A Good Fish Sandwich...

No, this is not my breakfast this morning, it's my lunch yesterday. Nothing like making a fish sandwich out of a few left over fish fillets. It's simple, you got the fish, toast some bread, a big slice of purple onion, some pickle, a squirt of thousand island dressing, and a dash of hot sauce. Good, good.

Me and the fish sandwich go back quite a ways. I can remember being a young man, all lonesome and hungry, coming home from the lake with an old white bass and a gasper gou and whipping off four fillets, frying them up and inventing the delight you see pictured above. 

I kind of remember a cooking and kite flying contest, held on Texas Independence Day and sponsered by Suzi Q where I had worked all night at the mill (dsyd long past) and I got off work and fried up a bunch of white bass sandwiches on French bread. I won something for that creation, a Texas cookbook that is still good for an idea or two now and then. 

Then there was that time in Casamento's in New Orleans. Casamento's was on Magazine St., famous since 1919 for oysters, shrimp and catfish loafs. I was in there and needed to take a leak. The route to the bathroom was through the kitchen. There on the gas stoves sat big deep iron skillets, just like the one I own, full of hot grease. You had to walk carefully and not because you needed to go so bad or because of all the beer you drank in the old fashioned short glasses, but because the grease that was soaked into the floor from the frying seafood since 1919. 

Here is a link to a look inside Casamento's:

http://www.casamentosrestaurant.com/tour/tour.html

I actually have a picture of me and some other folks, who as soon as they pay their $39,000 will get posted on this site, sitting in those chairs you see along the wall. There is another picture of the kitchen I walked through.

I guess these remembrances, when looked at in retrospect show that I was not really ever lonesome and hungry. It just seems so when you are eating gasper gou. Now I spend my time frying the catfish my baby catches, making the floor round here greasy as that kitchen in New Orleans.

My Rules for Buying Thrift Store Records...

 I saw a quote. It's from an unknown author. It says "If you observe the rules of life you will overlook most of it's opportunities." 

 There are some rules like always wearing clean underwear, trust me on that one, being nice to waiters and waitresses and wearing a mask if asked that just generally make things smoother and safer for all involved. You probably have some of your own rules and clean underwear. One of my personal rules that I adhere to is that while shopping thrift or used record stores I never Google a title I am thinking about buying.

I first picked up an instrument in 1969. I  probably bought some records before that and was certainty interested in music. Since then I have had classes, lessons, played concerts in all kind of bands, made instruments, played all kind of instruments, been involved in some musical moments that should be forgotten and of course bought lots of music for listening. 

When I pick up a record I use something from all these experiences as I examine the cover, who was involved with playing, writing, producing and so on of the music and of course just a gut feel. All that brought me to this record. 

It's release from 1988 by the Austrian band Edelweiss called "Bring me my Edelweiss." Of course once I get the record home I Google and see if my hunch has been good. It was with this one.

Reportedly this band read a book by the English band the Timelords called " The Manual, How to Have a Hit the Easy Way," which recommend stealing bits from other people's tunes. 

By heavily sampling the Swedish pop group ABBA, rapping, turntable scratching and lots of yodeling this record sold five million copies. I don't own any ABBA records which have probably sold millions but I own Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Dark Side of the Moon, some Doors albums sales of which provide surviving members with a a comfortable supplement and of course releases by Elvis and Jimi who continue to make money they can't spend.  

Looks like Edelweiss released about 9 singles and one album between 1988 and 2001. That's good work if you can get it and best I can tell most of the group continued to work in music and film. I would think if you sell five million it allows you to make some of your own rules and the opportunity of finding a record like this is an opportunity for fun.  

I love this video.

    

   

Iconic Instruments...

I made some photos, unfortunately through display glass at the Country Music Hall of Fame earlier this summer on our visit to Nashville.

Here's the pedal steel Sneaky Pete played on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, the first album he released as a non Beetle. Funny thing was we listen to that recording in the car on the way to Nashville. After being an icon of early alt/country music Pete made sound effects for movies like The Empire Strikes Back and the Terminator movies.

Chet Atkins's guitars and amps. When asked to the define the Nashville sound Chet reportedly would stick his fist in his pants pocket and shake the coins there making the jingling sound of money hitting the cash register. You have heard these instruments on may popular recordings.

Not a good photo, but it's Bill Monroe's mandolin. This instrument was once smashed to 180 pieces in the 1980s by an intruder with a fire place poker. The intruder's name has never been

reveled but widely thought to be a woman as conventional wisdom holds that a man would have swung it by the neck to smash. What ever, the Gibson Guitar Company repaired this 1920s instrument and he played it the rest of his life.

Something speaks to me about these old instruments being behind glass never to be heard again and I really don't know what it is. I guess the men who made the sounds are gone, maybe they won't sound the same played by others. Looking at these brought to mind a recent experience at a dance we played. A guy comes up after the show (no I don't think he was flirting with me) asks how low the action was on my bass. I had cased it, but I took it out and let him examine it. It was a funny feeling showing that guy my ax. As I handed it over to him I seemed to feel all the dents and dings, how really fine the play-ability and action really are on a guitar I have been playing for 26 years. The guy looked at it and acknowledged that the action was quite a bit lower than his guitar. I had never really though much about it, I just fool with stuff till it feels right.

I don't know where I am going with this. Old instruments, magic, or just stuff?

Hot Summer Catfish...

 In 1539 Spanish explorer Hernando Desoto landed in Florida and headed west exploring as he went. He made it to the Mississippi River where he died of a fever. The expedition headed on into Texas, headed up by a man named Moscoso and best accounts have them crossing the Attoyac River in about 1542. Their accounts document the daily life and culture of the Caddo Indians they encountered. Yesterday we crossed over and fished the submerged flats on the west bank of the Attoyac and are able to document that they are well populated with blue and channel catfish.  

Our fishing partners for the day were Nick and Kim. Nick fished with us last trip and we were glad Kim could make it this time. Their daughter is our daughter in law and the 44 catfish we caught will be fried up for our grandson Cullen's first birthday party next weekend. Cullen does not like farm raised catfish instead preferring wild caught just like Moscoso and his expedition probably ate when they passed through the area.  

Cathy helps Kim with a twisting, flopping blue cat. History records that Desoto and Moscoso had 600 men when they arrived in Florida and 300 when the group got back to Mexico. It does not say what the fate of all those people were but we had a bucket full of throw back undersized fish yesterday and those twisters will try their best to fin you as you take them off the hook.   

Nick had a good fish, one of the biggest. 

Kim muscles another one in. We were fishing the spot Cathy named Los Brazos. Last trip the depth was showing 35' but the lake has dropped 3 feet. Catfish had been suspended about 20' and we were pitching the Jpiggs punch bait out and letting it sink to them. Today it was easier to find them if you let to the bottom and reeled up 4 to 10 reel turns. 

Of course we took a couple of swims to cool off a bit and I must say for a Saturday afternoon there seemed to be few at the lake. We saw an occasional boat pulling a tube swing distantly by and one other boat fished nearby but never crowded us.   

Final catch was 44 cats and 10 pounds of fillet meat ready for a fish fry. The old Caddo Indians and Spanish explorers are long gone but there are plenty of catfish.   

My Musical Ideas...

 I have these musical ideas. One of them I had about 10 years ago when I bought a very nice Eastwood baritone guitar. At the time I was playing out a good bit with a lot of different musicians and making cigar box guitars. It seemed there was a lot of opportunities and one of them I felt was to have a little trio of a hard driving rhythm guitar player, me on the baritone guitar playing bass lines and throwing in a bit of lead guitar and a drummer. 

Baritone guitar is that sound you hear doubling the string bass on old country recordings. It's that low twang on TV and movie sound tracks where the shows are either about surfing, aliens, 1960s spy themes or spaghetti westerns. I figured it would go good in a small ensemble for bass or lead especially with an electronic dose of stuttering delay, dripping reverb, and wobbly tremolo. That strong strong rhythm playing and a thudding heavy tom tom would be picking up the bass sounds when I took a lead. 

Nobody else thought this. I could not get the idea off the ground. I was just a guy with a weird guitar like no one else had. To tell the truth if I was a bit better at Travis picking I might have put the idea across. 

It's ok though because by now I have about lost the fire in the gut required to tote a big Fender amp somewhere and my neighbors have not complained about stuttering delay, dripping reverb, and wobbly tremolo that emit from my house from time to time.  

Today I played tuba, digeridoo and harmonica in the park. I can get all that stuff from the car to the bench where I sit to play in one trip. I take playing in the park in spells. Depends on how good the fish are biting or if my services are required to babysit a grandchild. I have played twice out of the last 14 days or so. 

Some days no one stops to talk. Like a band built around a baritone guitar, a tuba player on a park bench might be someone that's not quite right but I do meet interesting people that if they stop to talk to me can only be labeled as the righteous true believers. There was the out of town band director using the jogging trails who was surprised to see a tuba player on a park bench.  I once gave a harp to a homeless guy who stopped to listen and talk. An Asian lady enjoyed the music so much she gave me $20. 

Today was a good people day with many folks enjoying morning before the day got too hot A guy walking the trails gave me a thumbs up. An older couple getting in their steps thanked me for the concert. A guy with a sack lunch and a cool drink at a picnic table told me he had not seen a digeridoo since he left California. Another a walker told me in broken English with his hand to his heart, "your music, I better now!"  

I can't remember exactly when I started these park tuba concerts. Must have been sometime in 2019. It's not an original idea because as I have traveled from New Orleans to New York, Munich to Prague and Austin to Waco I see people playing in parks. It's something that I thought my town needed. It's one of my musical ideas that has worked.

   

    

     

What is Hip...

 I read a book. That's what you are supposed to do in summer when you go to the beach. I have not been to the beach yet this summer but when I go I'll probably spend my time fishing in the surf, throwing a cast net for bait or simply sitting in a lawn chair imaging old Spaniards washing ashore with Texas beach sand chafing in their underwear. I guess I mean to say I won't be reading at that time so I better do it now. 

The book I read was "Hip: The History" by John Leland. Published in 2004 it's a case of better read than never. I flinched it out of a son in law's bookcase. In fact as I check around the house I may need a box to return the books I have borrowed. I might even throw in a few extras but I'll chose carefully because I have recently discovered that my recall is very poor of anything read greater than a decade ago. I know I read it because I own it. Previously read books can be a new joy to my aging brain. 

Satchmo was once asked "what is jazz?" He replied if you have to ask, you'll never know. Hip is like that. The word hip comes from a word used by the Wolof, a west African ethnic group "hepi" meaning to see, or to open one's eyes and is a term of enlightenment. Other hip words from the Wolof are "dega" which evolves to dig, to understand and "jev" or jive meaning to talk falsely. These words found their way to America by the 1700s. Hip travels. It binds cultures together. 

So who is hip? Hip is writers, the old gods of Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Twain, Whitman as well as the beat writers of Kerouac and Ginsberg. It's musicians and music, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, bebop and rappers like Jay-Z, punk rock and riot Grrrls. It's Bugs Bunny and any number of tricksters and in modern times it's the computer geeks. 

The thing about hip is that once it gets outside it's original small circle it may not be hip anymore. The great production machine that's America spews such a steady stream of merchandise to be consumed that sometimes hip is used to sell because they have run out of all the other ways.

Hip is the story of America, according to Leland, "the arc of ideas as they move from subterranean Bohemia to Madison Avenue and back again." There are so many threads to this book to think about I could sit down and read it again. I though the author explored the topic so well I bought another book of his, "Happiness is a Choice You Make: a year among the oldest of the old."

Leland was interviewed and asked who was hippest. His reply was Jack Kerouac and Miles Davis. Deeply flawed men but very hip.  

If I don't read a book at the beach this summer that's probably going to be hip. You on the other hand are probably not hip. Dig? 

  

         

Fishing for a Fish Fry...

We have an upcoming fish fry for our grandson Cullen's birthday. It's time to stock up the freezer. Our daughter in law's dad, Nick joined in to make it a true family effort as we hit the lake in search of fat, fillet size channel cats. Nick told me recently it looked like our shared grandkids were going to be fishermen so he wanted to get in on a few trips to get his game up to par. He was a quick study as we caught 35 catfish yesterday.  

Once again we hit the Los Brazos spot, 35' of water in standing timber with the cats suspended at about 20'. There were a lot of small throw backs but that's ok. We will take the action. 

 We left the house about 1pm, drove through rain showers to the lake and launched with a bit of  southwest wind blowing up from the direction of the Popher's Creek Valley. I had checked weather radar and the prediction that a hole in the afternoon showers would pass over Rayburn was accurate. Even when the wind laid it was still a pleasantly cool, cloudy, perfect catfish day.  

Nick's wife Kim could not join us because she was working in her shop. She will next time. Years of fishing has made me an acute observer of fishing personalities. Nick was the easy going, glad to be out there type that catching a tub full of fish was just a bonus to a great day. I predict Kim will be one of those fishers that you have to make leave the lake who will be willing to keep after it as long as a bite is possible. 

Two retired guys and a bucket of fish. Looks like we upped the count of a bit with an extra rod on board. How long will the lake hold up to pressure like this? 

 

Have You Been to See the Elephant...

I've been looking at this old photo taken during summer vacation with my family in 1959. It's a visit to what I think is either the San Antone or maybe Houston zoo. That's me in the front seat riding an elephant. I don't see any adults in the photo. Maybe in the 1950s kids just knew how to ride elephants and elephants knew what to do when they were loaded up with kids. It's another case of seems like things never going to change and then just like overnight it's different.   

I don't think you can ride an elephant anymore. Citing the public's changing attitude about animals and of course, the most important, the decline in ticket sales and the rule of the almighty dollar Ringling Brothers and Shrine Circus shows no longer use elephants in their shows. I bet you can't ride an elephant anymore but Cathy recalls the kids riding one at a Renaissance Festival as recently as the 1990s. 

Facts and figures show steady decline of elephant populations. Commercial bans on ivory importation into the USA took effect in 2016. In 2018 after some confusing flip flopping around the Trump administration reversed a ban on the importation of elephant trophies. Recently footage of a botched 2013 elephant hunt by NRA president Wayne LaPierre has surfaced and it is good evidence that he should not be allowed to hunt, have a gun or be around elephants. 

It seems when reading wildlife news that detrimental changes over the last four years, human behaviors and the customs of the ivory trade are going to take some time to reverse. I hope the elephants hang in there. One day it will be different but probably not overnight.