Tag: Fly rods

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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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Michigan and Ohio Packing List

I’m lumping these two states together. It’s hard to do them together, but it’s even harder to do them apart, and they do sit next to each other. So they’re lumped.

Gear

Our guides in both states wanted us to use their rods, which helps them because they can come to the launch with the rods rigged. We didn’t take rods at all. Lance in Michigan fished with 4-weight Winston rods, which meant that I was fishing with slightly lighter versions of what I would have lugged to Michigan anyway. Katie in Ohio fished with 7-weight G Loomis NRX or Sage rods, so I was fishing with different brands of the 7-weight that I would have lugged to Ohio.

In Michigan we used floating lines, same for Ohio except for a wee bit of sinking line fishing. I can’t imagine that anybody actually likes to fish with sinking lines. To cast with floating lines you just have to pick the line up off the top of the water. Now mind, that’s no easy task, and a good line pick-up is the heart of the cast, well, that and about a half-dozen other things that are also the heart of the cast, but with sinking lines you have to get the line to the top of the water before you can even begin to pick it up, and sinking lines are not known for casting easily anyway. The whole process is fraught with peril for everyone standing near me.

We also fished out of boats in both states, so in addition to not packing rods and reels we didn’t pack waders or boots. No waders, no boots, no rods, no reels . . . I did take some flies, and used a couple, but the guides had those too. It was the easiest packing ever.

Detroit

Detroit was a joy. Parts of it are still beat up, but I’ve never been in a town where people were prouder of their city. The first night at dinner at Alpino we asked our waiter if there was something in particular we should see, and he wrote out a page-long list of places for us. He recommended places for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He listed don’t-miss destinations and neighborhoods just to drive through. It was good advice, too. We spent parts of three days in Detroit, and could easily have spent three more, and we didn’t deviate much from our waiter’s advice.

The one place recommended by everyone we asked was the Detroit Institute of Art. We spent three hours there before we left for Grayling, and could have spent another four. We barely got off the third floor, which is the smallest floor. As museums go, it’s about as good as anywhere, and should be on everyone’s list of American art museums. I even fished while I was there.

Greek fish dish, between 340 and 330 BCE; Roman fish mosaic, 4th century A.D.; Detroit Institute of Art.

Detroit has a large Middle Eastern population, with estimates of over 300,000 people. Apparently the growth was a combination of the growth of the auto industry and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which is pretty serendipitous if you ponder it, and was then spurred by the lifting of restrictions on Arabic and Asian immigration by the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1965. The signage in Dearborn, for instance, is doubled in Arabic. We went to Dearborn for afternoon baked stuff at Shatila Bakery. No donuts, but a good bakery anyway.

Our Alpino waiter had suggested lunch at the Yemen Cafe, which was a diner in a fairly beat-up neighborhood. The cafe was busy with African Americans from the neighborhood and Yemenis in fairly traditional dress, including one guy wearing a jambiya dagger, the dagger that Peter O’Toole wears in Laurence of Arabia. Open carry.

Our waiter brought us free glasses of Yemeni tea to try. We ordered slabs of hot Yemeni bread, chicken gallaba with hummus, and lamb fasah. We were taking the advice of our Alpino waiter and didn’t know exactly what we were ordering, but sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Detroit was at it’s peak of wealth and industrial might in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Art Deco buildings from its heyday are magnificent. Our Alpino waiter suggested the Guardian Building and the Fisher Building, both of which have been preserved in fine form. It’s kinda like visiting the Sistine Chapel. You don’t so much comprehend it as just stand around and gawk. There were great mosaics in the Fisher Building, though I saw no fish.

Guardian Building, 1929

Fisher Building, 1928

The first morning I went for a run along the Detroit River, and when I tripped on the sidewalk and sprawled, customs officers offered me a bottle of water. The guy running in front of me came back to make sure I was ok. Detroiters are not only proud of their city, they’re friendly.

We took the Detroit Windsor Tunnel to Canada, and no matter what you may have heard I didn’t go there to buy Cuban cigars. Windsor looks like a good place to go if you’re in the market for cannabis, or a tattoo, or Cuban cigars. Cigars are heavily taxed and expensive in Canada, not that I would know.

We didn’t get to see the Tigers play because they were on the road, and I’m kinda glad. it gives me an excuse to revisit Detroit.

The first night we picked Alpino for dinner because it was the kind of Germanic high cuisine that we don’t really get in Houston. Alpino serves food from the Alps, which is German tinged with Swiss tinged with Italian, which makes for a nice combination. The food was good, our tour guide/waiter was great.

Our second night in Detroit we ate at Buddy’s Pizza, which first served Detroit-style pizza. Buddy’s was a Detroit bar, a former speakeasy, and it started serving pizza as a bar snack in the 40s. Square pizza is Sicilian, and the first pizzas were baked in liberated drip pans from the plants. I like to think of the pans as liberated anyway, though in truth they were apparently purchased from auto suppliers. Liberated drip pans just has a nice ring to it.

There are now multiple Buddy’s in the Detroit area, and I’m sure they’re all fine, but the original location reeks of authenticity. On the way in we asked an employee standing near the back door which pizza we should get. He told us his favorite was the Detroiter. Well of course it was.

He was a waiter but not our waiter, but before we left he went out of his way to visit our table and make sure we liked the pizza. Like I said, everyone was proud of their city, and who wouldn’t be? We really liked Detroit.

Cincinatti

After a day’s fishing in Ohio we spent two nights in Cincinatti. We went to a Reds game. We visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. I ate a hot dog with Skyline Chili and cheese, and we sat on a nice downtown square and listened to a lively band during Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest. We ate dinner at a completely forgettable restaurant, then we ate dinner the next night at another completely forgettable restaurant. We went to Graeter’s Ice Cream, and visited in line with two American Airlines flight attendants flying out of Dallas. It was nice enough, but it suffered in comparison to Detroit.

Skyline Chili, by the way, is actually a Greek ragu sauce usually served on spaghetti. It was dubbed as chili during the nationwide chili craze in the early part of the last century. It is not chili, and for Texans, calling it chili is heresy. It has cinnamon in it, and chocolate. I’ll just note that the Cincinnati Reds in recent years have consistently beaten my Astros, so eating Skyline Chili was debasement in hopes of appeasing the baseball gods. It’s no wonder that I didn’t enjoy Cincinnati as much as Detroit.

Of course Detroit then knocked my Astros out of the wild card round of the playoffs. Did I mention that I hate Detroit?

Hotels

In Detroit we stayed downtown in the Shinola Hotel. The room had lots of Shinola accessories, there was a Shinola watch store, and the downtown location made getting around Detroit easy. We walked to dinner at Alpino, and had the Tigers been in town we could have walked to the stadium.

In Cincinnati we stayed downtown at the 21C Museum Hotel, and were able to walk to the Reds game. There was plenty to do downtown, and we didn’t take the car out until we drove to the airport our last morning.

In Grayling we stayed at the Gates Au Sable Lodge, which sits on the bank of the Au Sable River, has a good fly shop and guide service, and has a good restaurant where we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every meal. The Lodge has also collected all of the possible trout fishing bibelots produced in its 50-year history to adorn every available decorative niche, as if it had hired an interior decorator from the classified ads at the back of an old copy of Field and Stream. There were rod racks on the wall above the bed, and wader hangers by the door to each room. There were framed flies and fish prints and mounted fish, and Au Sable boat-shaped light fixtures. I was especially fond of our room’s trout fishing carpet.

Playlists

There are a lot of similarities between my Ohio and Michigan playlists. They seem balanced, as if the two states took turns producing songsters, and they share a kind of rock and roll grit that you just don’t always find in other states. In Ohio there are the Black Keys, in Michigan Jack White. In Ohio there is Josh Ritter, Marc Cohn, and The National, in Detroit there’s MC5 and Fountains of Wayne. Of course it’s hard to top Detroit’s Motown. With Motown you get Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Aretha Franklin, the Spinners, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5 . . . Ohio does have the O’Jays, the Isley Brothers, and the Ohio Players, but Motown is Motown.

In Detroit there was Motown music playing everywhere. Well of course there was. It was like Hawaiian music in Hawaii. These people love their city.

The Supremes, The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS Television, 1966.

They really are good playlists, amazing playlists. Devo, Madonna, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Rare Earth and Grand Funk Railroad. Roy Rogers, Dean Martin, and Nine Inch Nails. Tracy Chapman and Doris Day. The Foo Fighters. They are great lists full of great music, and I won’t report you if you skip Kid Rock or the Amboy Dukes. No one has to listen to Kid Rock or the Amboy Dukes when they can listen instead to Stevie Wonder. Or Roy Rogers.

I had vowed I’d hum Baby Love every day in Michigan, and I did.

Guitar

I took the Kohno. I worked on Bach.

The Tyler Davidson Fountain, Cincinnati.

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North Dakota Packing List

Gear

I took a rod that was way too big for what I caught. Besides that I tied some 9 foot 3x trout leaders. I tied a lot of flies, including some almost perfect wooly buggers, which only took 30 years to accomplish. I also tied some Clouser minnows that I never used. My fly selection was fine, and really, for what I caught in North Dakota, they don’t make a rod that small.

Hotel

We stayed in downtown Fargo, in the Hotel Donaldson. The Donaldson is small, it only has 16 rooms, but its rooftop is a good place to sit in the evening, and downtown Fargo is a surprisingly lively place. It has a restored movie theater, and some good restaurants and coffee shops. It has stores. Where else can you find a downtown with stores?

There are more street people than one would expect, but it seems reasonably safe. I did have to skirt a couple of bodies on the way past the city library, but I think they were only sleeping.

Because we were downtown we drove a lot to look for fish. Over two days we put 450 miles on the rental car.

Donuts

There are three Sandy’s Donut shops in Fargo, though the one downtown isn’t open on Monday. They were oddly expensive, but they had a wide selection, and when you walked through the door the girl at the counter said “Can I help ya?” in a thick North Dakotan accent. Unlike, say, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I wouldn’t go back to Fargo just for the donuts, but they made for a healthy pre-fishing breakfast.

Restaurants

Notwithstanding the one awful hamburger in Valley City, food in North Dakota was pretty good. My friend and former law partner Brian said that when he was litigating in North Dakota during the fracking boom he ate walleye at every meal, including breakfast, and that it became his favorite fish. To find walleye on a menu we had to go to East Grand Forks, Minnesota, to the Blue Moose Bar and Grill. It was good, and if I ever go back to North Dakota I’ll get North Dakota restaurant suggestions from Brian. Weirdly, in Minnesota they served the walleye without tartar sauce. Tartar sauce may be too picant for Minnesotans.

Back in Fargo, we went across the river to Moorhead, to the oldest existing Dairy Queen franchise. As a Texan, I was surprised that Dairy Queens exist anyplace but Texas. I was stunned that Dairy Queens actually originated in Minnesota, and that per capita the highest concentration of Dairy Queens is in Minnesota, not Texas. The Moorehead Dairy Queen franchise agreement dates from the 1940s, and they have strange things on the menu that newer agreements don’t allow. They have, for instance, the favorite of my childhood, cherry dip cones.

There’s no seating inside the Moorehead Dairy Queen, but there’s a big seating area on the patio. My guess is that it gets cold on that patio in winter. I had the cherry-dipped Dilly Bar because (1) cherry dip and (2) the Moorehead Dairy Queen invented the Dilly Bar. Kris had a chocolate dip cone.

Now if I could just find a K&N Root Beer Stand.

When we got to the DQ there was one youngish couple. By the time we left, the patio was packed with old people. I suspect they heard I was there.

I had read something on the internet about Fargo’s best knoephla soup. Knoephla is a German potato/dumpling soup that’s ideal for Fargo winters. According to the internet, the best knoephla was at Wurst Bier Hall, where the menu featured (1) various kinds of wurst, (2) braised cabbage, (3) knoephla soup, (4) spoetzle dumplings, and (5) beer.

There were four kinds of mustard to go with your choice of wurst.

The second placed knoephla was at Luna Fargo, which was high end in a low-key sort of way. It tended more to wine drinking than beer, and there was no knoephla soup on the menu the night we went. There was a pickle appetizer plate which seemed properly North Dakotan, and the pickled watermelon rind was brilliant.

Our last night in Fargo we ate at Mezaluna. We could walk there from our hotel. It’s the kind of place where one orders martinis, and I did. The fish was very good.

Where We Didn’t Go

We didn’t go to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park to see the Badlands. I would go back to North Dakota to see the Park, but not to fish.

Playlist

If Utah is cursed by the Osmonds, North Dakota is cursed by Lawrence Welk. The guy started recording in the 30s, and it’s brutal that he never stopped.

There’s also Peggy Lee, but you can only listen to “Fever” so many times. Kris asked why there was so much Lynne Anderson on the play list. I like Lynne Anderson well enough but I thought it was obvious that there weren’t a lot of other choices.

Famous Actors

We stopped by the Fargo-Moorehead Visitors Center to pick up a highway map and to visit again with North Dakota’s most famous actor. He’s still there, still as handsome as ever, and he’s still autographed by the Coen Bros.

It’s too bad there’s not an Oscar for best portrayal of a wood chipper.

Guitar

I didn’t take one. I felt guilty about not practicing, and I may need to make some money busking before this is over, but it was liberating not having to haul it through the airport.

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Georgia Packing List

Gear

For trout in North Georgia we took 5-weight rods with floating trout lines. We used long 9-foot 4X fluorocarbon leaders with weighted nymphs. I took an Abel disc drag reel, kinda the pinnacle of obsessively over-built trout reels, but it didn’t get much of a workout. For all the trout I caught I could have used a spool of bright yellow sewing thread, or kitchen twine, or bailing wire, with any of them tied to a stick I picked up on the riverbank. It would have been harder to cast, but I would have caught just as many fish.

In saltwater we fished with 8-weight rods and floating redfish lines, with 7-foot 16 lb leaders. We used the guide’s flies, which if you squinted real hard looked a bit like tarpon toads. They were prettier flies than what I use at home for redfish. My redfish flies look like deformed bits of cotton plucked straight from the boll and colored brown with a Magic Marker. I forgot to take a photo of the guide’s redfish flies.

We could have used the guides’ rods instead of hauling our own to Georgia, but how could we ever amortize their cost if we didn’t haul them with us? We gotta get our money’s worth.

Barbecue

I found a list of Georgia barbecue places on the internet, and on the way to Savannah we stopped at one. Because I didn’t particularly like the barbecue, I’m not going to mention it’s name. Just remember, it’s somewhere between Ellijay, Georgia, and Savannah. I’m sure there are better places than the one I chose, but Georgia being Southern I expected anything that made a list to be quality barbecue. This wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Maybe I’ll try again someday.

We did get a pretty good Cuban sandwich in Blue Ridge, but as a Texan I have strong barbecue opinions but am mostly ignorant about Cuban sandwiches. I thought it could have used some pickles, but what do I know?

Donuts

We stayed in the northside Atlanta suburbs for wedding festivities. Two mornings we ate Atlanta suburban donuts, once at a utilitarian donut shop next to a gas station, Marietta Donuts, and once at an artisanal donut shop, Doughnut Dollies. Both had good donuts, and Doughnut Dollies managed to walk that fine line between too much imagination on the one side and boredom on the other. That’s not easy to do when you’re hawking artisanal doughnuts. I especially liked the frosting on Doughnut Dollies’ strawberry and orange doughnuts. All that fruit made me feel healthy.

Restaurants

Ok, so the barbecue we tried wasn’t great, but we otherwise ate a lot of good food in Georgia. In eight days I gained eight pounds.

The first night we went to a Korean place, Woo Nam Jeong Stone Bowl House, on Atlanta’s Buford Highway. Atlanta seems mostly to be either Anglo (50.7% in the metro area) or black (32.4% in the metro area), but that’s mostly. There is a Hispanic and Asian population, and Buford Highway is this strange culinary accident where a lot of Asian and Hispanic mom and pop restaurants have landed. I could have gone back to that Korean place for every subsequent meal. The food was so elegant but at the same time so homey and delicious that it was impossible not to be happy. All those dishes of pickled stuff couldn’t have been more beautiful. And all the bowls matched, which is more than you can always say at our house.

I suspect I could eat for days on Buford Highway.

Lunch Saturday we ate at Mary Mac’s Tea Room. It’s an Atlanta meat-and-three African American institution that serves huge–and I mean really really huge–portions of Southern food. Covering the walls they had photos of famous people who’d eaten there. There were several of Jimmy Carter and, of all people, the 14th Dalai Lama. I guess the Dalai Lama knows a good meat-and-three when he sees it. They didn’t ask for my photo for the wall, but I suspect that’s only because I couldn’t clean my plate.

Sunday evening we ate at a Vegan Mexican/Cuban place, La Semilla. Vegan Mexican/Cuban seems to me a strange combination, more because of the Mexican/Cuban than the vegan, but it was completely successful and very hip. I’m sure some of that hipness rubbed off, and you’re now reaping the benefit. Our friend Shelley can’t eat dairy, and she declared the vegan queso the trip highlight, because queso.

In Savannah we ate at The Grey, which is one of Georgia’s best-known restaurants. They priced accordingly, but it was worth it. If nothing else, it’s located in the old Savannah Greyhound Bus station, and who can resist repurposed 1930s streamlined modern art deco architecture? We couldn’t decide what to eat, so we copped out and ordered the tasting menu. They also had the greatest cop-out martini ever, named for one of the owners who could never decide what she wanted. It was advertised as a mix of curated gins and vermouths, with both a twist of lemon and olives. It was the perfect martini for the indecisive, and could only have been improved if they’d both shaken and stirred it. It was excellent, and if I’d drunk two it would likely have been more excellenter. I only had one and I could still barely speak English.

We ate at Common Thread, which was also highly recommended, expensive, and excellent, and we got ice cream at Leopold’s because we were walking down the street and there was a line. Who can resist a line at an ice cream parlor, and if you can, why would you want to? There’s a lot of good food in Savannah. There’s a lot of good food in Georgia, though the jury’s out on the barbecue. Did I mention I gained eight pounds?

The Civil War

Georgia was the industrial heart of the Confederacy. From 1863 to War’s end, Georgia was the final focus of the Union’s Western campaign. After the Confederates under General Bragg defeated the Union under General Rosecrans at Chickamauga, Ulysses Grant took charge of the Western campaign. Grant changed the War. Under Grant, General Sherman led the Union in two of the most important campaigns of the War, the Battle of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. I had three great-great grandfathers at Atlanta, two Confederate, one Union. Those Union victories cut off the Army of Northern Virginia, and with Grant’s Virginia campaign the War ended.

Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863, was a major Union loss, and the War’s second bloodiest battle. There were more than 34,000 Union and Confederate casualties, and more than 4,000 deaths. That means that over three days, 34,000 Americans, Southern and Northern, were shot, stabbed, or blown up, and more than 4,000 of them died. The Union fought at Chickamauga to capture the Chattanooga railroad hub and open Georgia for Union invasion. The South fought to destroy the Union’s Army of the Cumberland. The South won the battle, but under Bragg they didn’t cripple the Union army. Because the South failed, two months later at Missionary Ridge Chattanooga fell to the Union under Grant. That defeat at Chattanooga may well have ended the South.

We visited the Chickamauga battlefield, and weirdly it’s in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Congressional District. It’s odd that one small region could produce two such catastrophes.

Chickamauga National Battlefield. Apple Maps.

Back to Atlanta. In addition to wedding festivities and eating, we visited the Botanical Garden and the High Art Museum, but best of all we visited the strange Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama at the Atlanta History Center. The History Center has a solid presentation about the Battle of Atlanta, of which the Cyclorama is only a part, but the Cyclorama is its own attraction. It’s a 358′ x 49′ hand painted canvas, which is a painting longer than a football field. It may be the largest oil painting in the world.

Some interesting tidbits about the Cyclorama. According to the history center, Southern troops at the Battle of Atlanta outnumbered Northern, but the Cyclorama was painted in the 1880s in Ohio, a Union state. In the painting the South is vastly outnumbered. When the Cyclorama was first moved to Atlanta in 1891, many of the Union soldiers were repainted with grey uniforms to show the South winning the battle. It’s a problem with history. It’s hard not to slant the presentation.

Where We Stayed

In Atlanta we stayed in the Roswell DoubleTree. It was fine, but where we stayed was less important than that we were in the suburbs, and (except for the Atlanta Brave’s Truist Park), a lot of Atlanta eateries and attractions seem to be located centrally within easy driving range of downtown. Every time we went somewhere–well every time we went somewhere other than Total Wine, REI, or the wedding–we had to drive 20 miles. If I ever go back to Atlanta, I’ll stay somewhere central.

In North Georgia we stayed at a B&B, the Overlook Inn. If you’re going to some relatively remote mountain destination, you’re statutorily required to stay in a B&B. It was pretty, and on our second night we ate dinner there. Kris always complains about B&Bs because on the mornings we fish we never get to eat the breakfast, but she didn’t complain about this place, maybe because our friends the Marmons were there. And the dinner we ate there–all four of us had the smoked trout–was great. The Georgia mountain views were also great.

In Savannah we stayed at a restored 1960s motor lodge, The Thunderbird Inn. Who doesn’t like a restored 1960s motor lodge? This one had everything you could want except Magic Fingers, a swimming pool, and free parking. The turndown service was a Moon Pie and RC Cola, and there was 24-hour coffee and popcorn in the lobby. The rooms were small, the colors bright, and the sign was neon, so it was almost perfect in every way. It was also very central, but everything in Savannah seems reasonably central.

Where We Didn’t Go

When we fished in North Carolina we stayed with our friend Bryan, and his family had given him a week in Blue Ridge, Georgia, for his birthday. We went to Blue Ridge, and we had a good Cuban sandwich there, but Bryan didn’t go to Blue Ridge for the Cubano. Bryan went to Bill Oyster’s six-day bamboo rod building class. He hadn’t been yet when we stayed with them, but later he sent me pictures of the classes and the rod he built.

Now I can’t find Bryan’s pictures. They’re on my computer somewhere, probably under my virtual bed, or in a virtual drawer in my virtual closet. They were great photos, and I was jealous. Bryan made a beautiful rod.

Bill Oyster is famous for his rod-building class, and maybe more famous for his bamboo rods and his metal engraving. Bamboo rods aren’t explicable. They’re best compared to an old Jaguar E Type, or a 1956 Martin D-28, or a first edition of Absalom, Absalom. It may not be the most useful thing in the world, but it’s so . . . irreplaceable, beautiful, timeless . . .

One of Bill Oyster’s bamboo rods built for Jimmy Carter. Photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com

And Bill Oyster makes some of the most beautiful bamboo rods in the world. He made two for Jimmy Carter, who was a serious fly fisher. They were gorgeous things, with gorgeous engraving. Oyster told a story to the American Fly Fishing Museum about how he made the first rod for President Carter, and how Carter was going to fish it a bit, sign it, and then it would be sold as a fundraiser for the Carter Presidential Library. Carter fished it a bit and then told the Library that they’d better buy another because he wasn’t giving back the first.

I remember talking to Kris after Bryan went to Blue Ridge, and she just didn’t get it. Why would somebody pay good money to build something, when for the same money they could buy a rod from a real builder? I’m still baffled by her response. Why wouldn’t you want to build your own bamboo rod? And also the prices aren’t the same. The rod class currently costs $2,950–and almost all the classes for 2024 are full. Oyster also has some fly rods listed for sale online, and an 8′ 5 weight lists for $5,760. The cheapest rod listed is a 8′ 9 weight saltwater rod for $3,320.

8 5-weight Bill Oyster Master, photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com

Isn’t that rod-building class a bargain?

I don’t know though. That 8′ 5 weight looks pretty sweet. I might have to get a prettier reel though. And I might have to give up some stuff, like food.

Benedetto Guitars are made in Savannah, but I’m afraid they’re out of my league. I guess Oyster fly rods are also out of my league.

Playlist

Georgia had a great music playlist. Blind Willie McTell, Gnarls Barkley, Harry James, R.E.M., Cat Power, James Brown, Trisha Yearwood, Gladys Knight, Little Richard, Fletcher Henderson, Otis Redding, The Allman Brothers, The B-52s, Ma Rainey, Indigo Girls, Jessye Norman, Robert Shaw, Robert Cray, Kaki King . . .

There’s also Atlanta HipHop, plus there all those great songs about Georgia. I could listen to Rainy Night in Georgia once a day from here on out, and never get tired of it. There’s Georgia on My Mind, I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train, Midnight Train to Georgia, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and if you get tired of those there’s Moon River and Skylark.

That playlist is good enough to keep me happy on a six-hour drive, through Georgia, on a rainy night.

Blind Willie McTell

Guitar

I took the Kohno and practiced some. I should have found a transcription of Moon River.