Tag: Civil War

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Montana

The 1920s begin modern times. We used electric power for lights and for new gadgets like refrigerators and Hoover vacuum cleaners. There were cars on the streets, moving pictures in the cinemas, jazz on the radio, and telephones in the home. There were airplanes in the sky. Information and people moved in new ways. 1920 looked a lot more like 2020 than it looked like 1820, or even 1890.

You can’t have electricity without copper, lots of copper. Montana had some gold, some silver–oro y plata is the state motto–and when the world began to turn on the lights, Montana brought us Anaconda Copper of Butte, Montana. Anaconda mined and smelted the copper for our copper wire, and we turned on the lights. By the 1920s, Anaconda had eaten up the other copper companies in Montana, and Anaconda Copper was not only the largest mining company in Montana, but one of the largest in the world.

Miners brought with them from Wales and Italy and Germany not only mining skills, but a history of labor organizing and unrest. Cowboys didn’t organize. Shepherds didn’t organize. Farmers did organize briefly under the Populist movement, but the Democrats coopted prairie populism with Free Silver.1 By 1900 Montana miners were unionized, and the unions were strong.

In Butte in 1914 unions in Montana began a swift decline, partly because Anacaonda ate up its competition–the union had a lot less power negotiating with a single powerful employer instead of several divided employers–and partly because of the miners’ own damned fault. The Western Federation of Miners (the “WFM”) had split from the Industrial Workers of the World (the “IWW”, the Wobblies). Insurgent miners formed the Butte Mine Workers Union as a counter to the WFM, which they believed to be in Anaconda’s pocket. While not formally affiliated, most of the leaders of the Butte Mine Workers Union were Wobblies. Anaconda Copper was pitted against the miners, who were pitted both against Anaconda and against each other.

There were gunfights in the streets of Butte. The WFM union hall was dynamited, an Anaconda Copper office was dynamited, and the governor declared martial law. By the end of the clash, the power of Butte miners’ unions was broken, and Butte, which had been a WFM shop, had become an open shop.

Union Hall of the Western Federation of Miners, Butte, Montana, June 1914, International Socialist Review, Aug. 1914, vol. 15 at 89.

It wasn’t a soft landing. In 1917, an IWW organizer, Frank Little, was lynched, at least in part because of the anti-war stance of the Wobblies. In August 1920, the Wobblies and the Metal Mine Workers called for a general strike for higher wages and an 8-hour day. The strikers shut down all of Butte’s mines. Anaconda mine guards opened fire on strikers and shot 16, killing one.2 Federal troops were brought in, union officials were arrested, and the strike fizzled. It was the last major labor conflict in Butte until 1934, when the miners reorganized under New Deal protections.

Lowe, Jet, Butte Mineyards, Berkeley Pit, documentation compiled after 1968, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Along with the end of the union conflicts, other things changed in Montana as well. In 1918 Montanans voted for statewide prohibition, two years before national prohibition. Legal operations of Butte’s red-light district, Venus Alley, were shut down–during the teens there had been as many as 1000 prostitutes licensed by Butte. Hard-rock mining is still a significant sector of Montana’s economy.3 At least three new copper mines are currently proposed, though likely Venus Alley is gone for good.

The last active mine near Butte closed in 1980. In 1982 the last madam of the Dumas Brothel, the longest operating brothel in the US, was convicted of tax evasion, and the Dumas, the last remnant of Venus Alley, closed. The EPA designated the mining area surrounding Butte as a Superfund site, the nation’s largest. The Dumas reportedly was at closing listed in the National Register of Historic Places, though it isn’t now.

Geography and Population

Montana is the fourth largest state by area, after Alaska, Texas, and California, with 147,040 square miles. Its 2024 estimated population was 1,137,233, increased by more than 14% from it’s 2010 population. Montana is growing, probably faster than its residents really want.

It’s still not very big. Its population is slightly smaller than Dallas, and slightly larger than Fort Worth. Puerto Rico has more than 2 million more people, but two fewer senators. Montana is the 43rd largest state by population, smaller than Maine but larger than Rhode Island.

Anglos make up 84.5% of Montana’s population, Blacks alone are 0.5%, Native Americans 6.2%, Asian .8%, Hispanic 4.2%, and two or more races 6.6%.

Population Density in Montana, US Census Bureau.

Montana has a population of 7.73 people per square mile, compared to 1,259 per square mile in New Jersey. Only one city, Billings, has a population greater than 100,000. Three other cities, Missoula, Great Falls, and Bozeman, have populations over 50,000. The towns (and the largest population concentration) spread north-south along the west of the state, along the front range of the Rockies. If you check the maps below, population concentrations pretty much correspond to the western edge of the Rocky Mountains, the the major trout fisheries, and the counties carried by Kamala Harris. The oddest exception for voting in Montana is in Glacier County, population 13,778, where Glacier National Park is located. Park employees and hangers on presumably vote the interest of the Park, or at least their own interest, and Harris carried Glacier County.4

Montana is one of the eight Rocky Mountain states.5 Like New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming, about 60% of Montana, the area east of the Continental Divide, is prairie, part of the Great Plains. The principal mountain ranges are in Western Montana, along the Idaho border. There are more than 100 named mountain ranges in Montana, so Montana is probably a pretty good name for the state.

USGS Relief Map of Montana.

Since the last glaciation, most of Montana’s rivers flow into the Missouri, which in turn flows to the Mississippi and then the Gulf of Mexico. Before the last glaciers, rivers in Montana flowed to the Red River of the North and on to Hudson Bay. Times change.

Montana rivers are among the best-known trout rivers in the world. The Yellowstone begins at Yellowstone Lake in the Park, and flows Northwest into South Dakota to join the Missouri. The Big Hole, Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin are northwest of the Park, and that’s where we’re going. The Missouri begins where the Jefferson meets the Madison, and we’ll fish both the Jefferson and the Madison.

There’s also the Bighorn and Powder, the Bitterroot, Clark Fork, and Blackfoot, and somewhere in there is the Smith. The Flathead, which I’ve spent a pleasant day fishing, is generally considered in fly-fishing literature to be a second-rate fishery. Anywhere else it would be a destination.

There was good reason to leave Montana until last. For fly fishing in the US, only Alaska has a reputation to match. It’s too bad our planning got knocked out of whack by that whole New Jersey thing.6

Montana Natural Resource Information System, Mountain Ranges and Major Rivers.

Trout

The online Montana state field guide to native and non-native trout provides a good identification photo of native and non-native Montana trout, the trout’s current range, their native range (which is often very different), and whether the fish’s survival in Montana is threatened. Arctic grayling, bull trout, Rocky Mountain cutthroats, westslope cutthroats, and lake trout are all native, and are all species of concern in their native Montana habitat. Westslope cutthroats are the most widely distributed native trout in the Northwest, from the West Slope of Montana across the Rockies into Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, all the way to the Pacific.

Brown trout and brook trout are non-native, though both are widely distributed throughout Montana. Rainbow trout (including Columbia River redband trout), are native to a tiny section of far northwest Montana, in the Kootenay drainage. Instead of draining east to the Gulf, the Kootenay drains west to the Pacific, so rainbows native to the Pacific Coast make it to the Kootenay. In addition to the Kootenay rainbows, rainbow trout have been introduced throughout the state.

The state of Montana has led other states to end hatchery stocking programs where there are healthy populations of wild fish, so even where fish caught are non-native browns or rainbows, they are almost certainly wild.

Because it is such an important destination fishery, when something does happen to Montana fish, it makes national news among fly fishers, even people like me who rarely go to Montana. There was the introduction of whirling disease back in the 90s, and in the past years there are reported declines of large trout in the Madison River system. Crowding on Montana rivers is also a big issue, probably because of people like me going to Montana. If it’s any consolation, most of the places I fish here in Texas are also pretty crowded.

Politics.

When the Montana Territory was formed in 1864, the state was oddly populated by unregenerate Confederate sympathizers. The first name proposed for Virginia City, Montana, was Verina, named after the wife of Jefferson Davis. A judge refused to register the name, and named it Virginia City instead. Well into statehood,7 Montana politics would be dominated first by the state’s Democrats–aligned with Southern interests–and then by Anaconda Copper.

2024 Montana election results by county, Wikipedia.

Its recent history has been a mixed bag of Democratic and Republican leadership, though currently the state is dominated by Republicans. The State has had a Democratic Governor as recently as 2021, and John Tester was a Democratic US senator until defeated in 2024.

Donald Trump carried 58.39% of the Montana vote in the 2024 presidential election, an increase from 56.92% in 2020 and 56.17% in 2016. As noted above, voting patterns tended to follow population concentrations, and even in population sparse Montana the larger the population the more likely the area is to vote Democratic.

A River Runs Through It

Every fly fisher knows “A River Runs Through It,” and if not the novella then at least the movie. The 1976 story by Norman Maclean is mostly set in Missoula, Montana, and on the Blackfoot River. The movie was produced and directed by Robert Redford and released in 1992, and it made fly fishing great again. The movie is true to the book, and both are based on the lives of Norman Maclean and his brother, Paul. The movie’s popularity probably wasn’t hurt by Brad Pitt as Paul in one of his first major roles.

He looks so young.

Generally people say that the book is extraordinarily well-written, and the blurb on the cover of my current copy–from a review in the Chicago Tribune–says that the book is as beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway. I suspect that the reviewer, whoever it may have been, is suggesting that the book is excellent nature writing, but Thoreau most of the time and Hemingway at his best are American transcendentalists, and are writing about the power of nature to move the observer into a better place. Hemingway’s characters are always closest to tranquility when they’re on a river, and we should all aspire to receiving from nature like Thoreau.

Maclean on the other hand is focused not on the landscape but on his characters, and while they inhabit the natural setting (and the movie has the advantage of the book by showing the rivers au natural), there’s nothing spiritually or psychologically transcendent in it. The closest Maclean gets is when Norman describes younger brother Paul as an artist with the fly rod. There is a long interior dialogue early in the book where Norman plans his cast, and it is all about how he will approach the fish. Hemingway at his best would have described the finning of the fish, the darkness of the water, the light on the angler. Thoreau might have described the beauty of the fish and how it belongs in the natural world.

Maclean doesn’t really tell us much about the fish, or the water. There are bigger fish and smaller fish, fish caught on dry flies and fish caught with bait. What Maclean describes are Norman’s inner thoughts and preparations to make a difficult cast. Nothing wrong with that, and I suspect lots of fly fishers love the book because it is repleat with tales of roll casts and Bunyon Bug Nos. 2. It’s also easy to read, but what it is best at is not describing the Blackfoot River but the characters of Paul and Norman. It has a natural setting, sholy, but–and this is an important difference–the setting is background, a happy accident, not an agent.

Of course plenty of the book’s readers would tell me I’m spouting nonsense.

I will, however, not budge in my argument that there is nothing good about the fly cast in the movie poster. If I ever actually made that cast (and I don’t think it’s physically possible), it would immediately tumble from the sky onto my head and shoulders. Come to think of it, I must have made that exact cast from time to time, and I immediately wore the result. `

It didn’t need the help, but “A River Runs Through It” certainly reminded fly fishers that the trout fishing was great in Montana.

  1. Just like 2025, in the 1890s cheap money was seen as a cure to financial ills. Then it was increasing the money supply by adding silver, not it’s increasing money availability with low interest rates. Or maybe BitCoin. ↩︎
  2. It’s always mentioned that the Anaconda guards fired on fleeing strikers, and the miners were shot in the back. ↩︎
  3. Butte’s population peaked in 1920 at 60,000, and may have been as high as 100,000. The current population estimate is 36,134. At its height, from 1904 to 1917, Butte’s redlight district is estimated to have been second in size only to San Francisco. Licensed prostitution continued in Deer Lodge for a while after Butte was shut down, but it didn’t last long. The economy of Deer Lodge is said to have never recovered. Deer Lodge is the site of the Montana State Prison, and those two enterprises are probably both somehow related to mining. ↩︎
  4. As did Biden and Clinton before her. ↩︎
  5. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. ↩︎
  6. We still have not fished in New Jersey. ↩︎
  7. 1889. ↩︎
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Nebraska

Nebraska was a Train Stop

The first eastern track for the transcontinental railroad was laid near Omaha in 1863, during the Civil War. Starting a major construction project in the middle of a war isn’t the most obvious thing, but before his election Lincoln was a railroad lawyer, he believed in the future of railroads, and he wanted to keep California, newly acquired and separated from the East by the Sierras, the Rockies, and the Great American Desert, from leaving the Union. He could have just sent the Californians candlesticks. Candlesticks are always a nice gift.

Currier & Ives, “Westward The Course Of Empire Takes Its Way,” lithograph, 1869.

The railroad was constructed by the Western Pacific, Central Pacific, and Union Pacific Railroads, at a cost in current dollars of $3.5 billion. Construction was funded by stock sales, federal and state bonds, and federal land grants. The railroad wasn’t actually transcontinental. It didn’t go from, say, Baltimore to San Francisco, but there was already a network of trains in the East. The Transcontinental linked the existing eastern network to the West Coast through the largely unsettled West.

Serious talk of a transcontinental railroad began in the 1850s, and there were actually three proposed routes. A proposed northern route went through Montana to Oregon, a Southern route went through Texas, New Mexico, and modern Arizona,1 and the central route went through what would be Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. Severe cold presented too many technological problems for the northern route, and the supporters of the southern route kinda lost their influence after secession. You snooze, you lose.

Omaha is now Nebraska’s largest city because of the political maneuvers of Council Bluffs, Iowa. In 1854 the acting Nebraska territorial governor–acting because the appointed territorial governor got to Nebraska and promptly died–figured that if the train took the central route, then it would certainly go through Nebraska’s capital, wherever that might be. Council Bluffs wanted to be the train’s starting point, and Council Bluffians were developing Omaha directly across the Missouri River. The acting Nebraska governor, an Iowa boy, declared Omaha the territorial capital. I’m guessing lot prices skyrocketed, and Omaha and Council Bluffs got the train.

In 1867 when Nebraska became a state, every other Nebraskan wanted to punish Omaha for its hubris, so they moved the capital. Lincoln was chosen as the new site. To defeat the move, Omahaians loaded the proposed move with stuff they thought would kill it. If the capital moved, then the state prison would also be in Lincoln, and the new state University would be in Lincoln. Omaha was betting that if it loaded Lincoln with all the good things the move would fail and Omaha could keep the capital. It didn’t fail. The University of Nebraska is in Lincoln. The Nebraska State Penitentiary is in Lincoln.

Omaha still had the train, and it also has the College Baseball World Series.

Geography

At about 77,200 square miles, Nebraska is the 16th largest state by area, and with a population of about 2 million, it’s the 38th most populous state. That gives folk plenty of elbow room.

It is largely treeless prairie that divides into two sections. To the right of the 98th meridian Eastern Nebraska is part of the Dissected Til Plains. Western Nebraska is part of the Great Plains. As a child of the Great Plains, if I had stood in the front yard and looked due north, only Kansas, Oklahoma, and a bit of Texas would have kept me from walking over to Nebraska, and it’s perfectly possible that there were no trees to hinder my path.2 Of course if it had been February we’d like as not have been sharing a Canadian arctic blast, and in April we’d have shared a dust storm or two and some tornadoes. In summer we would have shared dry heat, wheat, and cattle.

From https://www.freeworldmaps.net/united-states/nebraska/nebraska-rivers-map.jpg

The Dissected Til Plains don’t make it as far south as Texas. They basically run from Minnesota down to Kansas, centered on the Missouri/Iowa state line. If you have a yen to grow corn, look to the Til Plains, young man. This is Green Acres country, and it’s the place to be. It was formed by glaciers, and as they retreated the glaciers left plenty of flatness and plenty of rich soil.

It’s a mildly humid region, defined under the Koppen system as a Humid Continental Climate, with four distinct seasons and big shifts in seasonal temperatures. That means in summer, eastern Nebraska gets mighty hot. In winter it gets mighty cold. It would be a great place to see the leaves change, if only there were any leaves. It is not humid like New Orleans, but it’s the last breath of mildly moist air before the Great Plains. Most of Nebraska’s population and its largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln, are in the Dissected Til.

https://unitedstatesmaps.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/rainfall-maps-of-us-1536×979.jpg

The Great Plains (and the American West) begin at the 98th meridian, roughly on a line north from Fort Worth, as decreed by Walter Prescott Webb. It is a semi-arid region unique not because of topography or geology but because of the lack of rainfall. Looking north along the 98th, to the right it rains at least 20 inches a year. To the left, stretching to the Rocky Mountains, it rains less than 20 inches a year. It is the beginning of the cultural West, and Webb, who loved the cowboy, says it is the land of barbed wire (bob war, if you want to talk like a native), windmills, and the revolver. It was also the land of the Plains tribes and the great buffalo herds. And the Dust Bowl.

The Missouri River borders Nebraska on the east, and continues north through the Dakotas into Montana, where it and its drainage is one of the great fly fishing destinations.3 The Republican River swerves through southern Nebraska from Colorado and on into Kansas.4 In central Nebraska the North and South Platte descend from Colorado to form the plain ol’ Platte, which then joins the Missouri between Omaha and Lincoln. North Nebraska has the Loup River,5 then the Niobara. We’ll be fishing in the far western Niobara region, just below the South Dakota Black Hills and above and to the left of the Nebraska Sandhills.

Population

As of 2024, the estimated population of Nebraska is 2,005,465. That’s less than the population of any of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, or Houston. It is a smaller population than the 35 most populous metropolitan statistical areas. It’s smaller than the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro SMA, but larger than San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland SMSA.

More than 76.2% of the population is Anglo, 5.5% Black alone, and 12.9% Hispanic. Native Americans are 1.7% of the population.6 As already mentioned, it’s a big state without a lot of people, and there are only 25.5 people per square mile. New Jersey, the densest state, has 1,263 people per square mile. Nebraska has fewer people per square mile than Nevada (29) and more than Idaho (24).

Wikimedia Commons

Nebraska’s population is concentrated in the east. Omaha on the eastern border with Iowa has a population of 483,335, Lincoln, just a bit south and west, is 294,757. The Omaha and Lincon SMSAs contain more than half the state’s population. Of Nebraska’s 93 counties, 66 have populations of less than 10,000, and 11 have populations of less than 1,000. Of the smallest ten counties by population, all are located central to west, well west of Omaha.

Farm in Custer County, Nebraska, 1886, Nebraska State Historical Society.

In a European sort of way, Nebraska is ethnically diverse. More than 40% of the population identifies its heritage as German. That’s presumably a combination of railroads advertising Nebraska settlement in Germany in the late 19th century, European economic depression, and available land. There are also sizable populations of English and Eastern European settlers, and I’m certain there’s at least a smattering of Swedes.7

Nebraska is a meat-packing state, and it has a history of foreign-born and African American immigration to man the meat plants. Attitudes toward non-European immigration have been decidedly ambivalent, and from time to time, in the 1930s and the 2000s, immigration of recruited Mexican workers was followed by repatriation campaigns. There really is nothing new under the sun.

Politics

Nebraska gained statehood in 1867, before it had the required population. Presumably statehood was pushed through the Republican Congress to support the 14th Amendment. The same thing happened with Nevada during the Civil War, though there was also silver involved. Nebraska had its own connection to silver, with William Jennings Bryan, a Nebraska boy, electrifying the nation with his Cross of Gold speech at the 1897 Democratic national presidential convention.8

William Jennings Bryan, Grant hamilton, 1896, Judge magazine, New York City.

Nebraska was (and is) an agricultural state, and Nebraska politics were central to the rise and fall of the Populist Party in the 1890s. The Populists were a Southern and Midwestern farmer’s party with mildly socialist leanings, and by 1890 Populists controlled the Nebraska legislature. They passed a bunch of progressive legislation, including secret ballots, mandatory education, free textbooks, an eight-hour day (10 hours for farms), and railroad rate regulation. They pushed for public ownership of the railroads. Bryan coopted Populism, and as the new leader of the national Democratic Party folded the Populists into the Democrats.

From 1894 to 1900, Nebraska elected Populist governors. After 1900 there was a mishmash of Democrats and Republicans, leaning Republican. Since 1994, all of Nebraska’s governors have been Republican.

Nebraska voters now pretty much vote Republican. Nebraska is the only state with a unicameral legislature, and in the current legislature there are 33 Republicans, 15 Democrats, and one independent. There are no Populists. Probably leftover from its Populist days, it seems like every statewide office in Nebraska is elected, from Governor down to the university board of regents. A bunch of the elections are non-partisan, but all of the partisan statewide positions are held by Republicans.

Nebraska and Maine are the only states that allocate their electoral votes by Congressional District, which actually makes a lot of sense to me, so while Donald Trump carried 59.32% of Nebraska’s statewide popular vote in 2024, Kamala Harris carried Omaha and Lincoln, and Democrats received one of Nebraska’s five electoral college votes.

Wikipedia, 2024 Nebraska presidential results by county.

Nebraska Pride

I have the sense that no state instills more pride in its children than Nebraska. It’s generally admirable, but it was insufferable when the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers had better college football teams than the University of Texas.

In addition to a unicameral legislature, the University of Nebraska is also unicameral, having rolled both its land grant agricultural college and state university into one campus. Such thrift seems uniquely Nebraskan.

The University of Texas has gone to Omaha for the College World Series 38 times, which is the record. The University of Southern California holds the record for titles, with 12.

  1. And just a wee bit of Mexico, which led to the Gadsden Purchase. In 1854, planning for the southern railroad route, the US gave Mexico ten million dollars and received Tucson, Yuma, and the lefthand side of southern New Mexico. Ten million dollars went a lot further in 1854 than it does today. You couldn’t buy Greenland for that now. ↩︎
  2. This is gross exaggeration. There are often trees on the plains where there’s water, and in shelter belts. In Texas there were mesquites (though they were invasive from South Texas because of over-grazing). ↩︎
  3. I haven’t fished the Missouri in Montana, but I have in North Dakota. I didn’t catch anything. Together with the Mississippi and the Ohio, the Missouri forms the world’s fourth largest river system at over 3,900 miles. I haven’t fished the Ohio, either, or for that matter the Mississippi. ↩︎
  4. The Republican River Flood of 1935 was one of the Nebraska’s worst natural disasters, resulting in 113 deaths. Before the Europeans, the Pawnee farmed beans, corn, and pumpkin along the Republican River with the occasional jaunts afield for buffalo. In Kansas, the Republican joins the Missouri before the Missouri joins the Mississippi at St. Louis. ↩︎
  5. Loup is French for wolf, so French fur traders must have made it to Nebraska. ↩︎
  6. Native Americans in Nebraska included the Sioux, the Pawnee, the Sac and Fox, and the Omaha. Much of the indigenous population was displaced south to Oklahoma. There are eight remaining reservations in Nebraska, for the Ogallala and Santee Sioux, the Omaha, the Oto, the Pawnee, the Ponca, the Sac and Fox, and the Winnebago. ↩︎
  7. This is because my friend Clark, whose family is Swedish, is from Nebraska. I was surprised when at least half of Nebraska’s population wasn’t originally from Sweden. ↩︎
  8. The amount of dollars in circulation was limited by the value of the gold owned by the federal government. Western and Southern farmers wanted silver coinage to increase the money supply, spur inflation, and make their existing debts easier to repay. Bankers didn’t. ↩︎

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South Carolina Packing List

Gear

We took eight-weight 9 foot rods, floating lines, and seven foot 16 pound leaders. We took redfish flies, which are generally any fly that looks even vaguely like a shrimp, crab, or small fish. If redfish are eating, they will eat anything you throw at them, including feathers, fur, polyester, and baseballs. Tan is my preferred color, unless my preferred color is chartreuse, purple, red, or pink, or if I’m feeling natural either olive or white. As long as they’re eating, redfish are a happy fish, and almost any color works.

What could be easier?

So of course we had a problem with our reels. I have used the same reels in saltwater for 30 years: Tibors. They’re beautiful things, handmade in Florida, and they come in different sizes for different fish, the 8-9 Everglades for bonefish and redfish, the 9-10 Riptide for permit and jacks, the bigger 11-12 Gulfstream for tarpon, and finally the massive Pacifica for things like sailfish and marlin, whatever those might be. Actually, I own some other 11-12 reels but I don’t own a Gulfstream, and I don’t need anything as big as a Pacifica. I own several Everglades and a couple of Riptides, but I lust after an orange Gulfstream. Not that I’d ever mention it because then Kris might feel obligated to remember that on my birthday or Christmas.

Or Father’s Day. Father’s Day is coming up.

Tibors are bombproof, easy to work on in the field, and for any given size their parts are interchangeable. They take almost no maintenance, and their design hasn’t changed significantly in the 30 years I’ve used them. Tibor engraves your name on a nameplate for the reel, and there is something so satisfying, so validating when one screws on that identifying nameplate. It’s there for everybody to see: this guy Neil Thomas ain’t fooling around. He owns a Tibor, so he must be special!

I love them. Mine have my name on them. I’m special.

Tibor makes other reels, the Signature, the Backcountry, the Billy Pate, but only the Tibor is just the Tibor. Tibors now come in fancy colors, though as I recall the originals were either gold or black. My oldest is gold, though the gold has faded and it’s pretty beat up. It’s the reel I used in South Carolina, and right now it’s in our skiff down the coast at Port O’Connor. It’s a well-made thing.

Kris doesn’t like them, and that was our problem. It’s not that they don’t work, but she says they’re heavy, and bulky, and to her they just don’t feel right. I keep trying to slip them in on her, hoping she’ll grow as fond of them as I am, because then I’d have an excuse to buy more. When we were packing for Charleston her usual eight-weight reel had a seven-weight line on it, so instead of switching the line I packed one of my Everglades. She complained the whole time we fished.

It was too heavy. It didn’t feel right on her rod. Where was her reel?

So now she has a new reel, a Hardy that she picked out at Gordy & Sons. It was a Christmas present, and by me a capitulation. It’s lightweight, probably flawless, probably made in Korea. It’s certainly very nice. It’s not a Tibor.

Hotels

Visiting the King Street shopping district in Charleston is a Garden & Gun ad incarnate. There’s jewelry and ball gowns, beachwear and books. I’m certain there are Luis Vuitton purses, and purses made at a boutique South Carolina saddlery shop, and purses made of woven sea grass. There’s crockery and cookware and antiques. I always wondered why Charleston was such a vacation magnet, and now I know. People go to Charleston to shop.

Where once slaves were auctioned, now there are bibelots, and bibelots don’t come with the same moral downside. I bought a spool of 20 lb. saltwater tippet at the Orvis store, so I did my part. My shopping was completely successful.

There are also hotels. You can spend as much as you’d like on a King Street hotel, though probably not as little. We actually stayed outside of the shopping district several miles inland, in an area of town that is gentrifying from the possibly dangerous to the marginal. I’m fond of mid-century modern motor inns, and we found a restored one in Charleston. In Savannah, just down the coast, we had stayed at a great restored motor inn, but the Starlight Motor Inn in Charleston was not as finely finished as the Thunderbird Inn in Savannah, nor was it as central. It was very good though, with small but well-appointed rooms. The room rates were immensely reasonable, and parking was free. I’d stay there again in a heartbeat.

The strange thing about the Starlight, I guess the ultramodern thing about the Starlight, was that we never saw any live employees. Check-in was by internet, which included a room code but no card or key. There was only a keypad for room entry. Room-cleaning was by request at an extra cost, which seemed fair since the room rate was so low. There was a storage unit with extra towels and coffee and whatnot in a cabinet in the stairwell under our room, and whether or not we were supposed to we helped ourselves to what we needed. There is a bar at the Starlight, but it’s open Thursday to Sunday and we were there Monday to Wednesday. I’m certain we could have roused someone if we’d needed, but there was never a need.

There was a pickle ball court painted onto the parking lot, and a moveable net, but there wasn’t a pool. Kris didn’t tip me when I carried our bags to the room.

Donuts

Annie’s Hot Donuts, in Mount Pleasant, was outside of Charleston proper but on the way to the ferry for Fort Sumter. At Annie’s, donuts are made when ordered, with fat fry-dom on demand and toppings from an ice cream sundae buffet of choices. It is such a miracle, why have I never seen one of these before? Why isn’t there one in Houston? Granted, in the morning, at the best Houston Shipley’s, the glazed donuts are hot when you get them, and a hot Shipley’s glazed is donut perfection, but that’s turnover and time of day, not the business plan. Every donut at Annie’s is hot when delivered. Miraculous.

There is an online list from Eater of Charleston’s essential donuts, but it unforgivably doesn’t include Annie’s. On the morning we fished–we fished one morning and then the next afternoon–we were on the water before any of the Eater-listed donut shops opened. We tracked down where Glazed Gourmet Donuts on King Street had been, but it’s now permanently closed. Joey Bag of Donuts was out of our way, though it was certainly one of the best names ever. On the day we fished in the afternoon, we had breakfast at The Junction, which was on the list, but it wasn’t donut day at The Junction so we had to settle for biscuits. I’ll grant that they were excellent biscuits.

The Junction was interesting not just for the biscuits, but because it was in Park Circle, even further west of the King Street shopping district than our motel. Park Circle seems to be the Bohemian, as opposed to the Garden & Gun, side of town, where because of cheap rents you can find a micro-brewery, or a bike shop, or a vinyl record store. It looked fun to explore, and I recall the biscuits fondly.

Restaurants

There are as many restaurants in Charleston as there are guitar pickers in Nashville, and in addition to the redfish that I didn’t catch, we left a bunch of restaurants untested. For our two lunches we had oysters near King Street. If we had had three days for lunch, we would have had oysters three days. We didn’t eat near enough oysters.

The two places we ate lunch, 167 Oyster Bar and Amen Street Fish and Raw Bar, weren’t joints. They were upscale, focused on seafood generally, and we paired our oysters with other more substantial things. At Amen Street in addition to oysters we had the shrimp corny dogs, she crab soup, and at 167 for some reason a lobster roll. I don’t think lobster rolls are native to South Carolina, but sometimes I give over to my baser desires.

There are authentically joint-like oyster joints in Charleston, but we didn’t make it to any and its a shame. Next time.

The first night in town we ate at Rodney Scott’s, which is whole-hog South Carolina Barbecue. There was this strange disconnect when people asked where we ate and we said barbecue, because they immediately assumed we’d eaten at a newer place, the Central Texas-style Lewis Barbecue Charleston. Why, I ask you, would we go from Texas to South Carolina to eat Hill Country brisket? I’m sure it’s excellent brisket, and I’m vaguely curious if it’s any good, but the world of barbecue is large, and for us whole hog is a rare treat. Brisket is not. Even great brisket is not.

At Rodney Scott’s, who orders both the hush puppies and the cornbread? Who doesn’t?

Monday night we ate at Hannibal’s Kitchen, which is traditional Charleston Gullah Geechee and which sports authentic 1980s Black Liberation decor. it was a great place, and we both ate the crab and rice. Both Rodney Scott’s and Hannibal’s are places I’d go back to. If Hannibal’s were in my neighborhood I’d go back way too often.

Tuesday, our last dinner, we went to Fig. I’m always so proud of myself when I get a reservation at a place like Fig, because it means that I’ve planned far enough ahead to do something hard. Fig might be the best known of all of Charleston’s high-toned restaurants, and it’s not easy to nab a reservation. Did I have to make the reservation 60 days ahead? 120? On the day our oldest child was born? I can’t remember, but whenever, I did it.

I read in some review that Fig is the place locals go for special occasions: Graduations, anniversaries, Tuesday nights . . . The decor is a bit dated, but it was presumably always meant to be clubby. The menu is American modern with a South Carolinian bent. It’s pricey.

After all that build-up though for some reason the waitstaff couldn’t get my orders right. My drink was wrong and had to go back to the bar. My entree was wrong and had to go back to the kitchen. I am apparently getting crankier with old age, because it bugged me, when usually I would have written it off to the sorts of normal human foibles at which I excel. Then I realized the staff was just dazzled by Kris’s beauty and couldn’t pay attention to me, so it was ok. After all, who wouldn’t be so dazzled?

Just as a reminder, that’s the orange Tibor Gulfstream. With blue backing.

Fig also had oysters, and we ate some.

Fort Sumter

We’ve been to a lot of Civil War battlefields, Shiloh, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Bull Run, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and Central High School in Little Rock. Fort Sumter may have been for me the most emotionally charged of all of them. Perched out in Charleston Harbor, in the midst of all that historic Southern outrage, it held the deepest reservoir of failed possibilities. Bombarding Fort Sumter was the path we chose, and we’re still paying.

We timed our visit right because Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest was published in 2024, and it is a great introduction to both the antebellum mindset and the particulars of Fort Sumter. It is also a timely book and pilgrimage to ponder the current state of affairs in these late days. It would have been a shame to miss either the book or the pilgrimage.

Playlist

Dizzie Gillespie was born and raised in Cheraw, South Carolina, then moved to Philadelphia when he was 18, and then moved on to New York. He also once stabbed Cab Calloway in the leg.

Moving to Philadelphia was a right of passage for South Carolina African Americans, who repatriated their popular music to South Carolina as Beach Music. Stay (Just a Little Bit Longer), Under the Boardwalk, Sixty Minute Man, My Girl, Such a Night . . . Motown was Detroit, Stax was Memphis, but Beach Music had its own sound and its own audience, and the audience was at least partially White and in South Carolina, busily Shagging.

Not that. That wasn’t invented until later. The Shag is the state dance of South Carolina.

Gillespie didn’t play Beach Music, but after the stabbing he was fired by Cab Calloway. It apparently wasn’t much as stabbings go, and he tried to apologize, but Calloway held a grudge, as bossmen will.

Gottlieb, William P., Portrait of Dizzy Gillespie, New York, NY, 1947, public domain.

Gillespie went on to become the first great trumpet player of BeBop, and influenced a generation of trumpeters that included Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, and Clifford Brown. Gillespie wasn’t the only great jazz musician from South Carolina. Hank Garland, the great jazz/country/rock and roll guitarist, was from Cowpens. Freddie Green, the greater jazz guitarist, was from Charleston. The great country blues guitarist, Reverend Gary Davis, was from Laurens.

Popular bands from South Carolina tend to have an edgy new-wave feel. The Country band, Shovels and Rope, is from Charleston, Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses is from Irmo, and Iron and Wine is from Chapin.

There’s enough diversity among good musicians from South Carolina to make for a fine playlist. Even The Marshall Tucker Band is perfectly ok in small doses. Did you know that there was never anybody in the band named Marshall Tucker? He was a blind piano tuner from Spartanburg.

Freddie Green, circa 1938, Library of Congress.

John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas was born on Parris Island, though he grew up in Virginia. I figured it was a close enough connection to include his Monday, Monday and Words of Love.

When Dizzie Gillespie appeared before his World War II draft board, he said, and I quote, “in the United States whose foot has been in my ass?”, and questioned whether they really wanted to give him a gun. He was classified 4-F. It’s good to know one’s limits. The funny thing is that notwithstanding the shooting threat and the stabbing, Gillespie is generally considered to have been not only a great jazz trumpeter (maybe along with Louis Armstrong the very best), but also a good-natured guy.

Guitar

I’m writing this so long after we went to South Carolina that I can’t remember if I took a guitar, or, if I did, whether I played it. Too late now to figure it out.

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South Carolina, Part One

For much of its history, if you were in need of a moral compass, you could do the opposite of whatever South Carolina was doing and have a pretty good chance of getting things right.1 South Carolina as often as not was a self-righteous, pompous Dickensian church beadle, proclaiming the virtues of starving and beating orphans for fun and profit. It seems always to have been peculiarly obsessed with wealth and status. It’s really hard to like much of South Carolina’s past.

South Carolina was the only original colony whose founders owned slaves. Instead of coming direct from England, a majority of its early settlers came from the sugar plantations of the West Indies, particularly Barbados, where slavery was already a going concern. Charleston became a major slave market for the Colonies, and between 1803 and 1807 South Carolina squeezed through Charleston the last legal shipments of approximately 50,000 slaves. In most slaveholding states, it’s estimated that somewhere north of 30% of whites owned slaves. In South Carolina, the number is estimated at 50%. Until the export in the 1830s of a goodly number of South Carolina slaves and their owners to better cotton land in Alabama and Mississippi, black slaves in South Carolina significantly outnumbered white residents. Until the 1730s, a majority of South Carolinians were African-born.

South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun was the mastermind of the first threat to the Union, the 1830s Nullification Crisis. Because tariffs to protect northern manufacturing increased the cost of goods in South Carolina, Calhoun (then Vice President) came up with the useful notion that a state could nullify any federal law it didn’t like. South Carolina did just that, but before the question could be tested Andrew Jackson worked a compromise with lower tariffs. It’s one of the reasons Jackson is on the $20 bill. Before Lincoln, Jackson first saved the Union from South Carolina.2

In 1856, South Carolinian Congressman Preston Brooks brutally beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor because of an antislavery speech by Sumner criticizing Brooks’ first cousin once removed. Brooks resigned his seat later in 1856 for reasons other than the beating, and was almost immediately re-elected. He died a year or so after the re-election, and good riddance. It was almost four years before Sumner recovered sufficiently to return to the Senate.

John McGee, Southern Chivalry–Argument Versus Clubs, 1856, National Museum of American History (Caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks). McGee’s engraving is wrong in an important respect. According to eyewitnesses, Brooks beat Sumner not with the tip of the cane, but with the heavy gold knob. The cane is on exhibit at the Old State House in Boston.

It is usually remarked that Brooks used a gutta-percha cane for the beating, though gutta-percha is never explained.3

The Bishop of Charleston, Patrick Lynch, was a slaveholder and a prominent slavery apologist. According to The South Carolina Encyclopedia, before the war he was the legal owner of about 95 slaves, most of them the property of the Diocese. He was the Confederacy’s delegate to the Vatican.

South Carolina’s U.S. Senator James Hammond, child molester (of his own teenage nieces) and slave rapist (one of whom may have been his own daughter), dared the free states to threaten Southern slavery in an 1858 speech declaring that cotton was king:

“What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what everyone can imagine, but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.” 
Hubbard & Mix, Negro Quarters, T.J. Fripp Plantation, St. Helena Island, S.C., circa 1863, Library of Congress.

In hindsight, there are three ironical twists to Hammond’s proclamation. First, much of our cotton now comes from India and China, not the U.S.4 If Hammond had been right, even for that moment, he would ultimately have been wrong. Had the South’s secession succeeded, an independent slave South, increasingly isolated and economically irrelevant, would have ultimately failed because someone else would have produced the cotton.

The second twist is that because its government lacked meaningful central authority, the South never stopped producing cotton during the war. Planters continued production, even while the planter class was largely exempted from the Confederate draft. During the war cotton was slipped out of the South by blockade runners or through Mexico. Presumably quantities were reduced, but there was never the cessation of manufacturing that Hammond had projected. Worse, by allowing the production of cotton, the South didn’t grow sufficient food. As the War progressed, starvation in its cities became widespread, and Southern White hunger hastened the War’s end.

Detail of photograph by Henry P. Moore, Slaves on Plantation of Confederate general Thomas Drayton, Hilton Head, S.C., 1862, Library of Congress.

And of course the third twist was that Hammond was just plain wrong. Cotton was not king. The South lost the War and never received the support from foreign nations that Hammond had expected.

Then South Carolina was the first state to secede, and then it kicked off the War by firing on Fort Sumter.

After the War, South Carolina was a leader in voter repression and Jim Crow. It even produced its own powerful version of the Klan in the 1870s, the Red Shirts. In July 1875, at Hamburg, S.C., approximately 100 Red Shirts attacked 30 black militiamen, killing two and then torturing and murdering four more. One white died. The Hamburg Massacre kicked off the Red Shirt violence of the 1876 gubernatorial election. Immediately following Hamburg approximately 100 Blacks and two Whites were killed in Ellenton, and five Whites and three Blacks were killed in Cainhoy.

The Red Shirts at Hamburg were led by Benjamin Tillman, who later served 24 years as a U.S. Senator from South Carolina. Tillman justified the execution at Hamburg of Simon Coker, a black state legislator. Coker had asked to pray. According to Tillman, while Coker was kneeling in prayer, it was declared that he was taking too long and “[t]he order ‘aim, fire,’ was given . . .”, presumably by Tillman. Tillman wrote as justification that at Hamburg the Red Shirts were in a battle to protect the Anglo Saxon way of life, which, whatever that may be, sort of begs the question.

Mike Stroud, Meriwether Monument, 2008, HMdb.org, used in accordance with site restrictions. Monument in John C. Calhoun Park, North Augusta, S.C., commemorating Thomas McVie Meriwether, the white casualty of the Hamburg Massacre, who “gave his life that the civilization builded by his fathers might be preserved for their childrens children unimpaired.”

The home of the founder of the Red Shirts, Confederate Brigadier General Martin Gary, was restored by the Daughters of the Confederacy in Edgefield, South Carolina, and is operated by a 501(c)(3) as a Red Shirt shrine. Admission is $5 for adults.

Segregation was defended in South Carolina into the 1970s. In 1964, Strom Thurmond, a former pro-segregationalist Dixiecrat nominee for President and U.S. Senator from South Carolina, supported Barry Goldwater against Lyndon Johnson and began the exodus of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party.

Brigadier General Martin Gary, founder of the Red Shirts, circa 1861-1865, Duke University. He looks quite the mad zealot.

  1. As an aside, I had assumed that none of my ancestors came through South Carolina, but there are at least a couple of fifth great-grandparents buried near Spartanburg, a Mary [?] and John Birdsong. Birdsong was a Revolutionary War major, and died in 1790, well before the Civil War. By the War my later Birdsong-related ancestors had moved on, though generally not from the Confederacy. They were just in different places. I suppose I carry some of the weight of South Carolina’s history, but one really couldn’t ask for a better last name to ponder than Birdsong. ↩︎
  2. Don’t tariffs just make your eyes glaze over? Apparently we’re going to have to revisit them soon enough. Who knew that tariffs could cause price increases? ↩︎
  3. Gutta-percha is a kind of rubber obtained from a tropical tree, the Palaquium gutta, and the first widely available thermoplastic was produced from its sap. Demand for gutta-percha in the 19th and early 20th centuries threatened the trees. In addition to canes for beating abolitionist senators, gutta-percha was used among other things to insulate the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cables and to revolutionize golf by providing the first solid-cores for golf balls. It is still used for root canals. ↩︎
  4. My Granddaddy was my family’s latest cotton farmer, but certainly not the first. During the Depression he once gave my Momma a bale of cotton to pay for her college tuition, so like a lot of Southerners, Black and White, I have a relatively direct tie to cotton. Notwithstanding the South’s early claim to cotton, now a lot of our cotton comes from somewhere else. It is irony on irony that much of China’s cotton that comes to us in Chinese-produced tee shirts and whatnot is grown by forced labor in the Uyghur region, where China is ethnically cleansing its Muslim minority. ↩︎