Gone Fishing - Harold Ensley the Duck and I

Cape Fair – just as you enter town on route 76  a sign proclaims“Cape Fair – bass capital of the world”. Who is to say that it is not? Three towns in Florida and one each in Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Jersey and Virgina make the same claim. It a sports fish. Some people eat them. Fishermen looking to put something on the talbe  usually go for crappie. It’s a bony fish I’m told, but it is a pretty fish. Black bass – gold and dark green. There are usually five or six pick-up trucks with empty trailers. Bass boats are long and low with a big moter that makes them skeeedadle and a little electric trolling motor aft to ease them into the best spot. There are two high stools on which to sit and make a clean cast. I bought a state fishing permit and a lite rod and reel today. I havn’t fished since I was a kid. The guy at the tackle shop says that he crushes one of these (it’s something stinkey) and rubs in on his lure. It attracts them he says. I’m only looking to waste some time on a hot afternoon. Maybe catch a few pan fish. I might not even keep ‘em, I think. No, I say, two of the lures and a packet of the jigs will do. I don’t plan to get that serious about it. I certainly don’t plan on a bass boat, although I’m considering a small kayak. I’ve been out along the shore three times now. I’ve lost one jig and narry even got a bite yet.

How harmless truth / is / in cold weather / to an empty nest – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972 p163

This moring the place is full of pick-up trucks with empty trailers. I hear someone talking down at the marina – seven metal sheds floating on the water. At the end of the second there is a gas pump and the tackle shop. He is addressing a group. From the sound of his voice, I’d assume he's giving them instrucions. Then a bass boats with a green light aft and a white one on a pole astern, idles past the seventh and last shed and past the buoy just beyond it and guns its big motor and roars down the river and around the bend towards the open lake. Then a hundred yards back another. I can see more between the sheds – not quite a parade and not an armada either. I begin counting them as the roar away. I count thirty. There were actually thirty-two. Bass tournment no doubt.

I spent the day / differentiating / and wound up / with nothing / whole to keep – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972 p183

The leader board has slots for ninty enteries but has only thirty-two written in. I read the rules. The “Freeze Up Buddy” bass tournament. $40 entry fee for each boat/team of two. Some fathers bring their sons. Some are just buddies. After the tournament teams pass by in review, the guys just out to fish line up and drop their boats into the river. The teams take off at seven AM. One team is late, someone had said that it started at eight. Seven places for the total weight of any three live bass. There is a side bet for biggest bass. Most of the teams poney up. Come back at two for the weight in, the man in the tackle shop says. Come down and watch, he tells me. They have opened up just for this tournament. They won’t open up for regular hours until March. This is the first year that the Corps has kept the campgound open – electricity but no water – and with my senior discount it only costing me six dollars a night. They had never had a tournament this early in the year before but the weather has been so nice.

“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no true patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”  - G K Chesterton

At 1:30 I head back down to the marina. About half the boats are already back. The rest of them come trickling in. Everyone looks tired. Just before two the two minuted warning is given. If anyone hasn’t turned in their boat tag, you got two minutes in which to get it done. The “Freeze-Up Buddy” tournament has concluded. Team members are carrying their three biggest fish in plastic bags to the weight-in station. Boat by boat they are weighted – single bass, three bass all alive – and totted on the board. Eighteen of the teams yield fish to be weighted. I had asked what the expected winer might weight in at. Oh, probably around fifteen pounds. It was 16.2 pounds and the biggest fish was 6.2 (boat #15 – Morphlet and Smith who also took second in total weight – taking home $934). The guy from the tackle shop asked the fisherman if they liked the way the tournament was organized. Most of them thought it was ok. Someone suggested that the weight-in might be done at three instead of two.

One can be an observer only up to a point. Beyond that point one was an intruder – V S Naipaul – The Masque of Africa, 2010  p174

The individual is possible only when he is a part of a disciplined and differentiated mass

Rational, reasonable people adapt themselves to the world, but strong people adapt the world to themselves – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956  p1562

Four fishermen – four bright red pick-ups

            In a parking lot

With a roar, down

            The James

And out onto the lake

            Bass await

If good, won’t be back

            Until late

And even if the bass

            Aren’t biting

Might not be back

            Until all the whiskey is gone

Winter over, ice-bound / mind better not rush to meet spring fast; / might trip, stiff thought, / shatter – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972  p60

Power can either be displayed by those who weld it or it can be displayed by the objectification of those on whom it is brought to bear

Poetry convinces not by argument but by the form it creates to carry its content – Louis Zukofsky – A Taste of Poetry

Power hangs between the pillars of spectacle and surveillance

News was generated by storms, not doldrums – Ngugi Wa Thiongo – Wizzard of the Crow, 2007  p74

To slip out of the leg-irons of a discipline: I miss my old chains.

The preoccupation of a bureaucracy with an individual always leads to the conclusion that this individual is shady and unreliable, that is to say, as measured by the standards of precision and security according to the rules and regulations one applies in a bureaucracy – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956  p1668

Raymond Carver’s shorts stories are full of drinking and exs – everyone that drinks has them – middle aged professionals in a relationship that involves alcohol and this relationship is bracketed by the former ones and the ones that will come after this – bottoms up. Set in small town America in rented rooms. Alcohol (and sometimes marijuana) and love (or at least a relationship which seems to be equalivent). Being drunk is a lot like being in love, or should that be the other way around. It is not that they are the same. Are they real? They seem to be grounded in reality, Carver’s reality. It is easier to read them than it is to do them . It is easier to do them than to write it. It is easier to write them out  it than  it is to live them.

Can reading – more to the point, can writing – be a kind of drug, a distraction from an otherwise insufferable existence? Is it possible to be addicted to writing? – Adam Krish – New Republic 0 8/18/11 p23

Those who are paid regularly; those who are paid by the day; those who are paid by the job done and finally there are the prostitutes.

It was time to go. And time to pay. The guide had to be paid for attending and when we got to the iron gate there was a further charge, for entering. It would have been like that, too, at the oracles in the Classical world. The world has always had its dues – V S Naipaul – The Masque of Africa, 2010  p29

I’ve just about had it with Sue Grafton – the Paula Dean of mystery writers – this genteel elder stateswoman. I’ve just finished the first half of the ‘U’ novel and have figured out the plot line – it is no mystery (or I’ll be very surprised if it is). It is just a matter of how our detective will go about putting the pieces together – sort of like a Colombo episode. And I’m getting tired of her bourgeoisie moralizing. A mystery should be a novella – something gets solved. This is a novel – a character is developed; and a poor one at that. But I’ll trudge on to see if it comes out the way I expect it. And oh, just one more question? What is it, Colombo? the villain asks indulgently.

For more than two decades, Washington’s maninstreamers considered [Dick] Chaney… genial, brainy and suave. You could invite him to a dinner party and know he wouldn’t start spouting Bible verse and frighten the caterers – Andrew Ferguson – Commentary Oct 1011 p64

And now the cabs return from Ocean Beach, disgorging the tired, the sore and the broken of the bay. Eight miles on their Stairmasters had seemed easy and so they had gone out last night with friends and partied. This morning they had stood at the corner play acting their jogging and laughing. Now they limp home.

Joe Banana was born in Ipenema - ugh - boom da oug oug, tat tat, yeah - boom da, Boy ah, boy ah boonk. Joe grew up an angry punk. Oih Oih. Now he’s the big banana of the Samba bunch. Sigh - boing, boing, ahi ah ah. And I get out my pastels and allow the colors to flow freely across the white page without restraint – have courage, use your instinct.

Don’t forget to slop the hogs, / feed the chickens, / water the mule, / cut the kindling, / build the fire, / call up the cow // supper is over, its starting to get dark early, / better get the scraps together, mix a little meal in, nothing but swill – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972  p66

My Donald Duck is two degrees of separation form Harold Ensley. My uncle provided the Ford that Harold drove. I bought Mr. Duck form my uncle's bookkeeper. I only found out later. I found the trailer on Craig's List.