It began somewhere over the Cumberland. That perfect blend of all things Southern, for me, it was all things Tennessee. Sitting in a blue Cheverolet pickup truck between my granny and papa. The dashboard lights shone green and the tires made that ripping sound as we hit the deck plates where the asphalt turned to concrete and headed across the Cumberland River on a Friday night. Or was it a Saturday. Memories of childhood are always hazy. The Grand Ole Opry was on the radio. “Howdy boys…” The river seemed like it was far below and the brown beams of the iron bridge hovered just above our heads, so close when going over the hump that it looked like the top of the truck would hit them.
That was a young boy’s river crossing from the big city (of 20,000 people?) to the country. To the land of hills and hollers, goats and mules. River have always been a boundary that I could cross into a different world. The next day invariably found me walking in creeks, picking up rocks full of coils and curious shells imbedded in them.
And then there was my first job on the water, sinking pony beer bottles into the deep waters of Center Hill Lake while my dad and his friends smoked short cigarettes and drank Miller High Life…there was a steady stream of bottles to sink as that blue Dixie Devil boat speed across the water only to navigate into some out of the way cove and pull up next to a party pontoon.
And the triumvirate of my water birth came in a little green john boat on the same lake when granddaddy made me and my cousin poke our own minnows onto our hooks while my grandmother stretched out in the center of the boat working on a tan. We caught lots of crappie that day and I caught a bass of some sort, probably a large mouth which I knew by my granddaddy’s reaction he’d not expected me to do.
Somewhere in those deep memories began my love and appreciation of rivers. Beware the outdoor education given to your children. From the first time my parents took me to 135 foot tall Burgess Falls with its towering hemlocks and crashing water I have known the woods and water to be an enchanted place.
Later the river became a place to test my adolescent courage. Having just bought a bluegrass album (as if that didn’t take courage enough in seventh or eighth grade) a friend and I walked up to the pickup where the man sat staring out at the water. He had a trailer full of red canoes hooked to the truck. When we told him we wanted to rent a canoe he didn’t seem too concerned about our age or any number of things I would have thought about in this day and age. He just took our money and said “Be back here before six. And don’t go over the dam.” That first trip in a canoe I explored the water on my own terms, fighting to learn to steer, keeping a keen eye over my shoulder to see if the current was pulling us toward the crumbling concrete structure that once served to generate electricity in the old days before the TVA brought all the power to Columbia, Tennessee. We explored a creek where my friend swore he saw an alligator. Likely story.
As years went by I began to feel the first stirrings of an isolation and sadness that has lain with me on and off ever since. I sought the river as a place of solitude where I could sit and read or try to catch fish while others my age drove their cars over to friends’ houses or practiced high school sports or took part in their high school social groups. We are never as isolated or outcast as we think and now I realize had I just made the effort I could have been doing what other teenagers did on July 4th,1990 instead of sitting by myself at an out of the way point up the river with a new guidebook and a fishing pole. Sitting by the water amidst the mud crusted rocks, the water willow, and sycamore shoots had become my safe haven and my excuse for the laziness that kept me from putting forth the effort to make the social connections I should have.
In lieu of going to pool parties with the long, lithe high school girls I daydreamed about I spent my time alone or in the company of the poor and dispossessed; old overweight black people and affectionate “white trash ” women who sat on the muddy banks with chicken livers tied into knots of worn out panty hose hoping a catfish would come gobble up the rancid, sticky mess. Or maybe they would have a doughball twisted onto their hooks waiting for a carp or buffalo to suck it in. I’d sit with them then, as today, knowing I would likely catch the world’s smallest bluegill.
They would occasionally ask me about random books I’d be reading (“that boy reads all the time…”): “Walden, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Essays of E.B. White, assorted fields guides. But mostly we’d talk about how to catch and prepare certain fish. Carp was a common catch and a big topic of conversation was how to get the muddy taste out of it. (More than one recommended pressure cooking carp, bones and all, like canned salmon). These people were poor and though I grew up sort of poor I knew I wasn’t really poor. There would always be an out somewhere and sitting by the river with these women its something I realized they didn’t have. These fish that constituted my entertainment were part of their diet. Which invariably made me wonder why they would through plastic and Styrofoam containers into the river after they were done with them. Old Indian myths aside, it seems to me that those most connected to the land are the first ones to poor their used motor oil in the creek. Maybe it was all the couch cushions and tires and mattresses around us as we fished that made them feel like a little plastic chicken liver carton didn’t really matter. The detritus from upstream affects more than the landscape downstream…it affects the mindset for the entire course of the river.
I remember too when I first truly lost my way in the world. College, 1991. Having nearly failed chemistry in eleventh grade I decided to major in chemistry in college with an eye on medical school. I scraped and clawed all the way. For some reason English, history, or journalism didn’t seem like an option. Once again I let outside influences keep from what I’d rather be doing. I really didn’t think my parents would approve of a humanities major. One more reason to put the young ‘uns on their own as soon as they hit eighteen. Its better for everyone, especially the kid who is controlled by fear and inertia.
By the end of that first semester I sank into a dark funk as I’m prone to do in late fall and December. The one thing I remember (actually, I remember a lot of stuff like my high school girl friend giving me a hamster when I came home for Christmas break) from that time is an essay I wrote for English 101. In the essay I embrace my funk and surprisingly, my bad decisions. I go to the river where it is muddy, slightly flooded, and the trees are grey and bare against a leaden sky. I seem to face my demons amidst the noisy, nervous flitting of hundreds of thousands of starlings twitching in the trees and the menacing caw caws of crows. But Spring semester found me back at school, headed toward that chemistry degree, however poor my grades may be.
After college I didn’t know what to do. So I re-enrolled. I drank heavily, daily. I took ephedrine and spent my time with friends as damaged as I was damaged. One was a beautiful woman with a lush problem. She held my heart through a succession of relationships with other men. The other was a homosexual hell bent on booze, acquiring more and more student loans, and the eradication of religion from his life. His family were evangelicals.
The three of us and others would seek out waterfalls where we’d sit all day drinking cheap wine and being ne’er do wells. I remember the day I was supposed to report to jail to spend my 48 hours following a conviction for DUI. We sat at Hardscrabble Falls drinking Boones Strawberry Hill wine. We laid over one another in piles on big rocks pretending to be dead. There are pictures. At a quarter till six they dropped me off at the jail house.
This debauchery went on for a year or so. One summer day while driving back from the Rhea County Courthouse where we’d been to see the site of the Scopes Monkey Trial the homosexual (Tony) and I visited Fall Creek Falls State Park. We’d been drinking beer all day. Tony’s ire was up because of the trip to the courthouse, where Tennessee had been the first state in the union to put evolution on trial. (On the way back up Highway 111 we’d stopped at a church so he could urinate on the building).
At Fall Creek Falls we stopped at the overlook then began the short but steep walk down to the base of the falls. It was a hot summer day and a mist was rising off the falls despite the low, late summer flow. Two girls stood in the mist stretching their hands up toward the falling water. One of them, the prettier of the two had on a light yellow t-shirt and no bra. Her breasts showed sensually through the thin cotton. I smiled at her and she smiled back. I looked over at Tony and saw him sipping from his Styrofoam cup of beer looking suddenly drunk, disgruntled, and not pleased with his life. I wanted to tell him to stand with us and be cleansed by the water. But I knew he wouldn’t, he’d be suspect of anything approaching that close to baptism…even in the name of a pretty girls breasts which I don’t suppose he’d have had much interest in anyway.
I moved on. It was time.
I felt the young man’s itch to explore the big waters and see something of the world. I joined the Navy. For the first time I ventured into the oceans, swimming the white sand beaches and emerald waters of the Redneck Riviera at Pensacola. I moved to the West Coast, experiencing for the first time the high sea cliffs of Big Sur, and camping on the rocky headlands of Washington State. I went to sea on a destroyer. One February, on Pro Bowl weekend, I nearly drowned in a rip tide on Oahu’s North Shore, deciding to swim the big waves despite the warnings of those who had been there before.
The oceans carried me to exotic shores I’d never imagined I’d visit. Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia. And after six years at sea, like the salmon looking for that special creek, I returned home.
Lost. That is what some people are after leaving the regimented life of the military. I had ideas for careers but didn’t know where to start. After several abortive efforts at becoming a copywriter, a magazine publisher, a mower of lawns, I settled into land surveying for a year then moved on to nursery work and landscaping. I was okay with the work and resigned to the vow of poverty. But there was something missing. Something more I could give, something I had to offer the world that I wasn’t fulfilling. God’s gifts are precious but can be pestering when they won’t let us alone.
Somewhere in me was an unresolved dispute. The rivers, creeks and oceans that carried me on through the good times and bad demanded I give something back. The best advice for a writer is to write what you know so I began writing about nature. The words soon flowed into a field guide and have evolved into an ode to Southern rivers. The words keep coming.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Duck River Bridge at Plant, Humphreys County
I went out on a photo gathering expedition last Thursday and captured this shot of the iron bridge over the Duck River in the Plant community in Humphreys County.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
The Fish Artist
The Fish Artist
Halfway through the original draft of A Field Guide I got excited and started looking for an illustrator. I went on craigslist like people do when they want to find quality work at low prices. I didn’t have any money to offer so I offered half authorship for the best artist I could find. Back in those early days of the project I was going for the warm, nostalgic look of the Golden Guide series that I grew up with. The quality illustrations in those books have always brought me great comfort in times of upheaval or when I’m sitting on the toilet. They are broken down into little vignettes of information with an accompanying informative picture or illustration that makes a bowel movement just perfect. A cup of coffee, a cigarette, and the morning is complete.
After several days I received a response to my craigslist posting from a guy who said he was a professional fish and wildlife artist and he assured me that he would be the perfect person for the job. He gave me a link to his web site which I followed. I’d found my man. His name was Ted McKay.
After a couple of phone conversations he invited me to his house for dinner and to hash out some more details of A Field Guide. He lived in an old farm house just north of Nashville on Old Hickory Lake. The bricks had the pocked texture of an old house. Several outlying buildings where the servants had lived and the meats had been cured still stood on the two acre lot. All I could imagine upon seeing the house is that Ted McKay must be doing pretty well with his art.
Ted’s wife greeted me at the door. She was what I’d expected, a calmly attractive housewife in early middle age. I’d soon find out she was the perfect juxtaposition to her more exuberant husband. “Ted’s back there in the garage. He’s so excited to meet you.”
I walked into the garage/studio and found Ted fumbling at a very large printer, pushing a button, bottle of beer in hand. He turned when he heard me come in. “Hey man, it’s good to finally meet you,” he said, extending me his hand to shake. “Do you want a beer?”
“Yes sir,” I replied. I could see this was going to be a fruitful working relationship. What I was surprised by was that Ted didn’t look like a McKay at all. I would have guessed Chu or Woo. His mother was Korean and his Asian features showed him to have inherited most of her looks. Even in his speech he rounded out vowels with that “woe” sound you hear from some speakers of Asian languages. Over the telephone I had assumed it was a speech impediment in his otherwise twangy voice.
“I hope you like fish,” he said.
“Well, I’m writing a whole book about ‘em.”
“Good. I’m cooking crappie and French fries.” Crappie is among the best eating of fishes.
The walls of the studio were covered with Ted’s paintings of various species of fish. Other projects lay around on tables in various degrees of completeness. He had revived the old style of fish painting known as gyotaku in which a fresh caught fish is laid out on a table and ink or water colors are applied to capture the true color and distribution of colors on the fish. Next a thin sheet of rice paper is pressed onto the fish’s body creating highly textured, mirror image of the fish. Gyotaku doesn’t allow the fisherman wiggle room when recording the size of the fish. It started in Japan in the mid 1800’s (about the time Ted’s house was built) as a way to record the exact size of a fish. A large gyotaku rubbing of a three and a half foot long stripped bass hung by the door.
There was also a curiously taxidermed rabbit with antlers hanging on the wall.
We sat in the studio discussing the finer points of A Field Guide’s tone and overall the thoroughness of its treatment of the subject matter. We talked a little about the time line to publication which Ted was excited about. However when I tried to guide the conversation to establishing a timeline for some sample illustrations to send off to potential publishers and agents he grew a little more vague. “Well, I’m going to be on the road a lot the rest of the month going to art shows. Maybe I’ll have a chance to get some samples done by mid-August.”
“Great. No rush. I’d like to have a good sampling ready by the fall to really get this thing up and running.”
“I heard that, man. We’re goin’ to make us some money.”
We proceeded to the kitchen and Ted got the fish ready to dump into the fryer outside. Despite having had a couple of beers I was having a case of nerves which sometimes happens to me around food. I went to the bathroom and gagged a few times. Retching in private makes me feel better in those situations.
Outside at the deep fryer we sat around watching the grease get hot. We each had another Amber Bock. A pretty girl about my age pulled into the driveway and got out of her car. “Hi Marrissa,” said Ted.
“Hi Ted,” she replied.
“Do you want to have some fish with us?” he asked. I hoped she would say yes.
“No I’ve got to go to my yoga tonight. But thanks anyway.”
“Okay.” After she walked into the small shack behind the house Ted whispered to me, ”She lives in the slave quarters.” I laughed, sort of wishing I lived in a refurbished slave cabin instead of my small, climb-many-stairs-to get-to apartment. “She’s a sweet girl. Maybe I can try to hook you two up but she’s really shy.”
“Well, you have my phone number. You can give it to her. I wish you would.”
The fish smelled good and the potatoes even better, frying up with plenty of onions thrown in with them. Ted, his wife, and I sat in the old dining room that had been hosting meals since the mid-1850’s. We talked about politics, art, and my past. References to my time in the Navy usually resulted in an eruption of “Fuck George Bush,” from Ted. He wasn’t fond of the administration at the time. He said that during the Clinton administrations his art had sold in over 1,100 galleries and now it didn’t. I suppose the Iraq War dampened the public’s appetite for paintings of bluegill and bass. Political rants behind us Ted pointed to a painting on the wall of a group of birds. Their bodies were round and textured and russet colored. Their heads were drawn with clean, albeit simple lines. This was much different from the fish art he had shown me.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked. I told him it looked like a group of birds.
“It is but it’s actually a booby picture,” he said laughing.
“Why is it a booby picture,” I asked. Ted’s wife rolled her eyes in anticipation of what I imagine is a familiar story.
“I get a pretty young model and rub over her nipples with a pencil on onion skin paper.”
“Ted will be Ted,” allowed his wife. “I knew I was getting an artist when I married him.”
Over dinner I learned more about Ted’s uncanny talent for finding fish. Or maybe he was good because of practice. Over the years his income as an artist has given him the freedom to fish lakes and streams all over the Southeast. He tends to find a body of water that looks interesting and then fishes it. “That’s how I started fishing in Loretta Lynn’s creek at Hurricane Mills. I just started wading. The caretaker came out and told me to get out, that I couldn’t fish there. I told him I was that guy that had been on TV the week before with my art. He’d seen it so he told me it was okay. Now I go down there all the time. I catch a lot of good smallmouth in that creek.”
“I’d love to go with you sometime.”
“I’ll take you down there and show you how to really catch smallmouth.”
After dinner we said our good-byes and made promises to keep A Field Guide on track for publication the following spring. “We’re goin’ to go fishing and we’re goin’ to make a lot of money,” reiterated Ted. I petted the dog who was sniffing the fish grease on my pants leg then drove off. I stopped on the side of the road and peed in the lake because it was a long drive back to Nashville.
July ended, and August came and went. No word from Ted. I sent an email. He replied:
I'll give you a call next week, I have to leave for Fort Wayne this morning and I do need your phone number.
A couple of weeks later in early September I gave him a call and he told me to come on out to the house for a beer. By this point I doubted I was going to see any illustrations but the nights were pleasant for sitting outside and Ted’s house was a good place to sit and drink beer.
I arrived and once again Janelle let me in. “Ted’s in the studio,” she said.
I walked through the kitchen and opened the door to the studio. “Oh, hi man,” said Ted with his good natured smile. “How’ve you been?”
“Oh, just fine,” I replied, just then realizing a topless woman was lying under Ted’s hands and a piece of onion skin paper. “Maybe I should wait outside-“
“No, you’re a grown man. You’ve seen these things before. Go to the refrigerator and get you a beer. Get me one too. Carol, do you want one?”
“Yeah I’ll take one,” said the model, sheepishly.
I took the beer over and watched Ted rub the broad pencil across the onionskin paper, picking up the texture of Carol’s areola. As you would imagine it protruded up where her nipple was. I was sort of in awe at this unexpected good fortune. Carol was a pretty girl with pale shoulders and dishwater brown hair. She had dyed a neon purple streak through one length of hair. Her lip and eyebrow were pierced. She studied art at the local community college.
“Man, we never have gone fishing yet.”
“Yeah, I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
“We’ll go before it gets too cold to wade. We’ll catch a bunch of smallmouth down at Loretta Lynn’s.”
“I’d love that. I’ve fishing some on the South Harpeth but haven’t caught too much lately.”
“Cause you’re tense my man. The fish know it.”
“I’m broke. That has a lot to do with it. And my latest fling has apparently decided to take her loving elsewhere.” [Note: this will be discussed in more detail in a later story.]
“Awe, I’ll set you up with Marissa. And when our book comes out we’ll make a lot of money.”
I decided not to press the issue. I enjoyed the atmosphere. Up on the wall above where Carol lay hung a picture of a martini glass. The olive was one of Ted’s booby rubbings and you can guess what part was the pimento.
Ted finished up on Carol and she casually sat up. Her breasts were perky but still hung with a sensuality one doesn’t find in a hard body. She put on her tank top sans bra and I consciously made an effort to not watch her getting dressed. Janelle brought out a tray of cheese and crackers and we sat out by the koi pond talking fishing and art shows with Ted throwing in the occasional “Fuck George Bush” to accentuate a point. It was pleasant evening but something in the casualness of it all caused me to loose hope that Ted would illustrate my book. In his defense I realize that providing eighty to one hundred quality illustrations is a lot more difficult than writing eighty to one hundred two hundred word descriptions of species.
I told Carol to look me up on myspace but she never did. Marissa never learned my name. And Ted still hasn’t taken me fishing.
But when A Field Guide eventually comes out I will be happy to give Ted a complimentary, autographed copy. He and Janelle showed me great hospitality and a couple of good nights of diversion during that summer.
Halfway through the original draft of A Field Guide I got excited and started looking for an illustrator. I went on craigslist like people do when they want to find quality work at low prices. I didn’t have any money to offer so I offered half authorship for the best artist I could find. Back in those early days of the project I was going for the warm, nostalgic look of the Golden Guide series that I grew up with. The quality illustrations in those books have always brought me great comfort in times of upheaval or when I’m sitting on the toilet. They are broken down into little vignettes of information with an accompanying informative picture or illustration that makes a bowel movement just perfect. A cup of coffee, a cigarette, and the morning is complete.
After several days I received a response to my craigslist posting from a guy who said he was a professional fish and wildlife artist and he assured me that he would be the perfect person for the job. He gave me a link to his web site which I followed. I’d found my man. His name was Ted McKay.
After a couple of phone conversations he invited me to his house for dinner and to hash out some more details of A Field Guide. He lived in an old farm house just north of Nashville on Old Hickory Lake. The bricks had the pocked texture of an old house. Several outlying buildings where the servants had lived and the meats had been cured still stood on the two acre lot. All I could imagine upon seeing the house is that Ted McKay must be doing pretty well with his art.
Ted’s wife greeted me at the door. She was what I’d expected, a calmly attractive housewife in early middle age. I’d soon find out she was the perfect juxtaposition to her more exuberant husband. “Ted’s back there in the garage. He’s so excited to meet you.”
I walked into the garage/studio and found Ted fumbling at a very large printer, pushing a button, bottle of beer in hand. He turned when he heard me come in. “Hey man, it’s good to finally meet you,” he said, extending me his hand to shake. “Do you want a beer?”
“Yes sir,” I replied. I could see this was going to be a fruitful working relationship. What I was surprised by was that Ted didn’t look like a McKay at all. I would have guessed Chu or Woo. His mother was Korean and his Asian features showed him to have inherited most of her looks. Even in his speech he rounded out vowels with that “woe” sound you hear from some speakers of Asian languages. Over the telephone I had assumed it was a speech impediment in his otherwise twangy voice.
“I hope you like fish,” he said.
“Well, I’m writing a whole book about ‘em.”
“Good. I’m cooking crappie and French fries.” Crappie is among the best eating of fishes.
The walls of the studio were covered with Ted’s paintings of various species of fish. Other projects lay around on tables in various degrees of completeness. He had revived the old style of fish painting known as gyotaku in which a fresh caught fish is laid out on a table and ink or water colors are applied to capture the true color and distribution of colors on the fish. Next a thin sheet of rice paper is pressed onto the fish’s body creating highly textured, mirror image of the fish. Gyotaku doesn’t allow the fisherman wiggle room when recording the size of the fish. It started in Japan in the mid 1800’s (about the time Ted’s house was built) as a way to record the exact size of a fish. A large gyotaku rubbing of a three and a half foot long stripped bass hung by the door.
There was also a curiously taxidermed rabbit with antlers hanging on the wall.
We sat in the studio discussing the finer points of A Field Guide’s tone and overall the thoroughness of its treatment of the subject matter. We talked a little about the time line to publication which Ted was excited about. However when I tried to guide the conversation to establishing a timeline for some sample illustrations to send off to potential publishers and agents he grew a little more vague. “Well, I’m going to be on the road a lot the rest of the month going to art shows. Maybe I’ll have a chance to get some samples done by mid-August.”
“Great. No rush. I’d like to have a good sampling ready by the fall to really get this thing up and running.”
“I heard that, man. We’re goin’ to make us some money.”
We proceeded to the kitchen and Ted got the fish ready to dump into the fryer outside. Despite having had a couple of beers I was having a case of nerves which sometimes happens to me around food. I went to the bathroom and gagged a few times. Retching in private makes me feel better in those situations.
Outside at the deep fryer we sat around watching the grease get hot. We each had another Amber Bock. A pretty girl about my age pulled into the driveway and got out of her car. “Hi Marrissa,” said Ted.
“Hi Ted,” she replied.
“Do you want to have some fish with us?” he asked. I hoped she would say yes.
“No I’ve got to go to my yoga tonight. But thanks anyway.”
“Okay.” After she walked into the small shack behind the house Ted whispered to me, ”She lives in the slave quarters.” I laughed, sort of wishing I lived in a refurbished slave cabin instead of my small, climb-many-stairs-to get-to apartment. “She’s a sweet girl. Maybe I can try to hook you two up but she’s really shy.”
“Well, you have my phone number. You can give it to her. I wish you would.”
The fish smelled good and the potatoes even better, frying up with plenty of onions thrown in with them. Ted, his wife, and I sat in the old dining room that had been hosting meals since the mid-1850’s. We talked about politics, art, and my past. References to my time in the Navy usually resulted in an eruption of “Fuck George Bush,” from Ted. He wasn’t fond of the administration at the time. He said that during the Clinton administrations his art had sold in over 1,100 galleries and now it didn’t. I suppose the Iraq War dampened the public’s appetite for paintings of bluegill and bass. Political rants behind us Ted pointed to a painting on the wall of a group of birds. Their bodies were round and textured and russet colored. Their heads were drawn with clean, albeit simple lines. This was much different from the fish art he had shown me.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked. I told him it looked like a group of birds.
“It is but it’s actually a booby picture,” he said laughing.
“Why is it a booby picture,” I asked. Ted’s wife rolled her eyes in anticipation of what I imagine is a familiar story.
“I get a pretty young model and rub over her nipples with a pencil on onion skin paper.”
“Ted will be Ted,” allowed his wife. “I knew I was getting an artist when I married him.”
Over dinner I learned more about Ted’s uncanny talent for finding fish. Or maybe he was good because of practice. Over the years his income as an artist has given him the freedom to fish lakes and streams all over the Southeast. He tends to find a body of water that looks interesting and then fishes it. “That’s how I started fishing in Loretta Lynn’s creek at Hurricane Mills. I just started wading. The caretaker came out and told me to get out, that I couldn’t fish there. I told him I was that guy that had been on TV the week before with my art. He’d seen it so he told me it was okay. Now I go down there all the time. I catch a lot of good smallmouth in that creek.”
“I’d love to go with you sometime.”
“I’ll take you down there and show you how to really catch smallmouth.”
After dinner we said our good-byes and made promises to keep A Field Guide on track for publication the following spring. “We’re goin’ to go fishing and we’re goin’ to make a lot of money,” reiterated Ted. I petted the dog who was sniffing the fish grease on my pants leg then drove off. I stopped on the side of the road and peed in the lake because it was a long drive back to Nashville.
July ended, and August came and went. No word from Ted. I sent an email. He replied:
I'll give you a call next week, I have to leave for Fort Wayne this morning and I do need your phone number.
A couple of weeks later in early September I gave him a call and he told me to come on out to the house for a beer. By this point I doubted I was going to see any illustrations but the nights were pleasant for sitting outside and Ted’s house was a good place to sit and drink beer.
I arrived and once again Janelle let me in. “Ted’s in the studio,” she said.
I walked through the kitchen and opened the door to the studio. “Oh, hi man,” said Ted with his good natured smile. “How’ve you been?”
“Oh, just fine,” I replied, just then realizing a topless woman was lying under Ted’s hands and a piece of onion skin paper. “Maybe I should wait outside-“
“No, you’re a grown man. You’ve seen these things before. Go to the refrigerator and get you a beer. Get me one too. Carol, do you want one?”
“Yeah I’ll take one,” said the model, sheepishly.
I took the beer over and watched Ted rub the broad pencil across the onionskin paper, picking up the texture of Carol’s areola. As you would imagine it protruded up where her nipple was. I was sort of in awe at this unexpected good fortune. Carol was a pretty girl with pale shoulders and dishwater brown hair. She had dyed a neon purple streak through one length of hair. Her lip and eyebrow were pierced. She studied art at the local community college.
“Man, we never have gone fishing yet.”
“Yeah, I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
“We’ll go before it gets too cold to wade. We’ll catch a bunch of smallmouth down at Loretta Lynn’s.”
“I’d love that. I’ve fishing some on the South Harpeth but haven’t caught too much lately.”
“Cause you’re tense my man. The fish know it.”
“I’m broke. That has a lot to do with it. And my latest fling has apparently decided to take her loving elsewhere.” [Note: this will be discussed in more detail in a later story.]
“Awe, I’ll set you up with Marissa. And when our book comes out we’ll make a lot of money.”
I decided not to press the issue. I enjoyed the atmosphere. Up on the wall above where Carol lay hung a picture of a martini glass. The olive was one of Ted’s booby rubbings and you can guess what part was the pimento.
Ted finished up on Carol and she casually sat up. Her breasts were perky but still hung with a sensuality one doesn’t find in a hard body. She put on her tank top sans bra and I consciously made an effort to not watch her getting dressed. Janelle brought out a tray of cheese and crackers and we sat out by the koi pond talking fishing and art shows with Ted throwing in the occasional “Fuck George Bush” to accentuate a point. It was pleasant evening but something in the casualness of it all caused me to loose hope that Ted would illustrate my book. In his defense I realize that providing eighty to one hundred quality illustrations is a lot more difficult than writing eighty to one hundred two hundred word descriptions of species.
I told Carol to look me up on myspace but she never did. Marissa never learned my name. And Ted still hasn’t taken me fishing.
But when A Field Guide eventually comes out I will be happy to give Ted a complimentary, autographed copy. He and Janelle showed me great hospitality and a couple of good nights of diversion during that summer.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Sauger Time In Tennessee
It’s sauger time in Tennessee. And when you’re after sauger there’s no better place to go than the Cordell Hull Dam in Carthage, Tennessee. At least that’s what the host with the radio voice said on my Tennessee’s Wild Side the other morning. They sent one of their “wild side guides” out with an accomplished sauger fisherman and filmed a segment of them at the base of the dam. The sauger guru caught a fish on every cast, albeit small ones. The guide didn’t do so well. The sauger guru laughed at the guides misfortune and slung light insults his way as he continued reeling in one fish after another. It looked fun. The mere act of sauger fishing looked to be a badge of honor since to do it right the sky should be leaden grey, the air temperature twenty-three degrees with a slight spit of snow blowing around.
The sauger is a smaller cousin to the walleye. The fish look very similar. Sauger populations have faired better in the Tennessee Valley because they tolerate turbid water better than the more walleye which thrives in clear cold water. Thirty plus years of siltation above TVA dams have caused a significant drop in walleye populations.
I decided to try my hand at catching sauger. The temperature wasn’t in the twenties but it was cold enough. Sauger in Tennessee are caught in the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. On the Cumberland Old Hickory, Cheatham, and Cordell Hull Lakes all boast decent sauger populations but with my poor luck at fishing where there is actually a fish to catch I decided I’d better stick with a proven location so I drove to Carthage.
When fishing the worst case scenario is that you will have a scenic drive getting to the spot. I drove east out Interstate 40 to the Carthage exit and then several miles across Highway Twenty-five. On the modern road I skirted the hymn of Carthage proper and headed up a hill where cinderblock shacks slowly disintegrated in to the muddy yards. One house sported a pile of plastic fascias off long dead Saturn vehicles and another was made of yellow brick and plywood and looked like a Dutch barn…perhaps it was the ugliest house that was intentionally built that I have ever seen. I am country people myself but I don’t know why country people like so much junky crap in their yards.
I turned onto Turkey Creek and passed a store that sold Levis, shoes, and minnows and lickety split was on the Corps of Engineers property. They built most of the dams around middle Tennessee. I passed the Visitor’s Center and saw it had been destroyed by fire. The makeshift visitors center was across the road in a mint green and white sheet metal building. I walked in and was greeted by tall attractive red head who smiled at me. Before she could speak a man wearing all denim came out of the back and I asked him where to catch sauger from the bank and he said, “The other side of the river.” He told me people were catching sauger around the dam structure and around any of the series of concrete steps that lead to the river from the parking lots above. He also told me where to buy bait when I headed over to the other side of the river which would turn out to be a more involved evolution than seemed necessary. I said thank you and waved good bye. The red headed lady was still smiling at me. I don’t think they get many visitors at the visitors center this time of year.
I drove down to the damn and found that it is not an attractive structure. It’s not like Hoover Dam or even Pickwick Dam. The Cumberland is a decent sized river but the dam looked short and sort of like a flooded dry dock. Electrical poles shot up out of the concrete as if the river were Frankenstein’s monster being brought to life. Apart from three boats under the spillway the other six or seven fishermen all sat on the far bank.
I drove out to the lock which is what the structure is called on the other side of the river. As the crow flies I was only going less than eight hundred feet. But country roads being what they are it was a journey of nine or ten miles. On the way I crossed an old iron bridge across the Caney Fork River. It reminded me that this is the hometown of Al Gore. He filmed footage of the Caney Fork and used it in An Inconvenient Truth. The Caney Fork is a small cold water river and is one of the few places in middle Tennessee where the stocked trout can live through the summer and reproduce. Shortly past the bridge I stopped at the Caney Fork Market. I asked how to get minnows. “Just take your bucket and count out the minners as best you can. They‘re a $1.29 a dozen.” I put two dozen minnows in my igloo lunch box cooler and also bought a spinner lure. Luckily it was cheap because I wound up losing it in the river.
From the store I turned onto XXXXX and for six miles wound around a beautiful road that wound up and down and hugged the sides of the limestone hills. The drive was pretty but I look forward to returning in the summer. Tennessee has the curious distinction of being the greenest state in the union for seven or eight months a year but being utterly grey and desolate looking as a prison yard from late November through early April.
I finally arrived at the lock and took a position at the far end of the line of men I’d seen from across the river. I was farther away from the structure than I would have liked but I was right beside one of the steps the guy at the visitor’s center had recommended. I rigged my line and I’m sure it was all wrong for what I wanted to catch: two good sized led pellets about eighteen inches above the hook. [Note: A proper rig would have been to have the wait right above the shank of the hook jig fashion to bounce the minnow across the bottom but in two sentences you’ll see why this wouldn’t have worked for me.] I hooked my minnow on through his lower jaw and the top of his nose so he was free to wiggle (unfortunately in pain I’m sure) and cast in. Within thirty seconds I was hung up. I rerigged my line, let it sit in the water for about three minutes and was hung up again. There was a weed growing in the water that I kept getting tangled in. Sometimes I’d reel in pieces of it on a bent hook.
The other fishermen were using corks to control their depth at about four or five feet but that didn’t seem deep enough to me. Besides, only one of them had any fish and that was a stringer with three or four fairly small crappie on it. I was here to catch sauger. I tried the lure, lost it on the third cast then went back to the minnows. An hour later I moved to the upper side of the dam.
For some reason no one was fishing on the upper side except a great blue heron which flew away in shrieks of protest when I crushed through the brush to the rocky bank. Using a cork I fished at four feet but didn’t even get a bit. But the clouds had broken up and my spot was sunny. Enjoy the view if you can’t enjoy the fishing.
I later drove out to a boat ramp at the mouth of a creek that came into the river just above the dam. I fished an alcove and two man-made points but still nothing. Over three hours without a bite wears out my patience. I was done for the day but am looking forward to going back when it is warm outside and the trees have leafed out and this beautiful newfound fishing spot is green and full of life.
The sauger is a smaller cousin to the walleye. The fish look very similar. Sauger populations have faired better in the Tennessee Valley because they tolerate turbid water better than the more walleye which thrives in clear cold water. Thirty plus years of siltation above TVA dams have caused a significant drop in walleye populations.
I decided to try my hand at catching sauger. The temperature wasn’t in the twenties but it was cold enough. Sauger in Tennessee are caught in the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. On the Cumberland Old Hickory, Cheatham, and Cordell Hull Lakes all boast decent sauger populations but with my poor luck at fishing where there is actually a fish to catch I decided I’d better stick with a proven location so I drove to Carthage.
When fishing the worst case scenario is that you will have a scenic drive getting to the spot. I drove east out Interstate 40 to the Carthage exit and then several miles across Highway Twenty-five. On the modern road I skirted the hymn of Carthage proper and headed up a hill where cinderblock shacks slowly disintegrated in to the muddy yards. One house sported a pile of plastic fascias off long dead Saturn vehicles and another was made of yellow brick and plywood and looked like a Dutch barn…perhaps it was the ugliest house that was intentionally built that I have ever seen. I am country people myself but I don’t know why country people like so much junky crap in their yards.
I turned onto Turkey Creek and passed a store that sold Levis, shoes, and minnows and lickety split was on the Corps of Engineers property. They built most of the dams around middle Tennessee. I passed the Visitor’s Center and saw it had been destroyed by fire. The makeshift visitors center was across the road in a mint green and white sheet metal building. I walked in and was greeted by tall attractive red head who smiled at me. Before she could speak a man wearing all denim came out of the back and I asked him where to catch sauger from the bank and he said, “The other side of the river.” He told me people were catching sauger around the dam structure and around any of the series of concrete steps that lead to the river from the parking lots above. He also told me where to buy bait when I headed over to the other side of the river which would turn out to be a more involved evolution than seemed necessary. I said thank you and waved good bye. The red headed lady was still smiling at me. I don’t think they get many visitors at the visitors center this time of year.
I drove down to the damn and found that it is not an attractive structure. It’s not like Hoover Dam or even Pickwick Dam. The Cumberland is a decent sized river but the dam looked short and sort of like a flooded dry dock. Electrical poles shot up out of the concrete as if the river were Frankenstein’s monster being brought to life. Apart from three boats under the spillway the other six or seven fishermen all sat on the far bank.
I drove out to the lock which is what the structure is called on the other side of the river. As the crow flies I was only going less than eight hundred feet. But country roads being what they are it was a journey of nine or ten miles. On the way I crossed an old iron bridge across the Caney Fork River. It reminded me that this is the hometown of Al Gore. He filmed footage of the Caney Fork and used it in An Inconvenient Truth. The Caney Fork is a small cold water river and is one of the few places in middle Tennessee where the stocked trout can live through the summer and reproduce. Shortly past the bridge I stopped at the Caney Fork Market. I asked how to get minnows. “Just take your bucket and count out the minners as best you can. They‘re a $1.29 a dozen.” I put two dozen minnows in my igloo lunch box cooler and also bought a spinner lure. Luckily it was cheap because I wound up losing it in the river.
From the store I turned onto XXXXX and for six miles wound around a beautiful road that wound up and down and hugged the sides of the limestone hills. The drive was pretty but I look forward to returning in the summer. Tennessee has the curious distinction of being the greenest state in the union for seven or eight months a year but being utterly grey and desolate looking as a prison yard from late November through early April.
I finally arrived at the lock and took a position at the far end of the line of men I’d seen from across the river. I was farther away from the structure than I would have liked but I was right beside one of the steps the guy at the visitor’s center had recommended. I rigged my line and I’m sure it was all wrong for what I wanted to catch: two good sized led pellets about eighteen inches above the hook. [Note: A proper rig would have been to have the wait right above the shank of the hook jig fashion to bounce the minnow across the bottom but in two sentences you’ll see why this wouldn’t have worked for me.] I hooked my minnow on through his lower jaw and the top of his nose so he was free to wiggle (unfortunately in pain I’m sure) and cast in. Within thirty seconds I was hung up. I rerigged my line, let it sit in the water for about three minutes and was hung up again. There was a weed growing in the water that I kept getting tangled in. Sometimes I’d reel in pieces of it on a bent hook.
The other fishermen were using corks to control their depth at about four or five feet but that didn’t seem deep enough to me. Besides, only one of them had any fish and that was a stringer with three or four fairly small crappie on it. I was here to catch sauger. I tried the lure, lost it on the third cast then went back to the minnows. An hour later I moved to the upper side of the dam.
For some reason no one was fishing on the upper side except a great blue heron which flew away in shrieks of protest when I crushed through the brush to the rocky bank. Using a cork I fished at four feet but didn’t even get a bit. But the clouds had broken up and my spot was sunny. Enjoy the view if you can’t enjoy the fishing.
I later drove out to a boat ramp at the mouth of a creek that came into the river just above the dam. I fished an alcove and two man-made points but still nothing. Over three hours without a bite wears out my patience. I was done for the day but am looking forward to going back when it is warm outside and the trees have leafed out and this beautiful newfound fishing spot is green and full of life.
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