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The Ones That Didn't Get Away

7/19/2022

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     It was July 1978, friends and I had just completed a thirty-day backpacking trip and were driving down Idaho State Highway 32 for a post-trip adventure. As we crossed Bitch Creek, a stream flowing through open farmland, I was amused to see fishermen sipping on their cans of Coors as they relaxed in lounge chairs trying to catch the elusive cutthroat trout. We were heading up into the mountains of the Jedediah Smith Wilderness for some trout fishing ourselves – sans lounge chairs.

     We passed the state line into Wyoming, parked at the trailhead, and started hiking up the trail towards Hidden Corral Basin, a location, as the name indicates, complete with nineteenth-century outlaw lore. South Bitch Creek flowed through the basin, and as soon as I saw it I knew–this was A Fisherman’s Paradise. We broke out our fishing rods, me with my fly rod and my companions with their spin casting gear and got started. 

     Early on, in an attempt to sneak up to a hard to access portion of the brook, I quietly fought my way through the thick speckled alders lining the shore. As I finally broke through the trees in anticipation of landing a big trout, I looked up at the far side of the stream and staring directly at me was a bull moose. Carefully, very carefully, I backtracked allowing the trees to close in, shielding me from the Moose’s stare. I looked for another place to find trout.

      I found it upstream at a bend in the stream with a six-foot-high boulder that had helped create a pool about forty feet across. I snuck up behind it and lay out some perfect casts. No luck. After working it hard for a half hour I finally climbed up on the boulder and looked down into the pool. I saw at least a dozen beautiful cutthroat trout hanging out without the least bit of interest in what I had been showing them. Finally, I declared the fish the winners and headed back to camp.

     My three companions were having similar luck. They too hadn’t caught any fish. I suggested they look for some worms–the conquistadores of novice fishermen. They hiked a mile up and down the trail digging for worms, grubs, or anything else to put on the end of their hook that might attract fish. No luck. 

     Over the next three days I fished as hard as I ever had. I tried every fly in my box, working the meandering stream miles in both directions. I caught two fish.

     Early on the evening of our last day before heading back to civilization, three of the four of us were at camp contemplating what we might have for dinner and feeling sorry for ourselves for Lady Luck’s absence. Suddenly, across the meadow we saw our fourth companion Chris walking slowly towards us. He had something in his hand but we couldn’t make it out. Chris was in his last year of graduate school wrapping up a PhD in chemistry and was about as straight an arrow as you’ll ever meet. Easy going, smart, and extremely likable, although he didn’t have a wealth of outdoor experience, especially with fishing. As he got closer it was clear he had a wide smile and in his hand was a stringer of eight of the most beautiful cutthroat trout I’ve ever seen. He sat down and told us a story that few believe. But I do.

     Chris had found the same pool with the big boulder that I had fished and he fished it hard with his Phoebe fishing lure, but without luck. He cast into the pool at least thirty times without results. Finally he accidentally cast across the pool and caught his lure in the grasses on the far side. His pole bent hard as he pulled and pulled trying to free the lure, but trying not to not break the line. Finally the lure broke free and came sailing across the pool. He reeled it in and on the lure’s hook was a beautiful four-inch worm. Being as smart as he was, he laid the worm on a log and proceeded to cut it into half-inch pieces. 

     Each half-inch piece caught him a gorgeous trout. 

     But that’s not quite the end of the story.

     Two of those trout made a great dinner for the four of us and the other six were cleaned and put in a plastic bag to be packed out the next day along with my two fish. 

     We packed up early the next morning and hiked out. Whenever we took a break, to keep the fish fresh, I put the bag in the wide glacier-fed stream. 

     At the last rest stop I sat on a rock along the shore and placed the bag of fish in a small eddy. For an extra measure of safety I put a good size rock on it as I had at the previous stops. Then I turned away in conversation and when I turned back, the bag was floating away in the middle of the stream. 

     I jumped in and ran out into the swift thigh-deep current to retrieve our precious catch. 

     I fought my way into the middle of the stream and reached for the bag, my fingers so numb I wasn’t certain they had grabbed it. Miraculously I did, and slid and slipped my way back to shore, thrilled, chilled, and triumphant. 

     As I stood on shore grateful I hadn’t lost our catch,  I realized why I’d risked my life for eight lousy cutthroat trout: I was damned if I was going to let our Bag O’fish be caught by those Coors-drinking, lawn-chair-sittin’ fishermen down by the highway.

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The Tale of the Tail

7/5/2022

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​     Post-WWII was a pretty good time period in America, but there were still plenty of things to scare a kid. Alfred Hitchcock, Twilight Zone, Communism, polio, and nuclear annihilation immediately come to mind. One thing I wasn’t afraid of was dogs because my brother, three sisters, and I grew up in a house full of big friendly Newfoundland dogs. 

     My mom’s love of Newfoundlands, and my dad’s enthusiastic support, provided numerous doggy adventures. There were always eight or more of the friendly 150 pound behemoths around our six-acre rural Long Island homestead and it wasn’t unusual to also have a couple of litters of puppies in whelping boxes in the kitchen. 

     My parents traveled the dog show circuit throughout the Northeast and three or four of the Drury kids were always in tow. If a kid growing up hanging out in a gym is a gym rat, then we were dog-show rats.
 

     My father was the classic Long Island Railroad commuter reading the New York Times on his way into the city. One day an ad for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus caught his eye. It featured a beautiful female trapeze artist and by her side was a Newfie. My parents couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet a fellow Newfie owner, so they contacted the circus and got the name of the performer. Then, before we knew it, we met Nina Karpova. Nina was born in Russia and escaped during the Russian Revolution. After World War II she escaped East Germany to the West. In 1953 Nina, her daughter Lily, and their Newfoundland came to visit us.

     Nina had a trapeze act with a fixed (non swinging) trapeze. Two men held cables to keep it from swinging. She had special boots that attached to the trapeze. When the audience least expected it, she’d let go, swinging forward, and became a human pinwheel. It was a real crowd pleaser. She was to perform on the “Big Top,” a popular TV show which ran from 1950 through 1957. I remember sitting in front of the TV on Saturday waiting for her act to be introduced, but it never happened and we didn’t learn why until later that day. During rehearsal a man held one of the cables at the wrong angle and when Nina started swinging she hit the cable, causing her boots to disengage from the trapeze and she fell forty feet to a cement floor. Miraculously, she didn’t break a bone. She and Lily stayed at our house that night. When I saw her shuffle out of the bedroom the next morning, she was bruised from head to toe.

     Nina’s daughter, Lily, had an impressive tumbling routine that she eventually turned into a nightclub act. After her mother retired, Lily traveled the world performing in nightclubs. 

     Lily also had an equestrian act. She had a wonderful horse, Kasback, that performed a form of dressage in which he executed complex maneuvers in response to imperceptible commands communicated through slight shifting in Lily’s weight, pressure exerted by her knees and legs, and her handling of the reins.

     Kasback was a gorgeous horse nearly seventeen hands tall with a glossy dark nut-brown coat and a delightfully braided mane. The piece de resistance was his tail. It was a perfectly coiffed five-foot long tail that he proudly brandished as he strode through his routine.

     Kasback traveled in a railroad car with some of the wild animals on the circus’ train and once rode next to a camel. Camels can be cantankerous critters. You want proof? An aggravated camel bit off its owner's head in India a few years back after the owner left the camel out in the sun for hours without water. The animal lifted the owner by the neck and threw him on the ground, chewed the body and severed the head. You don’t want to mess with Camels. In hindsight I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised when a camel ate all but six inches of Kasback’s previously alluring tail, a mere hors d’oeuvre. C’est dommage.

     During the mid-fifties whenever Nina and Lily were in the Northeast with a circus, we’d visit them or they’d spend a few nights with us. I’m not sure how many times they visited but it was enough that my father, at Nina’s request, bought fifty feet of two inch manila rope to hang high up in a tree so she could practice climbing it. Her athleticism left a tremendous impression on me as I watched this beautiful blond woman climb hand over hand up the rope, her legs outstretched horizontally.

     When Nina’s Newfoundland died she asked my parents where she might find a taxidermist to mount it. Though my parents found it a bit shocking, they found one. But alas, the taxidermist’s building burned down and the dog hide was lost.

     After a few visits Nina asked my parents for help regarding a sticky legal situation. Nina and Lily wanted to quit the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. They were told they couldn’t because they owed the circus too much money. It turns out that Ringling Brothers had a form of indentured servitude. They paid the performers but charged them for transporting their equipment from the train station to the performance venue. They also charged for transporting the performers themselves. Because artists were charged numerous fees of this type, it was almost impossible to quit the circus. Nina understood this so she hauled her own equipment and walked to the venues. She kept track of how much money she was saving and when she knew they didn’t owe Ringling Brothers anything, they quit. Ringling Brothers didn’t believe them and wouldn’t release them from their contract. My parents found them a well-known New York City lawyer who, with one threatening letter, got them released.

     From then on Nina and Lily worked for a variety of circuses throughout North America in the summer and South America in the winter. The last time we saw them in the U.S. was around 1960, but we kept in touch. 
  

     I saw Nina the last time in 1972.  I’d just graduated from college and traveled around Europe for three months. I landed in Hamburg where Nina and Lily lived. Lily was on the nightclub circuit in Asia. I had a wonderful visit with Nina, but one thing stood out.
​

     Nina had a cute little house with a loft that I slept in.  The morning after my arrival, I woke up, jet lagged and disoriented. I rolled over and felt a tanned animal skin I had been sleeping on. 

     Was it a deer? No, it was too big and the color was wrong. 

     Was it a bear or a moose? No, the coat was too thin. 

     Was it a zebra or other exotic animal? No, the color pattern was wrong. 

     I looked it over carefully but couldn’t figure it out. I ran my hands up and down the dark brown hide and since there was no head, there was no help from that quarter. 

     Then I ran both hands down the back of the animal and suddenly something clicked.  I saw and felt the animal's tail. Or should I say I felt the lack of tail. Where there had been five feet of lustrous hair, now there was only six inches. No doubt, only one animal on this planet–heck in this solar system–was this big, with a tail that small. 

     That’s right, you guessed it. I’d been sleeping on the mortal remains of Kasback.

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Lily and Kasbak
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(L-R) Lily Kohler, Nina Kapowa, Kitty Drury
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Lily, Bobi (Newfoundland dog in crate), and Nina
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1952 Ringling Brother Program
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    I contribute a biweekly column for our local newspaper, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. It is called Bushwhack Jack's Tracts. I post them here for your reading pleasure.
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