Tag: Restaurants

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Oklahoma Packing List

Stuff We Took

We took my car. It’s a 2012 diesel with 117 thousand miles. It needs the tires rotated and it uses a bit of oil. It ran great. For our other trips this year we’ve flown and rented, and we’re now pretty proficient at hooking the phone through the rental car radio (if they’re still called radios). We can hook into whatever Mitsubishi or Ford or Mazda mid-sized SUV the rental company gives us with minimal stress and only a few harsh words, but it’s still nicer to be in my car. 

I fished with a 10′ 4 wt. Kris fished with her Helios 3D 5 wt. that I gave her for Christmas last year. Chris the Guide wished it was the softer version, but she cast beautifully. Maybe she missed more strikes because of the hard rod, but man was it fun to watch her cast.  

There’s nothing else remarkable about what we packed except that I bought a bag of Cheetos. You can’t have a road trip without Cheetos, unless it’s a road trip with Fritos and bean dip. 

We ate two dinners the night we arrived, just to try things out: chicken fried steak at Abendigo’s and pizza at the Grateful Head.  Both were excellent, and the local beers were excellent. I no longer eat nearly enough chicken fried steak. We had leftover pizza on the river on Saturday, so two dinners was perfectly reasonable. We stayed at the Hotchatown Country Lodge, and had a breakfast burrito at Adam and Eve’s Coffee Shop before we fished on Saturday.  That place has good coffee. 

Beavers Bend is in the Choctaw Nation, but we missed most of the cultural stuff. We did take a photo of the casino. We also walked through the Forest Heritage Center Museum, which is peculiar, but there’s no doubt this is a lumber town. 

I now believe that forest science research is best carried out in white pumps. 

When we started planning Oklahoma, I asked an Oklahoma fly fishing group on FaceBook where we should fish, and here’s what I got:

• Sandies in the spring, but no specifics on places
• Bluegill, but no specifics on places
• Trout on the Lower Illinois
• Trout on the Lower Mountain Fork
• Smallmouth on the Upper Illinois in the summer
• Stripers on the Lower Illinois in the summer
• Carp, but no specifics on places

Personally, any of those could have been great, and I’d already thought about white bass. End of the day, the Mountain Fork was convenient. Kris already talks about Oklahoma more fondly than anyplace we’ve fished, and we were only really there for one day.

The other place I thought about was the Wichita Mountains. It’s the nation’s oldest wildlife preserve, and notwithstanding Yellowstone it deserves credit for preserving the buffalo. Hiking there once I looked up at a ridge line and watched a dozen elk watching me. They seemed to find me peculiar, and many share their opinion.There’s a series of ponds and small lakes spread through the refuge, and it would have made a good place for bluegill.

What I Didn’t Write About

The Cherokees, slavery, and the Confederacy. There are two recognized Cherokee tribes in Oklahoma. They seem to have split over the Civil War: the larger tribe supported the Confederacy, the smaller the Union. The Cherokee who owned slaves took them along to Oklahoma.

The 1909 Jim Crow amendments to the Oklahoma Constitution. Roosevelt refused to approve the Constitution for 1907 statehood until the Jim Crow provisions were removed, then the state constitution was amended in 1909 to put them back in.

Part of district burned in race riots, Tulsa, Okla, .American Red Cross, 1921, Library of Congress

The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. One of the bloodiest two day white riots in American history, it’s also known, appropriately, as the Tulsa massacre. Thirty-six African Americans died, and thirty-five blocks of the established African American Greenwood neighborhood were burned to the ground.

Tulsa burning, Alvin C. Krupnick Co., photographer, 1921, Library of Congress

Quanah Parker. I didn’t write enough about Quanah Parker. I didn’t write enough about the Wichita.

Boom Town, by Sam Anderson. It’s on the New York Times’ 100 notable books for 2018, and it’s a fine book about Oklahoma City. It had me checking The Thunder in the NBA standings, and recommending the book. Great book.

Ralph Ellison. Ralph Ellison is from Oklahoma City. I tried to re-read Invisible Man, but couldn’t. It’s a hard book.

The 2018 Elections. There’s now a Democratic congresswoman from Oklahoma City. There’s also a pretty interesting war going on in the Oklahoma Republican Party.

Playlist

I should have known Oklahoma had such great music, but I didn’t. I’ve already mentioned that Oklahoma was the home of five of the finest guitarists I know. And Woodie Guthrie. And John Moreland.

Bob Wills Publicity Photo, C. 1946, Wikipedia
  • John Moreland. In the Throes. I saw a review of John Moreland’s new album in Garden & Gun a few weeks ago, then ran across him in an inernet list of 10 Oklahoma bands you should be listening to now. If Bruce Springsteen sang Americana music he would be John Moreland. This is music about the Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, high school prom. Robin, take note: this is great stuff.
  • The Call. Some random songs. I didn’t pay much attention to them the first time around, and gave them short shrift this time. They probably deserve better. Or maybe not. 
  • Garth Brooks. I think I would like Garth Brooks, but his music is only available on Amazon, and I’m not technologically proficient enough to know whether I can download something on Amazon and listen to it on ITunes. 
  • The Flaming Lips. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. My daughter tells me that The Flaming Lips were one of her favorite bands in high school. Wayne Coyne lives in Oklahoma City, and is a central character in Sam Anderson’s Boom Town.
  • Woodie Guthrie. I’d been listening to Guthrie in Oregon. I downloaded covers of his songs from his 100th birthday celebration at the Kennedy Center and some other stuff. Billy Bragg and Wilco’s “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” is the best Woodie Guthrie song that Woodie Guthrie didn’t write.
  • Charlie Christian. Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar. Charlie Christian invented the electric guitar solo, and then died of tuberculosis at the age of 26. He made some fine recordings with Benny Goodman. 
Charlie Christian, Charlie Christian Family Archives
  • Leo Kottke. Acoustic Guitar once did a list once of the 50 greatest acoustic guitar albums. I don’t know where Kottke’s 6- and 12-String Guitar ranked, but I remember the review. The record came out in 1969, and they guessed that more joints were rolled in college dorm rooms on that album cover than on any other. I bet they were right. It at least ran a close second to Sergeant Pepper.
  • Michael Hedges. Hedges was New Age Music, which was once a thing. I had Hedges’ Aerial Boundaries because of that Acoustic Guitar list. He died in 1997 in a car wreck.
  • Roy Clark. “But I Never Picked Cotton.” He died last week. After a near 50-year interval I once again spent way too much time watching Hee Haw, this time on YouTube. His duets with Glen Campbell in the TV heyday were pretty amazing. 
  • Tuck Andress, of Tuck and Patti. Tears of Joy. Andress is such a fine jazz guitarist. He’s also St. Vincent’s uncle.
  • Jerry Jeff Walker, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.” She was, after all, born in Oklahoma.
  • Merle Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee.” The companion piece to “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.” Together the two songs form the yin and yang of country music.
  • Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Bob Wills–For the Last Time. Wills was born in Turkey, Texas, near my hometown, but the Playboys spent a good part of their career on Tulsa radio. I took that as enough of an excuse to include Bob Wills on the playlist. I don’t know how I’ll get him into the Hawaii list. There is a steel guitar. 
  • Cross Canadian Ragweed. Cross Canadian Ragweed. There’s an Americana sub-genre of country out of Oklahoma called Red Dirt Music. I picked Cross Canadian Ragweed because I liked the name, but there are several others, and I suspect some may be better. The Canadian River, by the way, is the longest tributary to the Arkansas River. It starts in Colorado, and crosses New Mexico, the Texans Panhandle, and Oklahoma. 
  • Chet Baker. Chet Baker Sings. Chet Baker is a cross between Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and James Dean. 
  • Jimmy LaFave. Texoma. More Red Dirt Music, LaFave left Oklahoma for Austin, and died last year. I can’t say enough good things about LaFave.
  • J.J. Cale. Troubadour. The guy who wrote “After Midnight.”
  • Jimmie Webb. The guy who wrote “Galveston” and “Wichita Lineman.” 
  • Hoyt Axton. The guy who wrote “The Pusher,” “Never Been to Spain,” and “Joy to the World.”
  • Leon Russell. Carney. I always figured “This Masquerade” was a cover of a much older song. It’s not. 
  • Blake Shelton. Red River Blue. There was absolutely nothing memorable about Blake Shelton, except Kris yelling turn him off every time one of his songs shuffled through. My daughter told me that this is a sub-genre of country known as Bro’ Country, which is mostly about drinking, driving pickups, and admiring young women. I did think the song about the honey bee was cute, but then Kris yelled at me to turn it off.
  • Reba McEntire. Reba. Reba has a nicer voice than I expected, and she handles her material well. Some of the material is decidedly mediocre. Some is pretty good. 
  • Gordon MacRae. “Oklahoma!” and “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’.” If you can keep from singing along to “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin”’ you’re a better man than me. That goes into my master road trip playlist, just for the joy of singing along. 
  • David Frizzel and Shelly West. “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma.” In 1981 this was number 1 on the country charts for seven weeks. It is a lovely song, and makes me pine for cold nights on a prairie country road in a pickup. Ok, it’s probably totally manufactured Nashville country, and you can’t go home again, but it’s still a lovely song. 

Guitar. 

I took the Kohno since I didn’t have to worry about airplanes.  My shoulder hurt by the end of the day, but my hands never did, so I worked on Mazurka Marieta by Tarrega. I memorized it a long time ago, and it was one of those songs I never seemed to forget, but then I forgot it.  Relearning went quickly though. 

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Indian Territory

Map of the Indian Territory, 1892, Library of Congress

I have a new friend, at least on Facebook. We sat at the same table at a lunch, and then last Saturday night we were at the same party. I talked to her husband (who was from Salt Lake) about where we should fly fish in Utah. He suggested Provo.

She works for the Anti-Defamation League. In the interim between our meetings eleven Jewish congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Congregation were murdered. It had been a brutal week, and maybe particularly so for her. This week’s been brutal too, with another mass shooting in California. We are a violent people.

Because of her work I suspect that more than most folk she is attuned to racial and ethnic incongruities, ranging from unintentional slights to out-and-out violence. At one point in our conversation I must have mentioned we were going to fish in Oklahoma, because I said the word Indian and I think she cringed. A few sentences later she said Native American. I took it as a gentle correction.

For most states, Virginia say, or Washington or Wisconsin or Texas, first people history is a repetitious prologue. Before X happened, there were Native Americans: Caddo, Wichita, Comanche, Cherokee, Umpqua, Powhatan, Ojibwe, Fox and Sauk, Alabama, Coushata, Seminole, Karankawa . . . Everywhere there is that iteration, speculative and archeological, and then X happened, X being when the Americans came, or the British or the French or the Spanish came, and the part of the story about the indigenous people ends.

Where did they go? For most states, after the prologue, it’s oblivion. Maybe extermination by violence and disease, or to smaller and ever more confined spaces, but someplace out of the way, someplace else. In San Antonio once, talking to a federal park ranger at a Spanish mission, he pointed across an open field to the local Hispanic neighborhoods and said that’s where I grew up and that’s where the native population is still living. He said that they, part of his ancestors, were incorporated into Spanish mission life. Early Thomas Jefferson thought the answer for the Indian conflict was for the Native Americans to become farmers and join into the new way of life. Tell that to the Cherokee. Late Thomas Jefferson pushed for removal. Mostly late Thomas Jefferson won. 

 In Oklahoma, A History, Messrs. Baird and Goble write that every place has its birth story, and sometimes more than one. They suggest three for Oklahoma: the forced immigration of the Five Tribes; the Oklahoma land rush; and the oil boom.  Of course before the five tribes, before the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, there were already Apache, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Osage, and Wichita in Oklahoma. Even in Oklahoma there is that first people prologue.

National Park Service, Trail of Tears National Historic Trail

The problem with referencing Indians, whether the term of choice is American Indian or Native American or Indian, it is always imposed. Among American indigenous people there was never an Indian. There were Yamparika Comanche, or there were Powhatan, or there were Karankawa. Any label that suggests a unified indigenous people is an exonym, and any one is as artificial as any other. Every one of the labels has its critics, but each also has its supporters. Columbus’ word wasn’t so much a misnomer as a creation, and it’s useful and ubiquitous.

For most of us there aren’t day-to-day reminders of American Indian history and culture. Unlike, say, statues of Robert E. Lee, we don’t have many monuments about that other national tragedy. Oklahoma is one we’ve got, but if I think about Oklahoma (and I don’t generally) it’s as a collection of tropes: red state, cowboys, oil, tornadoes, Dust Bowl, and Indians. Tropes are useful as shorthand for things that are more complex, but only to the limits of our own understanding.  For Indian, the complex thing contained in the Oklahoma trope is the geographical summation of every betrayal, every displacement and epidemic, every conflict, but there are the Native Americans who are there now, and whose families have now been there for generations. There are people who are Oklahomans.

S.C. Gwynne writes about the Comanche as cruel and violent. He writes that they were finally confined to Oklahoma only because they came across another people equally cruel and violent: Texans. The Searchers after all is not bad history. But Texans were not uniquely violent. There was plenty enough violence to go around. Oklahoma is one of the proofs. There are now 39 recognized tribes shoehorned into Oklahoma, from the Comanche in the southwest to the Cherokee in the northeast, and every tribe’s place in Oklahoma is both a conclusion and a continuation.

Did I mention before that we are still violent?

Usually I’m pretty comfortable dealing with information, sorting through and coming out the other side with a notion of what happened.  I can’t seem to do that with Oklahoma. I have only a vague notion of what happened to its first people, what happened with the forced immigration of the other tribes, the betrayal of the white land rush, and how that fits together now: those are matters for real and dedicated scholars.  All I can do is look at the mess with confusion as to the details, and a bit more knowledge that among those Oklahoma tropes there is something important, and something worth remembering.  

Creek Orphans Home Baseball Team, 1904, Oklahoma Historical Society, Alice Robertson Collection.

 * * *

There’s a cold front in, with a heavy north wind and daytime temperatures in the 50s.  Our skiff is in the shop, and the temperature’s dropped too much too fast for bass or sunfish. The first stocking of trout in the Guadalupe isn’t until next weekend (when we’ll be in Oklahoma). We drove to Surfside Beach to check the jetty: I had wanted to try spey rods in the surf.

Didn’t happen.  I have never seen either the surf or the tide so high. 

On the other hand, Killens Barbecue isn’t really out of the way coming back from Surfside. And by 2:30 there was hardly any line.  We did catch it at a bit of a lull though. 

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No Muskie, No Cry

We fished the Wisconsin River near Stevens Point, mid-state in Wisconsin, on the last two days of September. The night we got to Wisconsin it froze for the first time this year, months before we could realistically expect a freeze at home. During the day it stayed in the 40s, cold for us, cold for the smallmouth too. Some of the leaves had already changed, but we were told the rest would change and begin to fall during the week after the freeze. Our guide, Abe Downs, said that all but confused smallmouth had migrated for the winter to deeper lake water, and that the fish left in the river were muskie.

That was ok with me.  If the smallmouth were gone so were the summer crowds, and while the trees weren’t the brilliant fall-colors I’d hoped for, there was some color, and plenty enough trees, particularly when measured against the treeless Deschutes we’d fished two weeks before. From what I’d read I figured it was likely we wouldn’t catch a muskie, and I honestly didn’t expect to see fish.

We didn’t catch a muskie. We did see fish.

We fished out of a drift boat and covered a lot of water. It was a big open river lined with trees just starting their change. Off the river in Stevens Point Wisconsinites were friendly even when I couldn’t understand their accents. I think before we return I’ll buy some language tapes.

It was my fault I didn’t catch a fish. I got five strikes and a follow over two days, which for muskie is apparently great fishing. I had expected to deep dredge the flies, but instead they retrieved pretty close to the surface. The water was clean but it wasn’t clear enough to see a fish until it hit the fly. We weren’t sight-casting.

Along with steelheading it was as  repetitious and brutal as fly fishing gets. I would cast and cast and cast, an hour or two of casting, and then while I was daydreaming about cheese curds and beer a fish would violently collapse onto the fly. Being a cool, collected guy I’d freak out and jerk the fly away. Did I know better? Of course I knew better. For me the gap between the knowing and the doing was wide and high.

The rods were industrial Orvis Recon 10 weights, necessary for big flies and big fish but not the delicate whispy wands fly rods are expected to be. The leaders were a few feet of straight 60 pound fluorocarbon attached to a heavy wire bite tippet, attached to a snap swivel, which is the fly fishing equivalent of a steel cable. The flies themselves were huge, gaudy things, close to a foot long with tandem 6/0 hooks. It’s the only time casting a fly rod that I’ve felt like I was throwing a lure, not the line. Soaked muskie flies are heavy. Shoot, the flies were heavy when they were dry. They hauled the line with them, not the other way around.

Abe and Kris talked politics and birds. They both agreed on politics and both were interested in birds, and Abe rowed while we cast, pounding the bank, casting near structure. Abe was an interesting guy, a chemist in his day job, with degrees in mathematics and physics. He also liked bird hunting, which it was the season for, and he liked dogs. He kept us casting, and by the end of the first day my left hand ached from the line retrieve. By the end of the second day my right shoulder ached from casting.

The final muskie, the last one on the second day, struck sideways to the boat. For the first time I saw all of a muskie. It was thick-bodied, and Abe guessed it was about 42 inches long. That’s a big fish. I didn’t jerk the fly away and for a second the fish was on the line, but I needed to strip-set hard, and then strip-set hard again, and I didn’t do it. As fast as the fish struck and I failed to strip-set the fish came off and went back home to catch another re-run of Laverne and Shirley.

I don’t mind going back. Really.

The reels were Orvis Hydros reels with good drags, and I asked Abe if he played the fish on the reels. He said no, that they could be hauled in on the line. Muskie are big fish but I gather that the excitement is in the hook-up not the fight. I failed on the hook-up, but at least I got some of the excitement.

I don’t think Kris is unhappy going back to Wisconsin either. Really. We had a great dinner in Milwaukee with friends at Three Brothers, a Serbian restaurant. I had my first ever goulash, and Kris had the stuffed cabbage. The restaurant was what Milwaukee should look like, old and ethnic. We talked with our friends, Tom and Sal, about dogs and Wisconsin alcoholism and how they met and other stuff, but not much about politics and none about fishing. We would have forced Tom and Sal to look at our fish pictures if we’d had any. Since they probably didn’t want to see fish pictures at least somebody had complete success with our fishing.

That day the Brewers tied the Cubs for the National League Midwest Division, with a one game tie-breaker scheduled the next day to decide the season. Bernie Brewer was with us at the airport, and the Brewers ultimately won. Driving to the airport we wished we had time to go church to church just to see them. To us they were exotic, not the largely functional Baptist churches or mildly British Methodist or Episcopal churches of home. Kris asked me if next time we could fish for something easier than muskie and I said yes, and we will. We’ll go to the driftless region in the southwest to fish for trout, or we’ll come to the Wisconsin River in the smallmouth season.  Meanwhile I’ll think about those fish I didn’t catch. I’ll think about that last fish, the fish I got to see, flashing in the river when I failed to set the hook.

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Oregon Packing List I

We didn’t take many clothes to Oregon, and that was just about right.  Ok, we may have taken a few too many layers of polypropylene, and I took a pair of shorts I never wore, but here’s the most important thing you need to know about Portland: You can wear your nylon fishing pants into any restaurant in the City and fit right in. If the only clean shirt you have left for that elegant tasting menu restaurant s a mid-weight Patagonia underlayer pullover, it’s ok. It’s stylish. Stylish. One pair of Keene sandals, my running shoes, and a pair of wading boots would take me anyplace in the state unless I needed some other kind of technical sports shoes. Hiking boots, skiing boots, cycling cleats; those I might need. I wouldn’t need a dressier pair of shoes.

Oregon is an outdoorsy milieu. There are as many Subarus in Portland as there are F150s in Houston. There are a lot of Subarus.

Unlike New Orleans, I didn’t take a blazer, and unlike New Orleans I didn’t need one. I did worry that in a Nike town my New Balance running shoes might not be quite the thing, but Portland folk seem pretty tolerant.

The homeless like Portland, at least in the summer, but I don’t think it’s because they don’t need a blazer. Our first morning I took an early-morning run around the river. There were colonies of the young and ragged sleeping in doorways and camped on the riverside. Someone told me that much of Portland homelessness is about heroin, but I also think it’s some about accomodation. Portland has long been particularly tolerant of  the homeless.

When we first got to Portland we went to Portland Fly Shop. Ok, that’s not true. We first went and ate Pacific Coast oysters at Olympia Oyster Bar. For Gulf Coasters, Oysters on the West Coast are high dollar, about $3 each, but happy hour oysters were half price. They didn’t serve Saltines with the oysters, and I’m not sure they understood the value of salt and lemon or a classic mignonette, but the bread was good. The oysters were good.

So we went to Portland Fly Shop after the oysters and met Jason Osborn, who had helped me buy my 7 weight Beulah Spey rod long distance. Kris finally committed to a Spey rod, a Beulah Onyx 6 weight, and we bought some sink tips and some leaders. Here, though, is the bizarre thing about steelhead fishing:

To fish for steelhead, you honest-to-God could fish for days with two flies, one wet and one streamer.

If there are no tugs by the end of the swing, one doesn’t agonize about whether the fly is the very thing, you take two more steps downriver and cast again.  Changing flies ain’t in it. “Jason,” we insisted, “sell us some flies.” I’d tied a good two dozen flies getting ready for Oregon: multiple fish tacos in many colors, steelhead coachmen, skaters, black things, brown things, orange things. . . Jason seemed baffled that I wanted more flies. He clearly thought we had plenty flies enough. We insisted. He sold us some, but his heart wasn’t in it.

We only changed flies when the spirit spoke to us, or when the light changed.  In the morning or when it was overcast, we cast wets three-quarters downstream on Skandi lines. When it was full sun we cast streamers 90 degrees straight across the river on Skagit lines.  Then we did the two-step (or the four-step). The idea was to cover water. Maybe people who know what they’re doing change flies, but for us, what’s the point? Within the realm of decent steelhead flies one fly was as good as any other.

I was told that the Clousers I brought weren’t in the realm of decent steelhead flies.  What fish doesn’t like a Clouser?

As to other stuff we didn’t need, we took a bunch of trout rods. When we arrived at Maupin and met Travis Johnson, I said that I was in Oregon to catch one fish. He looked concerned and asked if I’d brought a single-handed trout rod, I think in part because trout are easier to catch than steelhead and in part because he worried that my casting would be even less competent than it was. Because I’d caught a Chinook the first day, I never took my single-handed rods or trout flies out of the suitcase. My fish was caught and everything after was gravy.

I took along a better guitar than usual, a 1973 Kohno, because I would be sitting by the side of a river for a few days and that deserves a better guitar.  The Kohno is a bit beat up, but has a lovely tone. My hands though were a wreck.  They were sore, I guess from the rod, and cracked and bleeding from the dry weather and the water.  I worked a bit on the Sor Variations on a Theme from the Magic Flute. I was playing it early in the hotel the first morning–we were running two hours ahead of everybody else on the West Coast–and the person in the neighboring room banged on the wall.  I’d never had that happen before, but they banged on the wall in the middle of the fast 6th variation, so maybe the song was a bit raucous.  Maybe they just weren’t Sor fans.

We spent a long time in Powell’s Books, which is one of the great bookstores. I bought Tom Robbins for Washington and Seattle, which isn’t scheduled, and replaced my copy of Sometimes a Great Notion. Mostly I was reading Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom, getting ready for Mississippi.