Tag: Music

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Packing List: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia

For a week long road trip that included a college graduation, some family, some friends, and five days fishing, we took some clothes–way too many clothes. For fishing, I also took:

  • Raingear.  Rain pants and a rain jacket. You don’t need rain pants when you’re fishing in waders, but we weren’t in waders on The Chesapeake. I bought Andy a new pair, and discovered my pair had a ripped seat.  It’s probably good I wasn’t sitting down. Kris couldn’t find her rain pants. It rained and it was cold and there was nothing good about that.
  • Waders, boots, wading staffs.  Kris always preferred an old pair of Orvis canvass boots from 20-odd years ago, but they were constantly delaminating and I suggested she buy a new pair for the trip. Not that we trout fished in Maryland, but because of disease felt is no longer allowed there, nor in Alaska, Missouri, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and South Dakota. For the two days on boats I had a new pair of Keen sandals because the old pair were constantly delaminating.  Maybe it’s us.
  • Rods.  More than we needed. Two 9’ 5 weights for trout, two 9’  6 weights for bass, and a 10’ 4 weight because after suffering rod fever in February I didn’t suffer long.  We used the 6 weights for the Shenandoah, and the smaller rods for West Virginia.  We used the guide’s 9 weights for the Chesapeake—I don’t own a 9 weight and will have to contemplate that. We also borrowed the guide’s short 8’  3 weights for the tiny bookies—I don’t own any 3 weights and will have to contemplate that. Fly fishing is a very contemplative sport.
  • Reels.  Some reels. Floating lines.  The guide on the Shenandoah River said he’d toss in a sink tip, but I don’t know if he did and we wouldn’t have used it. We used the guide’s rods on the Chesapeake because I didn’t own heavy sinking lines.  I started to buy them, but wasn’t sure what I needed.  Now I know. I’ll have to contemplate that.
  • Flies. I took no saltwater flies.  I thought about it, mostly because I was curious about whether any of my redfish flies would work, but the flies we used in saltwater were much longer and heavier than anything I own.  They were big 6” flies with big lead eyes. For the Shenandoah, the guide brought Shenk’s white streamers on which we caught fish, and some olives that I never fished.  I had tied a bunch of dragon tails before we left, mostly because I was getting skunked at home on larger black bass. On the Shenandoah I caught some fish, but I also got lots of slappy short takes. The flies were just too long.  I’ve ordered some mini-dragon tails hoping they’re shorter, and long size 4 hooks, but suspect they may just be the same tail as the regular with 1-1/2” cut off the fat end.  I also took all my trout flies–and I have a lot–but mostly we fished the guide’s flies.  I think all of the rainbows and the one brown I caught were on various colors of squirmy worms, and two of the bookies on big stimulaters and the third on a bead-head pheasant tail nymph.
  • Leaders. Some nylon tippet.  Some Fluorocarbon tippet. I never used the Flourocarbon.  For the stripers we used a four foot piece of straight 20 pound.  It fit nicely around my neck.  For the smallmouth we used 9’ 2X.  Approximately 9’ anyway,  I’d tied in bits and pieces of stuff, and I sort of guess at lengths.  For the trout, 9’ 5X with foam strike indicators for the squirmy worms.  The morning I fished on my own I switched to some Orvis strike putty that had been floating around my vest for 15 or 20 years. It worked fine. It always works fine. I don’t know why I ever use anything else.
  • Sunglasses. Amber and low light polarized Smiths.  Everyone loves low light sunglasses.  I love low light  sunglasses. I lost mine in West Virginia that time I fell down in the pond.
  • Fishing vest.  Complete with all the usual junk that accumulates in fishing vests.  Some split shot (which I used), some nippers, hemostats, various kinds of indicators, and nets.  West Virginia apparently prohibits cloth nets on catch and release water. I don’t get the sense that there’s lots of enforcement.
  • Sling pack. I meant to pack a waterproof sling pack for the boats but forgot it.  I didn’t need it.
  • Sunscreen. I meant to pack a buff and sun gloves but they were in the sling pack. I need lots of sunscreen.
  • A water proof Nikon and a GoPro.  I bought a Nikon CoolPix waterproof camera that I wore around my neck while fishing.  It was easier than the GoPro and took better pictures, kept me from draining my phone battery, and kept my phone out of the river.  I loved it, but you can’t see the view screen in high sun. Kris took her birding camera and lenses but never used it.
  • My Corpus Christi Hooks baseball cap, which T.C. Campbell admired. It’s a good looking cap, and because it’s fitted I can wear the GoPro on the back.

For general life I took my travel guitar (I’m re-memorizing Tárrega’s Capricho árabe so I can forget it again).  On the plane I read The Chesapeake in Focus by Tom Pelton, who worked for the Baltimore Sun and hosts The Environment in Focus for NPR. We listened to a lot of Tom Rosenbauer’s Orvis podcasts when we were driving. At Harper’s Ferry I bought a copy of Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign by Jonathan A. Noyalas and read that.

When we were driving around we listened to the playlists on my phone:

Maryland

Songs about Baltimore are mostly sad and gritty. There’s just something about Baltimore that makes it perfect for a dismal song.

  • Raining in Baltimore, Counting Crows
  • Baltimore,  Lyle Lovett
  • Baltimore,  with versions by Nina Simone and Randy Newman
  • Streets of Baltimore, with versions by Bobby Bare and Gram Parsons.
  • Baltimore Oriole, with versions Hoagy Charmichael and George Harrison. George Harrison?
  • Hungry Heart, Bruce Springsteen
  • Feets Don’t Fail Me Now, Little Feat
  • The Sad Death of Hattie McDaniel, Bob Dylan
  • The Lady Came from Baltimore, Tim Hardin
  • Tryin’ to Get to Heaven, Lucinda Williams

Plus, lots by Billie Holiday, Eubie Blake, Frank Zappa, and Phillip Glass. I listened to Glass’s Low Synphony three times on the flight. It sounded just like the Chesapeake should sound.  I tried to listen to it in the car in Maryland and Kris made me move on. She doesn’t like Glass.

All of us would be better listening more to Billie Holiday.

Virginia

  • Alexandria, Virginia, Bill Jennings
  • The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, The Band.  I never thought of this song as tied to a particular place other than the Generic South, but it mentions Virginia and Tennessee.
  • Virginia Girl, Deer Tick.
  • Carry Me Back to Virginia,  Old Crow Medicine Show.  Oddly, I couldn’t find a copy of Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny, which was retired as the Virginia state song because of racial content.  There are lots of versions though, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, and Louis Armstrong.
  • Virginia Moon,  Foo Fighters.
  • East Virginia Blues, by Robert Earl Keen. There’s the classic version by Ralph Stanley, so I had them both.
  • Shenandoah, by Bill Frisell.  Frisell is a jazz guitarist, and this for many years has been a favorite recording.  Shenandoah is apparently the interim state song of Virginia.  It’s apparently not the official state song because the only state it mentions is Missouri.
  • Sweet Virginia,  The Rolling Stones.  I’m Not a Stones fan much. Typical Stones. Kinda self-absorbed.
  • Yorktown, from Hamilton.  Not much Virginia, but I saw Hamilton last week, and Kris liked it.
  • James River  by Checker and  James River by Jan Smith.  Different songs I think.  Haven’t noticed them enough to decide.

Plus Some Old Crow Medicine Show, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ralph Stanley.  I ended up humming Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s Cheek to Cheek all through Virginia and West Virginia. And Jason Mraz.  Not much good to be said about Jason Mraz, but no harm either.

West Virginia

  • My Home Among the Hills, The Carter Family
  • Grandma’s Hands, Willie Nelson
  • Coal Miner’s Daughter, Loretta Lynn.  OK, technically that’s Kentucky, but close enough
  • Country Roads, Take Me Home, John Denver.  I had to buy two versions of this.  The first I downloaded had been remastered with strings. It was awful. I have immensely fond memories of this song from driving out to feed the horse when I was 14.
  • West Virginia My Home, with versions by Hazel Dickens and The Hillbilly Gypsies.
  • Green Rolling Hills, Emmylou Harris
  • Need You, Tim McGraw
  • Linda Lou, Bill Monroe
  • I Wanna Go Back to West Virginia, Spike Jones
  • West Virginia Wildflower, Stacy Grubb
  • A Country Boy Can Survive, Hank Williams Jr. I’m not a fan.

Plus some Kathy Mattea.  I also put Copland’s Appalachian Spring and O’Connor’s Appalachia Waltz on the list. They seem to fit, even though O’Connor is from Seattle and Copeland from Brooklyn.  We were listening to Appalachian Spring crossing from Virginia to West Virginia, and expected every mountain turn to open into a vista.  Mostly they didn’t, but it sure kept me awake.

 

 

 

 

 

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Maryland

Steven Johnson, Wikimedia Commons

I suspect that Maryland has always felt the curse of being so close to Virginia, both in geography and demeanor, but always coming off as a bit the lesser. It got started  later, 1630 instead of 1607. It wasn’t quite as English, being a haven for Huguenots and Catholics and other non-Anglicans. For us outsiders looking in it feels more foreign, less so than Louisiana but still, foreign. Baltimore ain’t an Anglo Saxon sort of word. It was settled by more tradesmen and fewer gentlemen. It was more urban, with Baltimore the major Southern City in the 18th Century. Even it’s most famous corpse, Edgar Allan Poe, was raised in Virginia. Virginia produced George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. Maryland produced Spiro T. Agnew.

Virginia shows up in the state song, Maryland My Maryland:

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain,

Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!

What Maryland seems to have done in the modern world better than just about anybody is produce slightly quirky but immensely influential musicians (and also John Waters, who fits right in): Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Eubie Blake, Frank Zappa, Phillip Glass. I really like Phillip Glass. I really like Phillip Glass. I really like Phillip Glass. I really like Mr. Glass.

Sorry.

Maryland, with +6 million residents and about 12,400 square miles, ranks sixth among states in population density. Modern Maryland is an urban state. Modern Marylanders do not identify as Southern, but historically Maryland was a slave state, with 87,000 slaves in 1860. Had Lincoln not suspended habeas corpus, declared martial law, and arrested the Confederate sympathizers in the Maryland Assembly, Maryland would likely have seceded. Not that there’s anything wrong with Mr. Lincoln, notwithstanding the Supreme Court ruling against him on the whole habeas thing. About a third of Maryland volunteers in the Civil War fought for the Confederacy. Of course the other two-thirds fought for the Union.

Again, Maryland My Maryland: 

She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she’ll come! she’ll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

So Maryland, like Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware–the other slave states that didn’t secede–was a bit on the cusp. It had always been different than its Southern neighbor. It had 87,000 slaves in 1860, but it also had 84,000 free blacks. However, if you asked Frederick Douglass, another Maryland famous son, whether Maryland was North or South, I’m pretty sure Mr. Douglass would say South, no question. It was in Maryland that Douglass was enslaved. It was from Maryland that Douglass escaped.

What Maryland is now is tougher to say. There are the D.C. bedroom communities: relatively wealthy, educated, urban. There’s agriculture, and there’s the Chesapeake Bay. There’s Baltimore, a city built to hold tens of thousands of stevedores but now coping with container shipping. It takes a lot fewer people to operate a crane. In 2017, Baltimore had the highest per capita murder rate of any city in the nation.

Notwithstanding its troubles, Baltimore is a fun city. Camden Yards is great, and the Astros won when I saw them there. I also had two great dinners in Baltimore, at a classic restaurant, Charleston, and an edgier place, Woodberry Kitchen. I’ve eaten the crab cakes while drinking local beer. We also had some good hipster donuts. If Brooklyn were in the South, it would be Baltimore. And in Maryland, on the Chesapeake, we’ll fish for stripers. I’ve never caught a striper. Don’t get your hopes up.

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Small Texas Interlude

Yesterday we drove our skiff from Galveston, on the Texas Gulf Coast, 250 miles west on I-10, the highway that in my world stretches from El Paso to New Orleans (but in reality goes a bit further), to a tiny community outside San Antonio, Elmendorf, where we dropped the skiff off at the builder for some work and its motor’s 100-hour service.

We keep the boat in a dry stack, and don’t trailer often. Everything from loading the boat on the trailer to towing it through Houston down the interstate to San Antonio is terrifying.  We’re still married I think, at least no papers have been served on me yet. Kris did an excellent job on that last 100 miles into the New Water Boatworks. Let me say that again. Kris did an excellent job, and I’m sorry I yelled at her. I’m even sorry I offered advice from time to time while she was driving.

We’d planned to fish the Guadalupe late in the day, but it was after 4:00 when we dropped off the boat. We drove to New Braunfels, found our motel, and ate German food and drank German beer at Alpine Haus. After dinner we went to Gruene Hall to listen to music. Chronologically we might have been the elders at Gruene Hall, but as Kris noted a lot of younger folk looked like they’d been ridden hard more miles than us. Listening to the main attraction, Uncle Lucius, was like reading a pretty good mystery novel the plot of which you’d read a half-dozen times before. The opening act, Folk Family Revival, was terrific.

A couple of months ago, three guides from Go Outside Expeditions had done a presentation at Bayou City Anglers on trout fishing on the Guadalupe. They did such a nice job that last week I emailed them about fishing the Guadalupe.  The owner, Chris Adams, said that with the warmer weather the fishing on the Guadalupe was slowing (which was a surprise to me–I never knew it was fast). He recommended fishing the San Marcos.

I was happy as could be. I like the San Marcos, and many years ago had canoed it a good 20 times and had fished it once, but that was old history. It’s a Texas Hill Country river (though not really in the Hill Country), 75 miles long from its start at San Marcos Springs to its confluence with the Guadalupe. It’s lovely, with greenish clear water and good flow and lots of descents through class I rapids. Clovis Culture artifacts have been found at its headwaters, so it’s one of the oldest continuously settled sites in North America. Bank to bank it’s small, just right for goofing around for a day, which means it’s just right for fly fishing.

Prairie Lea between Luling and the town of San Marcos used to have the best kolaches in Texas, but it’s a long way out of the way from nowhere and the shop didn’t last. My high school classmate Mark Morgan’s aunt is the last house on the right on the way from Prairie Lea to the river, and Mark met us at the river because that’s where we met Chris-the-Guide and Mark happened to be in Prairie Lea. Confused? Kris was. What’s to wonder? Mark was there to add local color, mostly orange.

I only ever remember one lazy fishing guide. A redfish guide once dropped me off the boat and told me to stand there and watch for the fish to swim by. None came. I think the guide motored off and took a nap. Chris-the-Guide on the other hand was great. He knew his river and kept us fishing, working his way through downed trees, rowing us into position to cast, ducking when I cast, and  recovering hung flies. It was hard work, dragging the raft over trees and shallow gravel and staying calm while we dropped stuff into the water, including me. The spa treatment was free.

Kris-Not-the-Guide fished most of the day with a popper, I fished most of the day with a weighted streamer, typical bass stuff. Kris fished her Orvis 5 weight, I fished my Winston 6 weight. It all worked fine, just like Chris had said. Chris-the-Guide was a Winston pro-staff guide, and we talked about how nice the Winston rods felt casting but more important how pretty they are. Chris said there were people who didn’t like their looks.  I would never have imagined someone could find those pretty rods boring. You learn all sorts of stuff from guides.

We talked a lot on the way down the river. Chris suggested places to fish in North Carolina and Georgia and Virginia. He grew up a Southern kid, in Georgia, and while his accent passed for Texan he was more polite than us, and he unfailingly addressed me as sir. With age lots of people do, but I suspect that’s how Chris always talks to clients, and that it was something drilled into him by a correct Georgia upbringing.

Nothing we caught was big, the biggest was maybe a pound, but it was lively and fun casting. We pounded the bank, putting the fly as close as we could then taking a few strips then doing it again, just like Chris-the-Guide told us.  There were black bass, Guadalupe bass, sunfish (which I found myself calling perch–I haven’t called them perch in a good 50 years), and warmouth. We caught several black bass/Guadalupe hybrids, and a few purer Guadalupe bass, and Guadalupes being the state fish of Texas, that was particularly satisfying. I like to think that Guadalupes were what Cabeza de Vaca labeled trout when he came through in the 1500s.  The Guadalupe bass behave more like trout than black bass, feeding in faster water off seams and runs in the river. Or maybe Cabeza de Vaca called all fish trout. Or maybe my memory’s faulty and Cabeza de Vaca didn’t talk about trout at all.

We probably caught 15 fish in the five hours we were on the river, which for us is something of a record.

Morgan, the local color at the top of the post and perfectly good fly fisher, had stayed put to catfish bankside where we put in. chicken liver. Doughbait. Eight pound channel cat.

 

 

 

 

 

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Packing List

What do I take on a fly fishing trip that is not a fly fishing trip? Of course I always take too much. In rough order of importance:

Suntan lotion.  I’m heading for the Sunshine State, and I’ve got that whole swarthy northern European thing going on, without the swarthy.

Lifeproof water proof phone case.  I remember to use the waterproof phone case every other fishing trip.  I have drowned many phones, and the next time I dunk my phone in water it will be on the trip when I forget the case.  I did some research on the case when I bought it, but none of the reviews mentioned that the case makes your phone unusable. This is particularly helpful on a fishing trip because it means if anyone calls you can’t answer.

Phone. My phone is critical because it includes my Florida playlist. Did you know that if you don’t like Jimmy Buffett, there’s not much music from Florida? When you look up best songs about Florida, one-third will be rap, one-third will be Jimmy Buffett, and one-third will be songs like Gulf Coast Highway by Nanci Griffith, which I really like, but which is about bluebonnets and Texas. There are some good musicians born in Florida that I never think of as Floridian: Ray Charles, Graham Parsons, and the Allman Brothers. There are some good songs that might be about Florida by Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. There’s a whole Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special Southern rock thing that I never much cared for. There are some good musicians who I identify as Floridian: Cannonball Adderley, Tom Petty, and Arturo Sandoval. On the whole though the state’s music sucks compared to the music from Memphis. But then what state’s doesn’t?

iPad. It’s got both Google Earth and my Kindle. I found a great anthology, The Florida Reader, to read on the trip.

Reading glasses. I can still thread the eye of a size 18 nymph with a 5x leader without glasses, but it’s mostly guesswork. Ok, it’s all guesswork. I like to hang a pair of reading glasses around my neck in case I want to read a menu.

Some underwear, some socks, and a tee shirt.  I need a tee shirt to sleep in. Underwear is always a good thing.

My boat bag. That’s a whole other discussion, but do you know where I put my saltwater pliers?

Keen sandals. I bought these Keens when my 26-year old son was 13 to wear with a tuxedo jacket and swim trunks to a private school gala. I never wore the swim trunks again, and there have been years I haven’t worn the sandals. They’ve become my fishing shoes of choice however, and have been re-glued many times. I keep thinking that they’re not going to last much longer.

Some fishing pants, a fishing shirt, a fleece sweater, rain pants, and rain jacket. The low will be in the 50s and a high in the 70s. It’s supposed to rain. I have to remember, I can always buy clothes if I get it wrong, but wet is no fun.

Running shorts, polyester running shirt, and running shoes. I might get a run in. I do get runs in. I really do.

A guitar and a copy of the Sor 20 Estudios. I have a little travel guitar that’s been to Portugal and Argentina and Mexico and Arkansas and a lot of places in between. I glued it back together once. Sometimes with long layovers I’ll sit in the airport and play. It’s always good for a conversation. I’m working on Sor’s Variations of a Theme by Mozart, and when I get through it to my satisfaction I get to smoke a cigar.

Shorts and my Altuve Astros jersey with the World Series patch. This is for spring training, and did I mention that the Astros won the World Series?

A toothbrush. My nod to Jack Reacher.

A 7 weight and an 8 weight, and some bass flies. In case there’s time to get to a canal. Otherwise we’re using the guide’s rods.

Some resort casual wear. Whatever that is.  We have a reservation at the Flagler Steakhouse in the Breakers on Saturday, and that’s their dress code. I hope that includes Keen sandals. We couldn’t afford to stay at the Breakers, so I figured we’d go for dinner.

Dramamine. This will not be flats fishing, and I get seasick.