The Fishing Trip----Part Three

    

One of the massive hammer mills in the canyon beyond Creede.  Ore was loaded into wagons under the shed at the base, but back then few people rode bicycles--they got exercise in other ways.

                             

     Monday morning we broke camp—meaning we moved our gear out of the log cabins and packed the vehicles—and headed for Platoro, Colorado.  On the way, we visited the old mines in the steep canyon just above Creede.  The mines at Creede operated continuously from 1890 until 1985, producing tons of silver, gold, lead, zinc and copper.  In the early days, ore was broken down here in massive hammer mills, then loaded on mule trains and carried overland to the railroad at Alamosa, where it was loaded onto railcars and transported to the smelter.  The whole canyon is full of history.

     Bob Ford shot Jesse James in Missouri, and ten years later, Ed O’Kelley shot Bob Ford in a tent saloon in Creede.  Bat Masterson and Poker Alice both lived and gambled there for a time.  Wide open, with gambling halls, saloons and whore houses, the local motto was, ”There is no night in Creede.”

     When the “Holy Moses” Mine was discovered in 1889, six hundred people lived in Creede.  By the end of 1891, the population had grown to over ten thousand.  When the mines closed in 1985, the locals continued digging for gold, changing their focus from ore to tourists.  The little city is filled with brightly painted, perfectly restored Victorian buildings.

     We made our way through South Fork and on to Monte Vista, then, because there are no front roads, took back roads to Platoro.  Platoro is a mining town, and an active mine still operates, boring into the mountain on the western edge of the community.  No idea what they mine there, but there may be a clue in the name.  A Mexican friend tells me the name Platoro is a combination of Plata, Spanish for silver, and Oro, which means gold.

Looking down into the metropolis of Platoro, at the curve of the Conejos River. 

     The last forty miles of road into Platoro is dirt, and according to the signs, must be graded by the county once each twelve months.  We arrived at the Skyline Lodge, cabin number eleven, about two P.M.  Roy Turner had already arrived—his gear was inside.  He was out exploring, but drove up within fifteen minutes.

     Ratisseau said having Roy show up was, “just like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae.” As soon as we stowed our gear, the fishermen began to talk in tongues as they prepared for battle and pulled on their waterproof suits of armor.

     “I reckon I’ll use one of them black-and-yellow pity pons this afternoon,” said Wayne, “or a solid black cinco loco.  Them big ‘uns cain’t hardly let one of them cincos go by.”

     “When I think back over the past sixty-some-odd years of fly-fishing, I doubt if I ever caught anything on a pity pon, much less a cinco.  My best luck has always been with a red-and-green jumble-iya, tied on a number eight hook with my daddy’s secret knot,”  Roy drawled.

     “I wouldn’t use anything red and green today.  Look at those birds—they’re going crazy over dark blue hotty-tottys.  I tied me some of them last week and that’s what I’ll be using,”  McMullen put in. 

      “You guys need to make up your minds and get moving or we won’t get any fishing done today,”  Collins said.  “I’m gonna use one of these McFly Terminators that Neil tied for me last Christmas.  Never fail to catch something with one of them.”

Roy, Wayne, Me, James, and Neil in front of cabin #11.  I took one look at this picture and started a diet.

     As I sat there on the porch and listened while the group discussed the proper weight of a leader, the exact color of a fake tsetse fly, the most advantageous length for a rod, and the type of line best-suited for dry-fly fishing, I suffered from an utter lack of understanding.  Except for the obvious West Texas accents and phrasing, I could have been listening to a bunch of Greek farmers arguing about the best way to cook a goat.

     After the afternoon fishing, Neil broke out a bottle of Ezra Brooks, and happy hour commenced as we fried trout for dinner.  Now, let me point out once again, none of us are spring chickens.  The guys moved slowly getting into their fishing gear.  They took forever to rig the fly rods.  Everyone maneuvered gingerly up and down the rustic steps at the front porch, and it took three rest periods for any of us to clomp up stairs to the bedrooms.  Not so with the whiskey.  A sack of crushed ice and more than half of Neil’s bottle disappeared instantly.  I suppose the thin air up there melts ice and evaporates good bourbon.

     I hated to put a damper on the festivities, but I had to relay a comment to James Collins. “Now Collins, I don’t hardly know how to say this, but I need to tell you something.  Our friend, Davis Ford is hurt that he was not invited up here to enjoy this trip with the rest of us.  He wouldn’t want me saying anything, but he was absolutely crushed.  He had a little catch in his throat when he told me you all had been friends since before the first grade and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t invited.  Maybe you ought to call him—you know, maybe help him feel better.”  Davis had asked me to lay a good, thick guilt trip on Collins and I did my best.

     “You tell Davis Ford if we’d wanted him up here we’d have invited him.”  Guilt trips don't work on Collins, and that closed the subject of Davis Ford.  “Pass that bottle over here, Jimmy Paul—as Rat says, ‘I need a half-sole on this drink.’” 

     Later, when I told Ford about the incident, he laughed heartily, and said, “The little S.O.B. hasn’t changed a bit.  He was just like that when he was five years old.”

     Turner started telling a story about two of our classmates.  During a brief pause, Ratisseau told three jokes.  Roy went on with his story.

     As Roy caught his breath, someone mentioned that Collins was the only guy they knew who reached puberty and went bald all in the same year.

     “Nineteen sixty-one at Fort Bragg,” Collins said.  “I was a brand new second lieutenant.”

     Roy went on with his story.

     “Let’s call Merriman,” Ratisseau said.  “Maybe he knows how Tom is doing.”

     I had Larry’s number in my phone, and he answered immediately.  He and Brenda were on vacation in the Caribbean somewhere.  We passed the phone around and everyone talked with him a few minutes.  We marveled at what a great age we live in—routinely talking with a friend in the Caribbean from the outback of Colorado.  Roy went on with his story.

     For dinner, we had fresh, pan-fried trout, crisp wedge salad, and corn on the cob.  I made a cherry cobbler that was a bit dry, but otherwise passable.  After we cleaned the kitchen, it was bedtime.  Everyone knew James would be fixing coffee at 4:30 in the morning, so we better get to sleep.  Roy went on with his story….

A bit dry, because I was unacustomed to working with fresh cherries, but passable.

To Be Continued…..

The Fishing Trip Continues---Part Two

The Rio Grande doesn't look like this in Texas

                                    

     At 4:30 on Sunday morning Collins put on the coffee.  That is not something unusual for James—he makes coffee every morning at 4:30.  Has for years.  He gets up when he wakes up, makes coffee, and then sits, drinks coffee, and plans his day.  I think it is one of the reasons he has always been successful.  He’s thinking about problems and working out solutions three hours before the rest of the world wakes up.

     Neil, Ratisseau and I straggled into the kitchen as we awakened.  It was forty degrees—too cold (and too dark) to sit at the picnic table outside.  McMullen mixed up a batch of scratch biscuits, fried a pound of bacon, made gravy and we feasted—bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, coffee, orange juice, and sweet milk—Collins quoted a high school friend, “The Queen of England don’t eat no better’n this.”

     We quoted a lot of old friends that morning.  We decided Charles Flowers had picked up the “Queen of England” quote from Robert Benton, who used it often.  We talked about people I had not thought of in years.  We laughed about things that happened during high school, while we were learning math and English and how to live and who we were.  We remembered sixty years ago, when we were teenagers trying to decide who we should be when we grew up.  We all helped each other over the adolescent rough spots.

     By the time it was daylight, we finished breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, made more coffee and moved outside to continue our visit.  I enjoyed these same guys in high school.  They were older, and perhaps wiser now, but they were the same friends with the same personalities I had been drawn to over sixty years ago.  We shared the same high plains values, the same ambitions, the same goals. After all these years, McMullen still lights up the room when he smiles, Collins can double me over with his dry wit, and, of course, Ratisseau just loves to tell a story.

         About mid-morning, the fishermen, like so many gladiators, pulled on their waterproof armor and girdled up for battle.  Trout are civilized fish.  They mostly don’t care for breakfast before ten am or so, and it is foolish to try to catch them before the day warms up.  Evidently, the fish take a siesta in the early afternoon, and have dinner around five, because the fishermen adopted that schedule and were very successful with it.  My friends were pros—no frenzied casting, no frantic splashing from place to place, no indiscriminate fly-switching—just quiet, skilled fishing, dropping the fly at the proper place, and teasing the trout into taking it.

There may be three better fishermen in the world, but I doubt it.  The Rio Grande is just behind those bushes.

      Neal and Wayne hustled off to a pre-selected hot spot, and Collins, knowing my interest in Texas history, gave up his morning session with the trout and took me on a guided tour of the Rio Grande headwaters.  We drove the high road past the Rio Grande Reservoir and followed the river up toward its source.  The road was literally cut through the forest.  It was unpaved, narrow, steep, and rocky, with no guard rails or shoulders. I was glad for James’ four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser.

     As we climbed higher, the Rio Grande branched into a north and south tributary.  The river was no more than a creek now, and the north branch cascaded downhill past us and on to the intersection below.  Stony Pass, where this primitive road crossed the Continental Divide, was about three miles farther up.  From that pass, the road meandered seventeen miles downhill into the old mining town of Silverton, Colorado, on the western slope. 

      Five hundred yards uphill from where we stood, a snowmelt spring marked the source of the river and once defined the westernmost border of the Republic of Texas.  From the spring, the border went due north to the 42^nd parallel, which was Texas’ northern border, in present-day Wyoming. 

     In my youth, nothing would have kept me from fighting through the trees and following that creek uphill to stand at its source.  I would have insisted upon a picture, standing astraddle the Rio Grande.  Now, I had to admit the mountain was steep and I was not forty anymore—hell, I’m not even sixty anymore.  With some effort, James found a place wide enough to turn around, and we went back downhill and downstream to join the fishermen.  I had been close enough to the ancient Texas border.  I could feel it.  Thanks to James, I can write about being there.

     The rest of the day, the Rio Grande was kind to the fishermen.  James called it, “One of the single greatest afternoons of fishing I ever had.”  I felt he was being rewarded for taking the time to let me explore.

The cobbler looked better after it was baked.  As you can see, we ate well.



     Somewhere in the bowels of the big Ford pickup, Ratisseau found a jug of Crown Royal for happy hour that evening, and we prepared an oriental stir-fry with veggies and chicken that was simply delicious.  I fixed a black-iron skillet peach cobbler that would have been somewhere around average at home, but was absolute perfection in the clear, crisp air, sixteen miles north of Creede.  Tomorrow, we are going to meet Roy Turner at a place I’ve never heard of—a place high in the mountains called Platoro, which, in Spanish, means silver and gold.

To Be Continued-----

Lubbock Boys Go Fishing---Part One

   

    

The Homestead Cabin at Freemon Ranch--built in 1874 to "proof up" the claim for timber and minerals.

     Wake up, don’t just lay there like cold granite stone------Merle Haggard filled Wayne’s big Ford pickup with sad country music as we headed west across the Llano Estacado—the land of our youth.  It was good to be back—back on the road and back on the high plains. We didn’t call it by a fancy Spanish name when we grew up out there.  It was just the high plains of the panhandle of Texas, and we had no idea how that country would mark us for life.

     James Collins called before we got to Big Spring, to tell us not to go to Pagosa Springs as planned, but drive instead sixteen miles past Creede to a place called Freemon Ranch.  He said the water at Bruce Spruce Ranch was muddy and fishing would be no good and we’d have better luck on the Rio Grande near Creede. 

     I was silently happy that I didn’t have to tell anyone we fished at Bruce Spruce Ranch—it sounds vaguely effeminate and is hard for an old man to pronounce.  I was also anxious to see the headwaters and the source of the Rio Grande because that was the northwestern border of Texas from 1835 until 1846.  Wayne adjusted his fancy GPS and kept his foot in the carburetor.

     James and Neil McMullen had invited Wayne Ratisseau, Roy Turner and me to join them on a fishing trip.  They made an offer we could not refuse.  I did not get the fishing gene, but I went along to keep the coffee pot warm, do a little cooking, and make sure all the lies got told.  Not much I’d rather do, and no one I’d rather do it with.  All these guys had been my friends since our sophomore year at Lubbock High School—sixty-two years, if anyone is counting.

A typical sunset on the high plains, where we grew up.  Because this is a daily occurrence, sometimes we forget.  Thanks to my friend Rick Palmer of Amarillo for reminding me.

     Wayne and I made it to Las Vegas, New Mexico, before dark, and the next day, we got to Freemon Ranch before two o’clock in the afternoon.  The lady there showed us our cabin and said that James and Neil were out fishing.  The air was clear, the valley was green, and the high mountain setting was magnificent. 

     The Freemon Ranch consists of a cluster of log cabins built in the early 1900s, with a trout stream running through.  According to the marker, one cabin, the “homestead cabin,” was built in 1874.  It had a sod roof but was past occupation, only used as a prop now days.  Our cabin was cozy, with indoor plumbing and a kitchen.  We unloaded the pickup and Wayne, a consummate fisherman, could not wait to gird his loins and do battle with the wily trout.

     As a novice, I just do not understand the serious nature of this undertaking.  Wayne was dressed, appropriately I thought, in shorts and tee shirt.  He sat on our cabin’s front porch and removed his shoes and pulled on a pair of heavy woolen socks.  He smoothed the socks over his ankles, and slid one leg into what appeared to be rubberized khaki-colored overalls, with black rubber feet attached, not unlike kiddie’s jamas.  It was a struggle.  He got one leg in and sat there hyperventilating before he attempted the other leg.  

     The air in the Colorado Rockies leaves something to be desired.  Oh, there’s plenty of it, but like a lot of things when you get outside Texas, it is just not real satisfying.  You can breathe up several gallons of it and still feel deprived.  Texas air, on the other hand, is something you can get your teeth into.  A couple of good deep breaths and you’re ready to take on the world.  In the high country of Colorado, it takes a whole vacant lot-full just to get on a pair of overalls.

     Wayne struggled into the left leg of his fishing suit and, leaving the trousers around his knees, began the ordeal of putting on his waterproof, lace-up fishing boots.  Several minutes and quite a lot of gasping later, he was completely dressed—up to the knees.  He rested awhile.

     Ratisseau stood and pulled the khaki rubber overalls up to his waist and sat back down to rest.  After a few minutes, he stood up and batted around behind himself, trying to locate the straps to his rubber long-handles.  I helped him as much as I could—as I said, I’m a novice.  Besides, I haven’t worn overalls since George R. Bean Elementary School.

Wayne, with his loins all girded, explaining why he cannot reveal the secret knot.  Those of you who know Wayne will understand that no one has a camera with a shutter speed fast enough to catch him with his mouth closed.

     With my help, Wayne had little trouble finishing.  He pulled on a fishing vest and an old hat.  Now it was time to rig up his fly rod and pick the perfect fly, one that was irresistible to even the Albert Einstein trout.  He chose a black ant-looking thing and tied it in place with a knot that only fly fishermen can know.  As he tied the knot, he turned his back so I could not watch.

      Fly fishermen teach the knot to their sons in a coming-of-age ceremony.  With the knot secure, he added just the proper amount of leader so the fish would not see the line and would believe that clump of horsehair was a real live black ant.  Many years ago, Wayne built that fly rod and tied many of his own flies.  His dad taught him, after he showed him that secret knot.

      As Wayne went down to the stream that flowed through the ranch to prove he was physically and intellectually superior to a 10-inch speckled fish with a half BB-sized brain, I found a shady place with a porch swing to breathe the mountain air, drink in the scenery, read about Sam Houston, and wonder about the water in that creek.  How long did it take that particular water to make it to Del Rio, on its way to the gulf?

Here, fishy, fishy, fishy-----This creek feeds the Rio Grande, which...well you know what the Rio Grande does.

      James and Neil came in a couple of hours later, carrying a creel full of fish.  They most always catch-and-release, but when Roy comes Monday, we’re gonna have a fish fry. 

    This, of course, will be continued…..