We’re driving to Ocean Springs, not flying. It’s a ‘fer piece, according to Apple Maps more than 400 miles, mostly east but a bit north (Yankees!), six hours and 19 minutes skirting roughly half of the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico. In our driving time six hours means seven. And 19 minutes.
We leave Friday and will be back Monday. It’s not a blue highway sort of drive, it’s I-10, the interstate that runs from Santa Monica, California, to Jacksonville, Florida, and it’s a drive I know well: from El Paso to Houston but also east. There’s Rao’s Bakery in Beaumont and the donut shop in Lake Charles where the boudin kolache was created. There’s boudin and crawfish pie at the Sausage Link in Sullivan and the 18-mile bridge over the Atchafalaya Basin. If we went earlier, Thursday evening, we could spend the night in Lafayette and go dancing. Last time I checked they still sell Haspel Suits in Baton Rouge. Once we get to Slidell above New Orleans on the northeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain I’m not so familiar with things, and every time I’ve gone as far as Mobile on I-10 I’ve turned north toward Atlanta, but we stop short of Mobile. Mobile will have to wait for a different trip.
We originally planned to fly to New Orleans, rent a car, and drive to Ocean Springs, and I had made all the reservations. A direct flight from Houston to New Orleans is only about an hour, and I’ve always got Southwest flight points: instead of enhanced Medicaid every Texan gets 10- or 20-thousand Southwest points every couple of months. With airport and driving time from New Orleans to Ocean Springs we could make the trip in about five hours. Five hours and 19 minutes. But truth is I love a good road trip, and with flying you lose the imagination of the countryside: that road would be good to bike down, that bayou would be good to canoe, would that farmer let me fish that pond? Could we live here? It’s better than buying a lottery ticket.
Plus there’s seven hours in which we can play the Mississippi playlist and finish listening to Faulkner’s The Hamlet (which I think hilarious and Kris thinks grim) and eat Cheetos and boudin and search for donuts. And how can Kris think The Hamlet grim, at least parts of it anyway? What reasonably empathetic heterosexual (or maybe not even heterosexual) male can’t see the goofier side of his infatuation in Labove and Eula Varner? I’m just lucky Kris didn’t whack me across the head.
So at TroutFest there was one of these from Four Wheel Pop-up Campers:
And there was one of these from Into the Wild Overland:
https://itwoverland.com/#
And they were either one about $30,000 as outfitted–they had every possible accessory. My children have been to college and beyond, and I can imagine retirement. I was taken with the notion of driving one of those things to a donut shop in the Rockies. Out of Denver the Into the Wild campers are available for rent for $150 per night. It doesn’t seem to have a toilet, and that might be a deal-killer.
When you start looking around you can find all sorts of folk who have caught fish on a fly, or at least a fish, in all 50 states. There’s a guy and his son who did all 50 states in 50 days, which makes my stomach queasy. There’s a lovely husband and wife who did all 50 states in a year. There’s a guide in southwest Colorado who tallied up his prior experience and realized he only lacked six or so states and went out and got them. But dang, I could spend a year reading books from Mississippi, much less fishing the farm ponds and eating the tamales and listening to the blues. I’m not in any hurry, and spending less than a month in Montana seems like a crime. So this whole RV thing is really appealing.
I’d thought next year of a grand Southwestern tailwater tour: the San Juan, Lee’s Ferry, and the Green. I can rent a Mercedes Sprinter Van for 10 days from Mercedes Sprinter RV Rental for about $6000, which is expensive but I wouldn’t at the end of the day have to own the thing, and it’s about the price for one of us staying in a very good lodge for a week in Alaska, not including drinks. I could pick it up in Albuquerque and not have to skip Taos or Chama or Chaco Canyon, and we could drop it off in Salt Lake City. We could also drive on that tailwater road trip and stay in motels. For cheaper. Or dig one of the tents out of the attic.
I don’t know. I didn’t much like staying in the Airbnb in Hawaii, nothing wrong with it but nothing right with it either, and I kept thinking that I’d rather be staying inThe Royal Hawaiian. Or a camper. A road trip camper. With a standard poodle named Charlie on a Blue Highway, self-contained, meandering. Of course once I got there I’d still rather be staying in The Royal Hawaiian.
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.
