question

what the hell is a dew point - and who cares...?

quote for the day

     "what the hell are we paying you for?"

      new jersey governor chris christie to b. h. obama

baboon

glen and i were camped at amboseli not far from kilimanjaro.  its snowy peak, kibo, loomed over our breakfast remains.  we'd been to the permanent camp at kimana, driving 20 miles [it seemed] through a sisal plantation to get to the river and the little cluster of buildings electrified by a generator powered by the biggest, most beautiful fly wheeled engine i'd ever seen.  i, foolishly, had taken off my shoes thinking the sand by the river would be pleasant to walk in.  it was until i ran into a nest of burrs which koloboto my old personal boy on safari, now camp manager, plucked gently from between my tender toes, all the while tsk, tsking.  now we were under tents in an area glen said was full of buffalo with which we could have some "fun".

"what are we doing today,  great white hunter?"

"fooling around.  nothing special.  we'll burn some fuel.  ramble a bit."

"good.  i need some photos, but i'm not walking around in herds of buffalo without a rifle."

"no rifles in camp, you baby."

so we rambled, slipping through the scattered bush, seeing what we could see.

at some point in the morning we left the track bouncing over the infrequent rocks, dodging the pig holes, creeping, sometimes backing up to get around in the thick bush.

"this is no fun," remarked john fitzgerald, the other hunter who'd joined us the night before.  from the back seat his vision was restricted, the bush scratching by him against the window frame.

suddenly we broke into the clear and before us sat, scattered, a troop of baboons - twenty or more.  they hardly reacted to the appearance of the toyota.

"see if you can get close, glen.  i don't have any baboon pictures."

glen, from the right hand driver's seat, eased up to an old dog baboon who was munching on some root he'd grubbed up, putting me within six feet - good photo range.  i pointed the camera and the beast leapt up on the hood of the car. 

"oh shit," we all said in unison.  at that he grabbed the rear view mirror support and swung into the car, into my lap.  i lunged at glen as the baboon pawed through the sweets on the shelf that ran across the dashboard.  when he found what suited him he vaulted out the window, giving us all the finger - i'm sure i saw that. glen, with me in his lap, wrenched the car to the right, ran into a rock, and stalled.  john squalled from the back, "you crazy shits.  you'll get us all killed.  that fucking thing could have torn your arm off...."  glen and i were in hysterics, laughing like idiots.  "you are idiots," yelled john.  "fucking idiots."

true story.

pallbearers

i won't have them because i don't want a funeral - certainly not a casket. just burn me up and cast the ashes into some water somewhere...but if i did have them here's a list of those i'd like to cart me around  [some of them are already dead so it's an impossible arrangement]: stiles adkins, ruly carpenter, glen cottar, jimmy green, tom o'donnell, andy smith, john swan, tiger thouron...and here's why i'd be honored to have them serve.

stiles adkins was my best man.  we met over quail guns.  his mama, miss laura, was the queen of fenwick island who used to take on all comers at yahtzee - with a glass of vodka at her side - and cooked the best soft crabs ever...i once ate 23 at one sitting and broke out in red dots.  [the crabs were illegal by today's standards - 50 cent sized.]  stiles and i laid waste to the quail population in and around fenwick and laughed the whole time, all the while trying to figure out how to get laid and drinking gallons of beer.  mister wilfred, his father, did not approve of our antics either in the field or in the bedroom [we wished] and, after finishing his bowl of chocolate ice cream would return to his beloved chickens - all 50,000 of them.  a true narrow face man.

ruly carpenter is my best friend.  he wasn't always - he used to beat the shit out of me on the football field and throw at my head on the baseball diamond - but when i began to date his younger sister we became close and have remained so ever since.  together we've shot every imaginable species of local wild life - some i'm not too proud of - and caught at least one of every local fish.  i've loved every member of his immediate family for - as he so amiably remarked at my son's, his godson's, wedding - "fifty years buzzard's been hanging around.  can't seem to get rid of the son of a bitch."  i'd trust him with my life.

glen cottar was one of the last true white hunters in east africa.  i met him in 1970 and hunted with him in 1971. we hunted the serious stuff - elephant, lion, buffalo, leopard as well as the antelope and zebra and did well, without incident - which meant glen did everything right. we didn't fool with rhino because they were being poached - though we were charged by a couple.  more important, we became friends and friendship forged in tight quarters - no matter the reason - tends to last.  he taught me a lot about life and death and  he'd be embarassed to hear it, but i loved him.  i loved his wife pat, just as much.

jimmy green was a gambler and, to a few, a bookmaker.  i first met him at the racetrack when i was a kid.  he was more of a kid than i but he was already running bets for his uncle, a real bookmaker.  jimmy was a hard drinker and a hellraiser.  he quit drinking and was forever famous for the quote "alcohol is not your friend."  his cigarette rasp would growl at the other end of the line, "we're headin' east [to atlantic city]. c'mon and go...i got bullets.  you can pay me later."  i'd always go.  jimmy died some years ago - in a chair at his favorite venue, the race track - a fitting exit for an old friend.

tom o'donnell is another gambler - though strictly a horseplayer.  besides adventures at the race track - like winning four 10 cent superfectas in one day and still losing $75 a piece - tom and i have fished together a lot in  the surf, off shore, and in the keys.  one day in jewfish basin tom hooked a nice permit which attracted the attention of a large lemon shark.  i fought the shark with joey's push pole while tom fought the permit.  both fish lost.  t'snake [to his friends] is a kind and generous man - the good cop to my bad cop.

andy smith taught me how to bonefish.  big and black as lawrence taylor, he lives on andros, the delaware sized island in the bahamas.  fortunately for andros there are only 5,000 inhabitants - hardly a crowded place.  besides bonefishing andy lobsters on the great bahama bank.  because of the cubans he carries an ak-47...my kind of man and one i'd want at my side throughout any trial.  he called me the other day after he heard of my newly acquired afflictions.  "i haven't the balance to stand on the bow," i reported.  "come sit on a cooler," he replied.  "if you can cast 30 feet we'll catch fish."  i think i'll go.

john swan...well, i'll tell you about swan.  he's a brilliant artist in watercolors and oils [i rather prefer the watercolors] who has just produced a couple of books - both wonderful evocations of his talent...but i've got a bone to pick with him.  he's a trout and salmon fisherman and whenever we fish in the salt he breaks my rods - that damn trout strike.  he forgets to strip strike, gets all excited and bang, there goes another orvis special.  he's chalked up four to date and i'm never again going to tell him, as i did last year, "you don't need to bring any rods.  i've got two."  he broke them both.

tiger thouron and i shot together for years.  he also, kindly, asked me to salmon fish on his deveron river beats in aberdeenshire [where i didn't  trout strike].  he was my son's other godfather - and a good one.  sadly, we had a falling out late in his life which was never repaired - though i tried.  we used to shoot in the morning, drink a lot at lunch, and play darts over whiskey until dinner.  to give you an idea of the annual killing volume, we often managed 2000 ducks, 2000 pheasants, several hundred doves, one year 154 deer, and one carp which i shot - much to my later regret - under the ice in a flood plain meadow after a deluge and a quick freeze.  tiger was a great friend.

major white, pure as the driven snow, i  hope would serve as altar boy.

quote from anon....

    "wives, never say no to your husband because someone else will say yes.  husbands, never say no to your wife because she will make your life miserable and fuck up your golf game."






[with thanks to tom odonnell]

unseemly things

herman cain - get out

joe paterno - get out

the first, stupid...the second, horrific.  just an old man's opinion.

the simple system

"want to go pound them ponies?"...not even  an answer to my telephonic hello - just a simple question.  i knew who it was, of course...the call came pretty regularly on sunday mornings during the thoroughbred racing season at delaware park.  a friend of mine, tom o'donnell, tsnake to his intimates, had come up with a handicapping system that was uncanny in its success rate that year...for a couple of years in fact and the caller, bobby carpenter, had quickly adopted it as his own.  he called me because i was quick with math - it was a pure math based - hence simple - system.  he was not as he proved when he took on the calculations himself and began to modify them to, ultimately, the dissolution of the product.

the simple system was a speed based rating calculation...we refined it a bit but in any race it took into consideration the entries last three performances and established the top three candidates for a bet.  i, and bobby, then, generally boxed those in exactas - tom was more of a straight bettor.  for some reason delaware park held a significant speed bias through that first summer, and partway through the next, so speed ratings proved to be all one needed to be a winner.

i don't remember how much i won that year...but it was enough to keep me going back and using the same calculations over and over again.  bobby, lately recovered from heart surgery, proudly announced he'd won $842 at the meeting - the best year he'd ever had. he further claimed we'd saved his life - helped him recover from the depression so often associated with artery reaming.  things fell apart midway through the next season - the track speed bias disappeared - but it was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.

the next adventure the tsnake and i had involved 10 cent superfectas - we won four in one day.  most bettors go a lifetime without winning one superfecta, let alone four in one day.  in spite of our handicapping ability we lost $75 a piece...a story for another time.

a reminder from the buzzard

   "any action is better than no action..."  hawk pollard, to himself, often.





[with thanks to sally pollard]

toasts

not something  practiced much anymore but a gesture appreciated at certain times...i submit the following for your review.

on the occasion of impending battle - no matter the circumstance:  "confusion to the enemy."

on the anniversary of the loss of a cohort - or at any appropriate gathering:  "to absent friends."

with the proper glass and the use of either, one can not go wrong.

guides

  "oh christ.  don't put that down.  dead lions very often get up, believe me."  that was glen cottar in 1971, in tanzania, at the conclusion of a hunt when i, exhausted from the tension, started to prop my rifle on the nearest bush.  glen was the latest and last of the famous cottar clan to professionally hunt in east africa - a family put out of business when kenya closed all hunting in 1977.  he was a mentor and became a great friend.

i've been very lucky in that regard.  many of the guys who have guided me on my hunting and fishing expeditions have become lifelong friends - and most of them have been world class.

first there was captain bob tarr an old eastern shore waterman who taught me how to bait a duck - with corn - to deadly result [for the duck].  then there was harry "the heron" elsey who could glide through a marsh like his namesake and one day, many years ago, helped retrieve a hundred teal which made the mistake of sliding down a little back water creek into our 20 gauge arms.

later, when i started fishing seriously in the salt came gil drake, whose family owned deep water key long before orvis and frontiers took over the fly fishing business.  some time prior, gil had moved to key west which was where i met him on the advice of guy de la valdene, a mutual friend.  gil, guy, tom mcguane, and others had pioneered fly fishing for tarpon - together with more exotic endeavors - out of key west in the 70s.  gil was not very patient with my untalented fly fishing technique and therefore passed me on to harlan franklin.  before that happened we fought an epic battle - four hours  - with a permit i hooked late in the day and lost in the black of night which gil - who saw it twice boatside - estimated to weigh 60 to 65 pounds.  that would have beaten, if boated, the world record by a substantial margin.  the only irony is that i had a take from a fish out of the same bunch that may have been 10 pounds heavier.  the shallow area on which these fish, and others, were feeding - just outside key west harbor - is now known as hawk's flat.

harlan taught my son and daughter to "throw at the white spots" on the flats, which often contained a terrifically hungry and excited baracuda who, once hooked, would leap in great greyhounding arcs, all the while glaring at us with its huge, black predator's eye...very satisfying for a young fisherman and for which i will be forever in his debt.  he and i specialized in permit - with the odd shark thrown in - and ultimately chased  bonefish on andros with andy smith.

andy, one of charlie smith's 27 children, is the consummate fly caster and bonefish guide.  his father created the "crazy charlie", an unassuming looking fly but one no self respecting, aspirant bonefisherman would be without.  andy and i fished together a lot.  i'll always remember his bahamian lilt on our first morning's meeting, "welcome to andros, hawk".  we never caught any really big fish, though i hooked a couple but we always had fun.  one day we went to the west side of andros, got stuck in the mud, saw a  big sawfish with its legion of little jacks in attendance, cast to a hundred small permit to no avail [as far as i know permit never eat - flies at least], and i was admonished not to jump overboard to cool off, "no man.  not here.  bulls here."  sharks, that is.  a wild, wild part of the world.

closer to home, on the outer banks of north carolina, i ran into rob pasfield.  we hunted false albacore in the fall with the rest of the small fleet of fly fishermen out of harkers island.  that fishing goes from dead quiet to crazy madness in a heartbeat as the brilliantly swift little albacore tear into the baitballs - and are gone before one can make the first cast.  one november i had a rookie join me for a couple of days.  he wasn't rigged when we left the dock - a cardinal sin in this type of fishing, hell any type of fishing - and had no fly at the end of his leader when we came upon the first school just inside the hook.  i had three fish to the boat before his shaking fingers finished knotting a clouser - and the fish disappeared.  rob didn't laugh until later.

sally and i flew out to kenya to visit cottar's camp a few years ago.  since we'd gone that far i figured oh hell, what was another 1500 miles so we went on to the seychelles to bonefish.  as the little prop jet dropped down over st. francois, an old coconut plantation gussied up as an exotic resort, i peered out the window at bijoutier its neighbor and the huge ocean flats that surrounded  the islands.  arno matthee met us the next morning and thus began four days of the most exciting fishing i've ever had.  i've written elsewhere of the adventures we had but two things stick out:  meeting arno who became a friend forever and the extraordinary tidal activity.  oh sure, there were fish of all kinds - and they were everywhere - but the water was like a live thing streaming off the flats so fast it left fish flopping on the bare sand, and as it returned climbing your legs like a silent slithery predator.  to sally, small in stature, it was frightening...me - i checked to see how far away the boat was and whether we could make it there before this wild thing engulfed us.

in the newspaper there have lately been stories of al-quaeda related somali bandits raiding in kenya, kidnapping and looting in an area east of the tana river near a town called garissa.  it is a part of the world claimed by both somalia and kenya, home of [in the old days] the shifta poachers who did so much to devastate kenya's elephants.  it is also the place glen and i hunted elephant so many years ago - the taru desert.  i wonder, my old friend - wherever you are - if anyone now there remembers us....