Whales. The Chicago Whales. Still, it is a baseball shrine, and later I always find ways to work into conversations that I went to Wrigley last time I was in Chicago.

It’s a burden to place on a small river, and it’s a slip of a river, only 12 miles long from the originating springs. It’s a mineral and bug-rich high desert river that supports populations of wild browns and rainbows and 150 species of birds. It’s not quite clear as glass and not quite smooth as glass, but it’s clear and smooth enough for the description to work, even when it’s overworked.

We fished the Silver Creek Preserve in the morning, owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy, and later in the day fished private Silver Creek water accessed by our guides, Picabo Angler. Where we fished in the Preserve the river wasn’t much more than 100 feet across. Deeper portions are fished with float tubes, but it was late September and for us Houstonians the weather was cold beyond imagining. We stayed shallow and waded until the arctic wind drove us off the creek for lunch. I swear it was colder than 60°. Brutal.

By my lights Silver Creek is bigger than a creek, smaller than a river, honestly more like a bayou, a really clear bayou without alligators and mud, and with lots of trout and lots of bugs. Silver Bayou just doesn’t have the ring of Silver Creek, though just about every state seems to have a Silver Creek this or a Silver Creek that: Silver Creek Apartments, Ranch at Silver Creek subdivision, Silver Creek Industries, or just plain ol’ Silver Creek with some water in it. There are two, count ’em two, Silver Creeks in Idaho. There’s still only one Silver Creek. Even in Idaho.

DCIM\101GOPRO\G0031307.JPG

Our particular Picabo Angler guide was Rob Curran, who also practices law in Ketchum, about 45 miles from Silver Creek. We didn’t discuss legal nuances much, just enough to get a notion of Rob’s practice. We talked more about Rob’s avocations: paragliding, mountaineering, fly fishing, ultra-marathon running, going to Baja for a month to chase rooster fish, all the usual stuff that one does. Sometimes Rob runs races where he runs up a mountain then jumps off on a paraglider, then does it again. Go figure.

There seem to be plenty of young, attractive, fit folk like Rob in Idaho, male and female, who have traded the muggle life back home for the wizarding Northwest outdoors life. Rob in fact seemed more grounded than most, balancing a law practice with all that other stuff, but they mostly scrabble together a life that makes me feel soft and paunchy and hidebound, which I guess I am, and old, which I guess I also am. But I’m also happy that way, and I doubt that at this late date anyone would hire me to guide fly fishers or work on their ski lift. If I tried paragliding I’d likely do injury to myself and others, not to mention giving my cardiologist a heart attack. And I like running my three miles every other day on the flat track around Rice, where there isn’t a single incline, unless you count the curb.

On the flight from Houston to Boise I finished Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which when published in 1980 won the Pen/Faulkner award and was a Pulitzer finalist. I had first heard of Robinson when she published her second novel, Gilead, in 2004, twenty-four years after Housekeeping. Gilead won the Pulitzer, and is brilliant, but Housekeeping is even better. There isn’t a long list of Idaho writers, but any state should be proud to call Robinson their child, and Housekeeping must be the only great novel set in Idaho. Spoiler alert: it’s also the perfect Idaho novel. Ruthie, the child-narrator, gives up her attempts at common domesticity to become a fishing guide. Ok, not really, but close enough.

As for Silver Creek, it’s become a test of fly fishing prowess. Its clarity makes it difficult and its ties to Ernest Hemingway make it legendary–it’s Ernest’s last fishing ground and son Jack is generally credited with its preservation by the Nature Conservancy. It’s a delicate dry fly kingdom too, and in these decadent days of euro-nymphing and bobbers and droppers and whatnot that makes it special. We were there for the fall baetis and calibaetis hatch, tiny blue wing green olive mayflies and slightly less tiny blue wing green olive mayflies, but Silver Creek is most famous for early-June brown drakes, when anglers line the creek for combat fishing. We pretty much had the creek to ourselves.

Once you get off the bank and into the creek, it’s easy to wade. There are heavy river bottom weeds, but open paths of hard sand and small gravel snake through. There always seemed to be a path to where I wanted to go. I fished a 3 wt., which Rob said was about right, and Kris fished her Helios III 5 wt. We had 5X leaders, tied from a formula I cadged off of Troutbitten, though I think Kris traded hers for something less cranky. My leaders ended up closer to ten feet than nine, but when I was paying attention they turned over well enough for me, and the brown Maxima leader in the butt made them easy to watch on the water.

Was I good enough angler to fish Silver Creek? Well of course I was. Sort of. I caught fish. Lots of fish, probably 20 fish. All of them but the one rainbow I foul-hooked were circa five inches. I am the master of Silver Creek tiny browns, bright and perfect as bluegills and just as gullible. I couldn’t keep them off my baetis. Kris probably caught bigger and more fish than me. I know she caught plenty. I know she was happy.

But what the heck. I watched a lot of fish, many bigger fish, and I believed in the creek as a special place, a shrine. Clear and smooth as glass, rich with bugs, rich with fish, it’s a place that you could happily fish a season or two or ten and still learn, and that you could still happily or greedily or maybe just obsessively return to. It’s better than Wrigley, and I’m guessing there aren’t any Cubs fans. It’s just that close to perfect.

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Illinois Playlist

What we took.

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

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

What I lost, Where we didn’t go.

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

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

What we ate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books, Movies, TV.

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

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

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

Donuts.

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

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

Playlist.

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

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

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

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

Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, 1925, Chicago

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

Jazz

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

Blues

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

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

Folk/Country/Americana

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

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

Scattered and Inconsisten Rock

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

Reo Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins.

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

Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville.jpg

Random Stuff

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

Guitar.

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

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Illinois

Over the Labor Day weekend we’re fishing in Illinois. This year we’ve fished in the Northeast, the South, the West, and Hawaii, and we’re on our way to Idaho, but we’ve made no trips to the Midwest. I have this premonition of us coming down to the last states with Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Indiana the last on the list, so we’re making a special effort to knock Illinois off the list. I’ve been to Illinois plenty, or at least I’ve been to Chicago plenty, but Illinois isn’t a fishing destination, no matter how much I might otherwise like Chicago

And I do like Chicago. Chicago overwhelms the state, but the population in the corporate limits of the city is declining. In 1840, Chicago’s population was 4,470, St. Louis’s 77,860, and New Orleans’ 116,375. Midwestern trade ran down the Mississippi on steamboats from St. Louis and points north to New Orleans. While St. Louis and New Orleans thrived, Chicago was a frontier settlement badly located in a muddy swamp. Trains changed everything. By 1900, six years before one of the great Chicago novels, The Jungle, the population of St. Louis was 575,238 and the population of New Orleans was 287,104. Chicago’s population was 1,698,575.

Chicago won the 19th Century.

McCormick Harvester Company advertisement – Front page of The Abilene reflector, Kansas, May 29, 1884 – scanned by US Library of Congress http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84029385/1884-05-29/ed-1/, from Wikipedia.

Three things built Chicago: meat, grain, and railroads, and Chicago’s rail and Great Lakes access to producers and markets and processing of meat and grain shaped the settlement of the the rest of the Prairies. With a McCormick reaper purchased on the installment plan (and other stuff purchased by catalogue from Sears, Roebuck), Chicago carried the Prairies into a market economy that was something new, something different. In the 18th Century Long Island farms produced grain. In the 19th Century Long Island farms converted to truck farms for produce.

Hog Butcher for the World,
   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
   Stormy, husky, brawling,
   City of the Big Shoulders:

Carl Sandburg, Chicago, 1914.

Sandburg’s not much in vogue, but explaining the City of the Century in 22 lines was pretty good work.

But still, Chicago is only one city in Illinois. In 1900 the population of Chicago was 1,698,575, the population of Illinois was 4,821,550. In 1950, Chicago’s zenith and three years before Saul Bellow published another of the City’s great novels, The Adventures of Auggie March, the city’s population was 3,620,962. By 2010 the city’s population had declined to 2,695,598.

Augiemarch.jpg

But in the 2010 census Illinois remained the sixth most populous state with 12,830,632 people, behind, in order, California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Chicago proper may have shrunk, but greater Chicago, the municipal statistical area known as Chicagoland, had a population of 9.5 million. There’s Chicago, and then there’s Chicago.

For Democrats, Illinois has been a dependable presidential vote, and Hillary Clinton carried the state in 2016 by 55.83%. There was, however, a decided rural/urban voter split, with Donald Trump carrying the rural counties.

Al Zifan, Illinois Presidential Results 2016, Creative Commons Attribution.

Illinois and Chicago also have a long and distinguished mastery of political corruption and political incompetence. Four of the last seven governors of Illinois, three Democrats, one Republican, served time after leaving office. The most imaginative may have been Rod Blagojevich (D), who tried to sell the appointment for Barrack Obama’s successor in the US Senate. Its most famous congressman, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R), plead guilty to structuring bank withdrawals to avoid reporting requirements, but is perhaps better known for admitting to molesting boys as a high school wrestling coach. Other well known Congressmen included Dan Rostenkowski (D) (mail fraud, 17 months) and Jesse Jackson (D) (mail and wire fraud, 30 months).

There’s also a special level of City of Chicago corruption, best captured in its 50-member Board of Aldermen. Patronage drove Chicago politics at least through the modern age, but even in the modern age the corruption is magnificent: The Economist quotes Dick Simpson of the University of Illinois, who estimates that of the 200 aldermen serving since 1969, 33 have served time for corruption. That’s only about 15%, but one suspects that there’s plenty of undetected malfeasance, and it’s 15%. Think of it being the norm for 15% of your co-workers going to work for fraud. That would be a special kind of office culture.

Of the places we’ve been, only New Orleans and Louisiana can hold a candle to Chicago and Illinois.

Chicago, Illinois. Union stockyards, Delano, Jack, 1943, U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War InformationChicago, Library of Congress.

And the incompetence! Chicago’s pension deficit is $28 billion and there’s no real plan to fix it. And as crippling as that is, it’s a drop in the bucket when stacked up against the estimated $214 billion state pension deficit. Standard & Poor’s rates Illinois’ long-term debt at BBB-minus. Junk. Illinois government is broke and failing.

There’s plenty of good stuff to say about Chicago. The University of Chicago championed the social sciences, there’s the magazine Poetry, a fine symphony and opera, the Art Institute, and Prairie Style architecture and the modern skyscraper. There’s the White Sox. Of course there’s also the Black Sox.

Illinois did give us our greatest statesman, A. Lincoln. One can put up with a lot for A. Lincoln. And I thought Barrack Obama a very good president, and he’s at least as Illinoisian as Lincoln was.

Abraham Lincoln, Matthew Brady, 1860, National Portrait Gallery.

Of course we’re going to go to Illinois to fish, and it’s not known for its fishing. I thought about trying urban fishing in the city, but honestly that feels presumptuous. It seems to me that urban fishing may be best left to local residents, and this exercise is stunt-like enough. Plus I should at least once get out of Chicago. We’ll go looking for smallmouth out of the City.

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Island Kingdom

Catskill Mountain House Hotel, opened 1824, ”View From The Mountain House” by W.H. Bartlett, 1836. Engraving by R. Branford, published in “American Scenery”, London 1838.

I have been to New York City just enough, and I could live the rest of my days without returning. How often? I don’t know. A half dozen times? A dozen? But the number of times I’ve actually been there isn’t really the point, is it? Most times I’ve turned on the television or listened to the radio or read a book I’ve likely as not been on a trip to New York City, or at least someone’s idea of the place.

Getting ready for the Catskills we’ve been watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and yes, she is Marvelous, and because of the tv show I’ve been reading about why the great Jewish Catskill resorts died: greater mobility, mismanagement, dispersion from the City by the New York Jewish community, air conditioning, and assimilation.

I have a favorite movie moment, ok I have a lot of favorite movie moments but one is when Cary Grant is abducted from the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room in North by Northwest. Everything in that sequence, the room, the martini, Grant’s suit and perfect shirt and tie, were meant to show the rest of us New York City. Becoming a man who takes a phone call in the Oak Room and begins an adventure was at least one of the things that I could aspire to. It was as exotic as Tahiti, and just as appealing.

North by Northwest (1959)

When we were getting ready for Louisiana I read a book by Shane K. Bernard about the Cajuns, called, fittingly enough, The Cajuns.* The premise of the book was that until after the World War II mobilization the Cajuns were culturally isolated, and that after World War II and the advent of television the Cajuns were assimilated into a national culture. Not completely: we still thank God have red beans and rice and boudin and spring crawfish, but a Cajun boy born in the 50s or 60s or 70s no longer looked solely to Lafayette or New Iberia or Lake Charles for his only point of reference. The television beamed New York and Los Angeles and London into his home every evening, and what it beamed was inordinately influenced by New York City. As much as any place it came from New York City.

It worked both ways though. If New York had more influence on the national culture, the rest of the nation was more accessible to New Yorkers. New Yorkers also assimilated. Air travel opened the nation physically and at the same time old prejudices declined. New Yorkers were no longer confined to the Castskills. The Catskill resorts died.

Getting ready to go to New York, I’ve been reading a history of Catskill fly fishing by Ed van Put, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Burrows and Wallace, “Rip Van Winkle”, E.B. White’s short essay “Here is New York“, a book of New York geology (orogeny, glaciers). But whatever I read now, whatever I might try to read before we go, much of my reading life has already involved New York, and I give up. It wins. Just to name a few important books to me: The Last of the Mohicans; The Great Gatsby; The Summer Game; The Emperor’s Children; Netherland; How the Other Half Lives; Bright Lights, Big City; The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York; Eloise; Washington Square; Kaddish; Enter the Goon Squad; Veronica; The Pushcart Wars; Breakfast at Tiffany’s; Lunch Poems; The Boys of Summer; The Poems of Hart Crane; Brooklyn; Catcher in the Rye; The Poems of Charles Reznikoff; Motherless Brooklyn; Leaves of Grass; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay; The Age of Innocence; The Bonfire of the Vanities; it wins. It wins.

Spider-Man lived in New York City.

I suspect though that New York doesn’t win in the same way any more. There was a time when a good part of our notions were bundled and delivered from New York, but our notions now come from Fox News or CNBC or what our friends, defined as the people we haven’t unfriended, post on Facebook. We have so many media choices that we only need to see the things that affirm our own prejudices. We can happily return to alienation and separation.


The Oak Room closed in 2017.

Maybe it was always really this way, but it seems that every man is now his own island kingdom of inclinations and prejudices. I’ve been to New York City plenty enough, but at least I’ve been, and it has always changed me in ways I didn’t expect. While there are other places I’d rather go, I don’t at all mind going again, or another half-dozen or dozen times. Mrs. Maisel is still Marvelous. And each time I ‘ll likely come back a little different, a little surprised at what else there is.

* * *

There are roughly three weeks each spring when Houston is the best place in the world to be. Home-grown tomatoes ripen, the largemouths move onto and off of their spawning beds, the reds and the flounder return to the bays from the Gulf, baseball returns, the last of the winter northers come into town not for revenge but gently, sweetly. It is always green in Houston, but for that three weeks it could be no other color. Best of all the walls of climbing star jasmine bloom and add their scent, a scent less cloying but as lovely as a roomful of lilies, and you smell the scent of jasmine on every walk or bike ride or run.

We went Sunday to Damon’s Seven Lakes to catch post spawn bass, and I caught three of these on my new five weight rod. The rod is a Winston Pure, and Trout Unlimited sent it to me because I am kind, handsome, and amusing. It was very good of them. I also saw, cast to, and caught a six or seven or eight pound catfish, which for various reasons neither Kris nor I got a picture of, mostly because she thought I was taking the picture and I thought she was taking the picture. Anyway I caught a trophy catfish and three good largemouths on a rod that, if you look carefully at the picture, is inscribed “Trout Unlimited.” It’s not inscribed “Bass Unlimited,” and certainly not “Channel Cat Unlimited,” but “Trout Unlimited.” It’s not just any trout rod either: according to R.L. Winston it’s Pure. That must mean it’s probably too pure for bass, and certainly too pure for a big channel cat. I hope Trout Unlimited and R.L. Winston don’t find out. They might take the rod back because I abused it, and it really is sweet.

Since I didn’t get a picture of the catfish, I took a picture of a half-eaten plate of cheese enchiladas from Ninfa’s on Navigation to show you. They were delicious, and you’ll have to let that serve in the catfish’s stead. In a Texas sort of way it seems an appropriate trade. Probably because of that fish I had the catfish at Brennan’s of Houston on both Monday and Tuesday, but it’s just not my week to take pictures of catfish, live or fried. The Brennan’s catfish was good though, and the Damon’s catfish was magnificent. Just don’t tell the folk at Winston.

*Actually the name of the book was The Cajuns: Americanization of a People, but the shorter title works better in the paragraph.