Author: docboese

Over half century ago, I grew up in southern Oregon or “God’s Country” as the locals preferred to call it.  What they neglected to add was that God has a left to go along with his right hand. 

The largest town in the area was and still is Medford, which in my youth had a population of about 20,000 with the principal industries being lumber and pears.  While this sounds like a rustic Garden of Eden, it had a bit of a smog problem made nearly intolerable by frequent atmospheric temperature inversions.  In those days, lumber mills had no way to get rid of sawdust, so it was burned in huge metal teepees misnamed wigwam burners.  This coupled with the nasty process of burning old tires used to prevent the pear buds from freezing during the spring, produced witches brew fogs that put London’s pea soups to shame.  Although winters were mild, they were dreary with misty rains, while summers were often miserably hot with daytime temperatures often exceeding 100 for two or three weeks at a time. 

But even hell has its rewards. Less than an hour away are the southern Oregon Cascade Mountains.  This is a truly stunning place, with mixed groves of old growth Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, and western hemlock.  Together these trees combine to shade an understory of ferns that can grow to your navel.  It is an area of countless pristine high mountain lakes and creeks that are filled with rainbow trout that were catchable even with my adolescent angling skills.  At lower elevations, numerous reservoirs contained warmer water pan fish like crappie and blue gill, which were easily caught in abundance using worm and bobber. 

My dad and grandfather loved to fish, which often involved camping in an old army surplus canvas tent.  I hated that tent.  It was greasy, infested with earwigs, and smelled like a musk ox in rut. I hated sleeping on those terrible army cots or worse on the original air mattresses which bore almost no resemblance to the fancy inflate-a-beds of today. They had four rubberized longitudinal tubes which required an hour of blowing by mouth to achieve a lumpy firmness which leaked out overnight.  Although the mattresses were uncomfortable, what I hated the most was the noise they made.  My parents rolling over in their “sleep” sounded like a terminal emphysema ward.  I also hated having to bathe in ice cold lakes then trying to warm up next to a fire that produced more smoke than heat.  As a kid I could get away without daily baths.  As I grew older, the first day without a bath left me with a pungent sweaty gym shorts odor.  The next day I developed the stickies. followed the rash.  The tent eventually disintegrated into a greasy blob which was then carelessly discarded into a rat- infested landfill, where I suspect it might have been seen and warped the mind of a young and impressionable Steven King.       

After the curse of the tent ended, we seldom camped.  Even after my father bought a small camp trailer, we still did not camp.  This was because my father always dreamed of owning a farm or at least to be as self-sufficient in food as humanly possible.    He reasoned that when the next great depression happened, we could live off the land while others less foresighted would starve or be forced to become bootleggers like great uncle Frank. 

For years he had been looking to buy land so that he could have a few cows, pigs, chickens, and a garden.  On the surface, my mother seemed to support him, yet there was always something wrong with the land deals he found.  In truth, she did not want to be a farmer’s wife and somehow managed with subtle feminine guile to dissuade him.  She was so good at this that, in retrospect, I am surprised that he ever was able to realize his dream. But after years of searching and now into his early forties, it was finally realized. 

It was only 16 acres, which was not enough to support a family, so dad always had to have a steady job in town. But it was enough to raise all the beef, chickens, rabbits, and carrots that it took to survive in the harsh world of his youth.  My sister was probably the main reason why mom relented, for if anyone was better at manipulation than mom, it was her.  And Sandra like all young teenage girls of her generation wanted a horse.  Somewhere in the musings of Sigmund Freud there is probably a sexual explanation for this female fascination with large powerful animals being ridden by girls with spurs on their high-topped leather boots.  Regardless of the underlying reason, if Sandra wanted a horse, she was going to get it.  She begged, pouted, cajoled, promising to keep it fed and groomed.  I am sure she even convinced herself that she would keep those promises.

I, on the other hand, got a duck.  Not that I wanted a duck.  Nor to the best of my knowledge are there any male fantasies involving carnal knowledge of ducks or any species of waterfowl.  I had actually wanted a goldfish.  But the dime I was tossing at the carnival bounced out of the dish over the fishbowl and dropped into the one over the duckling cage.  Seems like everyone at the carnival won a duck, even the kids that lived in town.  That is something that probably does not happen much anymore unless you live in rural Laos.  But in those days bringing home a duck from the carnival was pretty common.  Most did not last a week.  Mine lasted three.  My sister’s collie killed it.  The dog was something else she had begged to have on the farm after watching a Lassie movie.  This was yet another thing which she had promised to care for and train, which of course she didn’t.  I was devastated.  Quacky, Donald, or Daffy or whatever name it had that week, was dead.  I pleaded with my father that the crime deserved capital punishment, but my father refused.  It might have been different if it had been a chicken or rabbit as dad was highly protective of our potential food resources.   But Quacky-Donald-Daffy was not considered as food, being too “greezzy” as mom so aptly put it.  But a week later, when Lassie killed about 30 baby chickens that were under a brood light, she was quickly “disappeared”.  I don’t know the actual fate of the beast but suspect that she succumbed to the three “S”es  (shoot, shovel, and shut up). 

Over the years I had other more traditional farm animal pets, but I never got as attached to them as much as I did Quacky-Donald-Daffy.  I knew that eventually they would all meet the same fate—-food.  Sometimes that first bite or two was a little tough, but all my pets turned out to be mighty tasty.  It may sound cruel, heartless, and a bit sadistic but such is the way with farmers, and it is not a bad way to live, with the exception that you can’t go anywhere.  There were always cows to feed; eggs to collect and a garden to weed.  In the summer we irrigated, cut hay, baled it and stacked it in the barn.  Most of this work fell on my father and grandfather, who came to live with us. My father also had to maintain the farm equipment.  We even had a hay baler.  This was silly as only about eight acres were in hay, but he thought he got a good deal on it.  The problem with the baler was powered by the old 45 horse Briggs and Stratton air-cooled engine.  It had to be started by hand crank.  This was easily accomplished when the engine as cold, but once it warmed up there was no way to restart it till it cooled.  Dad never learned this lesson.  As I walked up the long dirt driveway after getting off the school bus one early September afternoon, I could hear him trying to restart the beast after it gorged itself on too much hay.  Crank, crank, crank, then silence for a bit, then crank, crank, crank again.  Drawing closer I could feel his frustration.  If I had known he was beginning to suffer from Chrohn’s disease I might have taken over for him or better yet suggested that he relax with a beer for an hour till it cooled off.  Maybe he would still be alive today if he just learned to relax a bit as I believe that stress was a contributing factor to what ailed and eventually killed him.  If I had been in his shoes, I would have taken a nice nap as well, or better yet just sold the farm and moved to town where there was far less work and food came pre-wrapped.  But Dad was not that type, he continued to crank in total frustration and silence.  When I was within  20 feet he looked up at me and spewed out a string of creative cuss words that hangs over Medford to this day as a light blue haze.  It was such a shock to hear my dad curse so colorfully that I involuntarily snickered.  That turned out to be a really bad idea. 

The beginning of the end of his farming days was the result of milk cows.  While one cow produced all the milk we needed, with two, then three, we produced more milk than we could use.  This was converted to cream which my mother sold to a local creamery where it was made into butter or other high fat dairy products.   Mom though that this was a great way to get a little extra spending money, especially since she, having never milked a cow, did not have to work for it.  Sandra, being a girl, was not expected to do it either.  And even if she was, she wouldn’t.   I might have been able to help, but could never get my mind to accept the idea of sitting on a stool near the ass end of a living fertilizer factory.  So my Dad milked them morning and night for two years.  Then one day he had to work late at his real job of being a lift truck mechanic.  He got home about 2AM to the sounds of three bawling cows wondering why the guy with the calloused hands did not show up that evening.  Dad got to bed just before dawn.  The next day they were all for sale at the local beef auction.  A year or so later we were living in town.  Took the ol’ boy about eight years to figure out that if he wanted to be a farmer, he was on his own.  It also convinced me that I never, ever want to be a farmer. 

Although Dad never totally gave up the dream, we only had a large garden after that.  No chickens, pigs, cows or rabbits.  It also meant that we could take up camping again.  The trailer was eventually replaced by a pickup with a camper so that Dad could pull a small boat trailer behind that mobile bedroom.  As much as possible I tried to avoid these trips.  I still enjoyed fishing, but girls and partying in my parent’s house had much more appeal to me at the time.  And if I did go, it was my job to clean the fish, another job that my mother worked at avoiding.

Time heals all wounds, and the same can be said of bad memories of childhood camping trips.  In college, I worked summers for the forest service which rekindled my love of the southern Oregon Cascades.  During those summers, I lived in rustic but comfortable cabins, complete with showers, flush toilets, heat, and beer.

In the spring of my senior year in college I married Judy, and Wes, much to my mother’s relief, was born ten months later.  By the time Wes was two we were making a little more money and I even had some paid vacation time.  I don’t know if Judy or I came up the idea of a camping trip vacation, but we both were excited to be in the mountains near Union Creek, OR, where I used to work.  We bought a small tent, a couple of sleeping bags, borrowed a Coleman camp stove, and were off to enjoy the wilds.  We didn’t last one night.  The mosquitoes were horrible and Wes took the greatest joy in crawling backwards down a steep hill with the bottom hem of his shirt digging into the soft earth like the blade of a giant earth moving tractor.  Even at that point we might have stayed if there was someplace to bathe him, but we only had the Rogue River, which is so cold at that elevation that hypothermia would have been almost instantaneous.   We packed our newly purchased tent, stowed the sleeping bags and drove home in the dark vowing to never try camping again

After our initial fishing failure, I would like to say that things improved during the week we were in Montana.  It didn’t. We fished lakes, streams going into lakes, and even a stocked local pond with no luck. We bought bait, got advice from the bait shop owners, and talked with anyone who looked like they might know something of fishing in Montana, no luck.

I know that part of our problem when we moved up north to Kalispell and Whitefish was the lack of lake access.  Every lake depending on its size was surrounded by homes that varied from rough log cabins to estates that put Buckingham Palace to shame.  This made finding a spot on the shore without trespassing was a big problem. Montana occasionally would let us low-lifes who did not have seven or eight figure salaries know where we were allowed to fish by putting out an occasional sign with a fish and hook.  These signs would then bring us to a boat ramp where one could fish on either side of it for a few yards. Only way to get to where the fish were was by boat. This idea probably helped the local boat sellers and renters but did little to improve the luck of we who were of moderate means.

We finally gave up listening to the locals on where, how and what to fish with.  Their advice invariably led to the purchase yet another lure or bait type which failed to get us even one lousy nibble.  The only time we caught any fish at all was a site Wes and I had found on our own on the Flathead River by following one of those fish and hook signs.  What we caught were a bunch of eight inch white fish, all of which we threw back, as according to Wes they were not edible unless you were on one of those human versus nature reality shows where maggots were on the menu. In actuality we never technically caught these fish either as the only time they bit was when the pole was perfectly stationary and propped up on a forked stick.  Within a minute of being put on the stick, the end of the pole would start to bob. Pick up the pole, they stopped biting. Hold the pole as steady as possible while not breathing, still no bites. Put it back on the forked stick and boom, the bite was back on. The ones we caught that afternoon had all stupidly hooked themselves and we just reeled them in. Even that was not enjoyable as white fish don’t seem to have any fight in them and they had all swallowed the hook so deep that needle nose pliers could reach the shank.  After about two hours of this we drove back to our hotel, tired, dejected, with worm slime and fish blood on our hands.

On about our third day in northern Montana we were told where to go by yet another local, but before reaching that spot we followed yet another fish and hook sign.  This time the lake was too small to have its access owned by anybody of importance. From the boat ramp we spotted a likely shore site on the opposite side of the lake and what looked like a nearby road.  After a bit of four wheeling we manage to get what we thought was pretty near the site, got out of the truck and were instantly swarmed by humming bird sized mosquitoes. Undeterred, or more likely desperate to go home with at least one nice fish between us, we sprinted toward the lake in the hopes that the deadly swarm was confined to the trees where we had parked.   Lucky for us that the rocks we had seen from the opposite shore were mosquito free, as I am not sure we could have made the return run to the truck without allowing some time for our bodies to renew a few of our lost red blood cells. We fished from the rock for about three hours without a bite. During that time we saw a guy launch a small boat from the boat ramp, and oar around the lake for about an hour dragging a fly behind him.  Eventually he seemed to catch a fish as he took out his net and dipped it into the water. However he was just retrieving a can of Bud that he had dropped. I am really sorry to say that fishing from those rocks was the highlight of our Montana fishing experience. Perhaps we were too early in the year. Perhaps if we had a boat, or had hired a real fishing guide, we could have done better. More likely is that large portions of the people of Montana are liars out to sucker a few bucks out of the stupid tourists. That marketing strategy worked on us big time.

Beside the large proportion of liars in the state it has another more subtle problem.  At two of the resorts we stopped at for Wes to do his chef thing, there were landscaping crews of college age girls busy pulling weeds and planting flower.  Even though I enjoyed the view, where were the little brown people? I have asked this question of several of my buddies when I made it back to Oregon, and the only answer that did not involve blatant racism was that Hispanics being from a warm climes did not like the winters that far north.  Although this answer was also racist it might have some merit, but then where were the Black people? Surely they have adapted to all American climes after being here for four hundred years, which by the way is about three hundred years longer than my family has been here. One day during the trip, Wes left me at the hotel for most of the day as he traveled to various accounts with a food service company representative that could actually sell the pasta to the clients.  Given that they had several hours in the car together and Wes knew her to be a true Montana conservative, he had the opportunity to explore several liberal vs. conservative topics, the gist of which he related to me later that same day. Her point was that the lack of ethnics in Montana was not a sign of racism as evidenced by her own interactions with people of color. She knew a couple of “Mexicans” that ran a local restaurant and they were good people. She also had talked to the black maid at our hotel in the hopes that she would moonlight and clean her house as “those people are so good at that”.  My mouth fell open at that one. I immediately Googled: Kalispell, MT., Racism. What I found was truly enlightening. A person of color had asked a question on a forum about what he could expect if he took a job offer in that fair city. There were six responses. The synopsis was that it would be OK, sure he might get stared at because Montana has few ethnics, he might even get asked where he was from, but as long as he did not do something “stupid” he would be treated fairly. My question is what is the definition of stupid in Montana? Would wearing a Hindu dot, or a Jewish skull cap, or a hat on sideways constitute stupid.  I wanted to add a comment to the forum about Montana’s being too ignorant to even understand that they were racists and not to even consider moving there unless the whole state was given mandatory diversity training.  But then I would be stereotyping, so I let it go.

The highlight of our trip to Montana was Glacier National Park.  We pulled into the park entrance before noon and paid for a ten day pass, which was the least expensive option even though we were planning on leaving the park before sunset.  Went to the visitors center and had to wait for twenty minutes for some hippy back packer types and their kid to stop asking stupid questions about bears in the back country and the precautions they should take to avoid being on the ursine menu.  Finally they left and we got to ask important questions:  Where to fish and what to use for bait? We had to fish in the park as our out of state licenses had expired and there were no license requirements in the park.  We were told that it was too early for Lake McDonald, the main lake in the park, but that we had some limited access to the Flathead River if we drove out of the park following an unpaved Montana road, then pulled back into the park at an entrance located at Pole Bridge, MT.  There was a nice hole right at the park entrance, although the park guy said he had not personally fished it in years. He also said that the river was running high and that he thought we probably were going to be skunked. He went on to say that the road was an eleven mile dusty wash board through an area which had been heavily burned during a recent forest fire.  But if we insisted on going we should stop at the Pole Bridge store as they make pastries that are to die for. Turned out the old man was spot on. The road and fishing sucked but the cookies and Danish were great even though we got there long after they were baked. At least there was one honest man in Montana, but then he had no profit motive, unless he as part owner of the Pole Bridge Bakery.

After checking to make sure the river was not fishable, we decided to drive the six miles up an even worse road to Bowman Lake even though we were not sure that the road was open all the way to the lake.  We started into the lake on the single lane road which got rougher and steeper as we climbed out of the burned area. On one particularly rutted and steep section Wes shifted into 4 wheel drive. Soon after we met a family in a Suburban coming down.  We rolled down the window and asked if the road was open to the lake and if the road got worse than this. The driver answered in the affirmative to both, but also went on to say that though the road was rough we would have no trouble as some grandmother had driven up to the lake in a full sized Cadillac.   A couple of miles further on Wes and I began to comment about yet another Montana liar as there was no way a non-four wheel drive was making it up this jeep trail. The words were no sooner out of our mouths when round the corner comes a Cadillac sedan driven by a woman in her 70’s. We pulled over as far to the side as we could to let her pass.  I was thinking of rolling down the window and spouting a pithy comment about how GM had missed an advertising bonanza by not being there to document her ascent, except the look on her face said that this was one lady who did not take kindly to idle chatter. She could have willed the car up that road on pure hatred alone.

We finally made it to the lake a few minutes later.  Absolutely stunning, as the lake mirrored the snow streaked mountains that surrounded us on three sides.  The lake had a campground and even a boat ramp. How anybody could trailer a boat up to that lake was beyond me, with the possible exception of the lady in the Cadillac.  Wes and I parked in the day use area, grabbed our poles and headed down the lake trail in the direction of where he felt an outlet stream had to be located. Within a few minutes we were on a rustic bridge over the stream where there were fish rising just as it exited the lake.  Wes stood on the bridge with his fly pole casting gracefully out to where the fish were. That kind of fly casting was beyond my ability so I took the bait rod and headed up the trail a bit where it looked as if I could get beyond the shallows into a deeper part of the lake. We fished for about an hour, again without a bite.  Found out later that the fish in the lake are few and small but the scenery was well worth the drive. Might even consider camping there some day, but our travel trailer would not make it up the road and even if it did, Judy would probably not sleep due the presence of grizzly bears, as evidenced by the multitude of warning signs that the National Park people had put up on the trail and at the campground.  Nice to know that there are still places in the lower 48 where man is not totally in control. Maybe that is why the lady in the Cadillac was so hateful.                    

But back to my observation of the lack of shore access to what are supposed to be great fishing lakes.  Of the six major lakes in northern Montana that we visited, shore access was limited to the few public boat ramps.  The rest of the shore line was private, often with mega-mansions that appeared to be in the seven to eight figure ranges.  We found out from a couple of Wes’s contacts in the area almost all of these were second, third or fourth homes that might be occupied a couple of weeks a year.  I can only imagine the kind of money it requires to support multiple homes like that. I have had lots of conversations with some of my conservative friends over this precise issue.  How much money is enough? Their response is that people with that kind of wealth earned it or inherited it from a relative that earned it and that was the American way and dream. Their argument goes on to say that if you put limits on the wealthy class you also put limits on opportunity and America falls into socialism with aimless youth and a degraded general population that scorns working for a living like the French.  Besides as the rich pay most of the taxes already why should they pay even more?

I suppose that they have their points.  But when does wealth become greed? I submit that having several mega mansions all over the world, making eight and nine figure salaries by shipping your companies’ jobs overseas, and hiding your corporations’ assets from the IRS by having your corporate “headquarters” in a Bahamian post office box, is not only greed it is un-American.  I think that even that God of conservatism, Ronald Reagan, would be appalled. Giving tax breaks to the wealthy was supposed to result in increased investment in American business, creating jobs, with a rising tide lifting all boats. Instead what happened is that a large portion of this new wealth went into attempts to create more wealth by investing rather than earning.  Since the Reagan and Bush tax cuts we have had the savings and loan disaster, the internet business bubble, the housing bust, and a banking crisis that has put us on the brink of another great depression. Meanwhile the regular working man is losing his job, his health insurance, if he had any, and can’t find a decent place to fish from the shore of a lake in northern Montana.  

On our last full day in Montana, Wes and I drove along the eastern shore of Swan Lake looking for a place to pull out with a view so that we could have a smoke before his next appointment.  We drove for 35 minutes finding no viewpoints. Although there were plenty of wide spots in the road above the lake which were jealously marked with private drive –no trespassing signs. Seems like the wealthy might be a little nervous about regular guys being able to look down on their estates.  They may just be right.