Mississippi Donuts

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

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

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

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

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


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

* * *

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

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

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

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

Helios 3

We took two rods to the Guadalupe, the 5 weight Orvis Helios 3 I gave Kris for Christmas and my Winston 6 weight.  This was my year for buying rods, and I bought the 6 weight Winston in June before a trip to Arkansas, and put a Hardy Duchess reel on it.  You want aesthetics?  Match a Winston with a Hardy reel and it’s a thing of beauty.  I’ve fished with an older Winston 5 weight for a while now, and I like Winstons.  I like that green.  I like the nickel hardware and the burled wood reel seats.  They’re just pretty, and they feel right to me: they have substance.

Kris though has this thing for Orvis rods, and the lighter the better.  She wanted the 8 weight, but we have a lot of 8 weights ’round here, ranging from an old Orvis Rocky Mountain on which the 25-year warranty has expired through a Helios 2.  Eight weights are really the rod of choice on the Coastal Plain, and we’ve got Sages and a Thomas & Thomas and some Orvis.  They’ll catch most things we see in saltwater, and they’ll throw big bass flies.  They’re good in wind, and there’s always wind.  Anyone needs an 8 weight, I’ve got a store full.  Plus I’d just bought a new Loomis 7.

But at the Orvis store the 8 weight Helios 3 did cast great, and I was tempted.  After all, I’d get to fish it.  But I got her the 5 weight, even though when I cast it at the store I thought it felt whispy and rattly.  She doesn’t have a 5 weight, she would only be happy with the Helios 3D, and I thought it would be a great deal because I have lots of old 5 weight reels sitting around.  I went to Bayou Cithy Angler and got her the Amplitude 5 weight mpx line.  Christmas morning she was thrilled.  I also gave her a new Astros jersey.  She was thrilled with that too.

I put the line on a Ross Cimarron reel, circa 1995, and the day after Christmas we went to the Guadalupe.  The reel was unacceptable.  Too large.  Too bulky.  Not sufficiently . . . matched. Not that aesthetics matter to me.

The day after the day after Christmas we were back at Bayou City Anglers, and she picked the Ross Colorado Light reel, the one with nothing to it but a bit of click and pawl.  I told her that she could get a much friendlier drag system–of course I didn’t tell her that every trout reel I own is click and pawl.  But why would my opinion matter? I never catch fish anyway.  And it did make a beautiful combination with that rod.  Did you know that reel has heart cut-outs, just like a circa-1973 DeRosa?

So yesterday on the Guadalupe I tried out her rod for the second time.  I’m not a bad caster, but I’ve got a tendency to get tailing loops by overpowering my forward cast, and unless I think about it I get a bit of a wrist twirl that leaves my fly five feet to the left of the fly line.  But at a reasonable distance with enough concentration I can get within a yard or so of my target. All I can say is that the Orvis casts true.  You send the fly somewhere, and it goes there.  At the store I thought it whispy.  On the water I thought it telegraphic.  Or digital. Or something.

As for the aesthetics, it’s not as pretty as my Winston, but it’s a handsome rod, especially with that Ross reel.  And when you go to pick it out of a pile of rods, it’s the easiest thing in the world to spot.