Trout Fishing in America...

From the title you may have thought this would be another fishing report but last night at the Live Oak Listening Room in Nacogdoches, Tx we saw a concert by the musical duo Trout Fishing in America. 

Ezra (6'9" tall) and Keith (5'5") have been making music together for 50 years. I probably first saw them at the old Crossroads bar in Doches in the 1980s. I took my kids to see them at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in the 1990s. In 2017 we had a big family outing to the Mucky Duck in Houston including grandchildren Warren and Coraline, who were with us last night as well, to see the band. The music appeals to everyone with styles ranging from blues, jazz, country and more with nursery rhymes and other kid adjacent themes mixed with much humor and the enduring inspirations of adult life that seemed to be reflecting a bit on getting older and not acting your age.  

For those wanting to go a bit deeper the band took their name from the book of the same name by Richard Brautigan, an abstract work critiquing mainstream American culture. 

I think this might have been the best show I have seen by them. I am not sure why I felt that way because they have always been a good band. Playing as a duo the sound of the band is very full and the Listening Room was a great place with another great video loop by Pat Casey running in the background. Possibly besides reflecting on some of the songwriting themes that touched me such as where's my cell phone, banjos on the moon and yes you are a pretty girl now where's your momma and imagining the confidence to musically explore 50 years together brought me to the fact that there were friends at the concert that I have known for 40 to 50 years and it was just amazing to all feel the same things.  

After the show the band were very gracious taking the time to sit on the edge of the stage to sell t shirts and cds while chatting up the crowd, signing autographs and posing for photos. Here's Warren and Rose with the guys. 

Keith shares important insights into the music business and life in general with my grandson Warren. The band repeatedly mentioned though the night how they were always looking everywhere to find songwriting inspiration. I know their music is an inspiration to me. 

 

 

Your Favorite King...

 Cathy and I were driving home last night. The night skies were beginning to light up with  late spring thunderstorms that promised to bring much needed rain. It's only a side note that King Charles is visiting the USA because the USB drive plugged into the car which makes it a random play stereo on wheels started to belt out a long slow blues by Albert King and the stinging sustained notes from his signature Flying V guitar must have made the hair stand up on the back of both of our necks because Cathy asked, "Who is your favorite King?" 

If you are a blues fan you should know there are four Kings. There is Earl King from New Orleans, Freddie King from Gilmer, Texas, B.B King from Mississippi and the one we were listening to, Albert King also born in Mississippi. I had to answer that probably my favorite is Albert. 

Actually Albert has been on my mind as it's that New Orleans Jazz Fest time of the year and I always think about music that was the soundtrack in the car for long rides south on I-10 to the fest as well as the music I've seen at the fest. There was plenty of Albert King on those old cassette mixtapes we played in the Rocket 88 and actually saw Albert once at the fest but for what ever reason, too much beer in the sun or too many funk and tropical sounds for me to sit though a set of 1234 blues in the middle of the afternoon. My loss. 

I took a quick count of the music in my collection and found these three records. That live one has had the most play and if you don't count the greatest hits package these are not even his most well known recordings. Though I have seen Earl King twice I think I might only have one side by him on a jazz fest compilation. I never got to see Freddie King but I think I might have three or four cds. I have seen B.B. King live twice, have two of his albums and though he is a great maybe my least favorite. 

So I guess to answer that stormy question who is your favorite King:

1. Albert

2. Freddie.

3. Earl

4. B.B.

Don't let my thoughts influence your judgment. Take a late drive. Crank the tunes. They will speak to you and maybe rearrange your hair.   

  

Pre-Big Bass Splash Fishing Report...

 This weekend is a Big Bass Splash Fishing Tournament on Sam Rayburn and the lake was strangely quiet the day before an expected 3000 entries try to hit the water and win. There was plenty of parking at the ramp and I could only see one camper in the park but many campsites are still in disrepair from Hurricane Beryl and after all the popular big bass spots on the lake are on down a way and it was a perfect day for our late afternoon catfish trip. 

You can see from this photo how close to the shore we were. Right in front of the boat juts a little sandbar which when we untied to leave we let the stiff south wind blow us up on and caused me to take a swim in belly deep water to float us off. The water is 82 degrees which is probably a little warmer than our water aerobics class has been lately so swimming season is on us. 

Cathy caught this fat channel cat on the first cast dropping her slip cork rig in a 4.5 foot deep creek which dead ends in the first photo but at normal lake levels is passable into the the Deer Stand area cove. Final total was 8 channel cats, nice fillet size. There was a lot of shad activity in this cove and we had many throw backs as it was just full of 8 to12 inch cats in a feeding frenzy. 

The lake is so low looks like I'm bank fishing in this photo.

I think this is a man made structure of branches piled around a stump to create a fishing holding spot along an edge leading up to a point which when the lake comes up should hold some fish. 

Of course we ate fried catfish, blackened potatoes on the blackstone and salad. 

I pronounce that summer has arrived. Be careful with those tournament fishermen on the lake this weekend but truth be told we caught these fish after the time of what will be their final weigh in so if you leave late should be good.  

  

   

 

 

 

Canoe Trip...

Milo was after me everyday last week with the cry, "I want to go fishing!" Heck I did too but sometimes you just get caught up in doing those big people things and neglect other things but I finally found a day to load the canoe and head over to Martin Dies Junior State Park for some fishing along the paddling trails on B.A. Steinhagen Reservoir.  

We only caught a couple of small bass but I think Milo was more interested in loading, unloading, dragging to and from the water and the strapping for transport of the canoe. That's OK, we all have our gifts and if we get through those terrible twos looks like hard work will be one of his. 

I have had some world class bream fishing along the trails but seemed like the lake was just a little low and that made it hard not to snag the small 1/32 ounce swim jigs the panfish like so well in the mats of hydrilla. I think fish were present and maybe sometime I'll take a cane pole and drop a bait in the openings instead of dragging weeds. 

There was plenty of bird watching and though the lake is loaded with gators we did not see any. Of course that does not mean they did not see us.  

 

I did scope out some of the camp sites as I usually camp at this lake in the other unit on the other side of the lake and I noted easy access to a part of the creek I usually don't fish so I'll keep that in mind. 

Over a Half Million Blog Visits...

One of my biggest blog fans was my late father in Law Bill Cooney. He urged me to monetize the blog with ads so I could make money off of it. Bill was a retired school teacher and I was honored he thought the writing was that good and apparently other people think so too because this year my blog has surpassed a half million visits.   

When Bill suggested this I was all pure and everything and at the time the internet was a different place but now after 3257 posts and seeing online influencers make obscene amounts of money in a month I almost think, Why Not Me?

This blog app does offer placing ads and with the clicks of readers the traffic will pay money. My wife says don't do it, you don't need to. Maybe after I'm gone the kids will do it and the legacy money will pay my great grandchildren's college expenses. Of course I'm assuming that college as we know it will still exist and not be free. 

Maybe no one will click the ads, whatever they might be, because the online world has moved on past blogs to TicTok, Substack and other things I don't know about or even use. 

What do you think? Give me the clicks, man!  

 

 

You Don't Need a Time Machine...

 We like to tour old houses, plantations and other historical sites when on vacation. On this last trip to Charleston South Carolina we took a look at the McLeod Plantation on James Island. 

The plantation is a recognized as an important Gullah Culture site, important because the isolation of the imported people on the Sea Island region stretching from North Carolina in to Florida  kept much of their African culture intact. You can easily see this today as the traditional sweet grass baskets are still woven by hand and sold in roadside booths. I'm interested in this because my ancestors were and probably still are in North Carolina and may well have some tie to the Gullah culture which I hope to uncover some day. Hopefully that tie will not be too embarrassing. 

My grandkids Parker and Cullen with the house in the background. They are very well behaved tour takers and hopefully the will retain some of the history heard here. This house is from 1858 though the site is first recorded on maps in 1678. It's not furnished but you can look around inside. 

Barn on the property. There are many beautiful oak trees and what's left of an oak ally along the original driveway. Usually I take photos of the oak allys I visit but with a modern highway in the back ground I passed on this one.  

Can you spot the fingerprints of the brick maker? These bricks were made from the local clay, shaped by human hands and then dried and fired to harden them and you can also see prints like this at nearby Fort Sumter. They have figured that these were probably from a child and the clearness of raised fingerprint ridges may have indicated some illness.   

This big live oak is estimated to be 700 to 900 years old. 

An interesting story told by our tour guide is that in the years following the end of the civil war despite the efforts of Jim Crow to keep the people oppressed without free labor the economy of the Charleston area declined. By the 1930s it was clear tourist were going to be an important income stream. Note the bell in the tree. 

Where tours of the 1930s were given by McLeod descendants they told the story of how the bell was rang so that the slaves returned from the fields and lunched under the tree while the McLeods dined on the porch as one big family group. Nothing was farther from the truth. Growing the crops of the plantation, cotton, Indigo and rice was brutal work. Later someone climbed the tree and from an inscription on the bell it was easily dated to the 1920s. It had not been rang while enslaved people lived on the plantation. The story was just a way to advance the untruths of the mythic, noble south. As the tour guide said you won't need a time machine to still find those attitudes around Charleston today. 

These slave houses are in their original location and were built when there was an influx of French planters and the slaves that came to American at the start of the Haitian Revolution in 1791. The descendants of the McCleod slaves were still living here in 1990 when the last living McLeod passed away. They were afraid to move because they mistakenly thought that occupancy guaranteed some monetary inheritance or burial rights on the property.       

It did not. One out of four imported people came through the docks at Charleston. 90% of African Americans can trace one ancestor to Charleston. As Faulkner said, "History is never dead, it's not even past."  

 

    

 

Seven Days on the Road and We Made it Home Last Night...

This has been the season of the great spring break celebration. First we camped at Beaver's Bend with our grandchildren Warren and Coraline and the Zamora family and this week we completed a tour that included a flight to see the Tulloch family in Chicago and a flight to see the Wallace family in South Carolina. It was nice that everyone had different spring breaks because if it was all at once the grandkids would have ganged up and been busy with each other but here we were able to spend time with each family not to mention the cooler late winter climate of Chicago, the costal spring of Charleston where we met the Wallaces as well as a good dose of government shutdown TSA screening line delays in Houston.   

The Tullochs downtown in Maggie Daly Park. 

With the Wallace family in Charleston.

It was a seven day, three flight trip with lots of good eating. Since Katie and Peter live so close to Chinatown the Asian food is great. 

In Charleston the southern seafood cooking is top notch. They have a saying, "eat till you are tired and wake up hungry." I had shrimp and grits for breakfast three days in a row. 

Some people had a dip in the Atlantic Ocean.

Some people were busy babysitting a friend's big lizard. 

We all had fun and the TSA lines were much easier in Chicago and Charleston for what ever reason.  This vacation was so good I'm ready for another. We don't have a big camper trip scheduled till mid May but a campsite by the water somewhere is calling me.