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Recently I was chatting on the telephone with a similarly unemployed friend who lives in a nearby town. He observed that the February Thaw was going strong, producing a clement day in the mountains despite all the El Nino horrors elsewhere, and that in bygone days, he might have knocked off to go fishing that afternoon.
Why wouldn't he do it now, I inquired? Was the press of business such that he no longer had time to fish -- and without that, what's the point of living in some rural backwater where prices are high and wages are low?
No, he said, he could spare the time. The problem was that fishing had become a lot more expensive and complicated.
Before the yupscale fly fishermen arrived,
he
said, I could grab a handful of flies, some of which I
tied myself, an old fiber-glass rod and a discount-store
reel, and head off to the creek. Some days I'd catch a few
trout, some days I wouldn't -- you know how that
goes.
But now, he says, he would draw scornful glares and
commentary from the other anglers if he dared to fish with
such cheap, primitive gear. You just aren't a good
enough person to fish in our precious mountains unless you
arrive with a $475 Orvis graphite rod, a $500 Abel reel
with double-pawl drag, $225 waders and $125 special wader
shoes inside,
he said.
Further, the old kit of a few flies stuck in a felt hat and a Swiss Army knife in a belt holster isn't good enough, either. A vest with at least 50 pockets is required, and in those pockets one must carry pinchers, clippers, magnifiers, hook removers, tippet spools, stomach pumps, fly dryers, paste, line floatant, line cleaner, etc.
Fishing isn't about you and the water any more,
he said. It's a fashion show, and, well, I just can't
afford to keep up.
My first thought was that we should lobby the state
wildlife commission to set some sort of gear limit
for anglers, but I then realized that we had hit upon a
bizarre cultural trend.
During my boyhood, fishing wasn't an elite sport -- it was pretty much a blue-collar low-life activity. The upper crust played polo or arranged debutante balls -- if they did venture to the woods, they celebrated the egalitarian nature of American nature, where corporate tycoons and railroad brakemen might stand shoulder to shoulder at the stream bank, all equal in the eyes of the trout.
However, they managed to inject status games into fishing, and now regular folk with affordable gear must endure a gauntlet of condescending stares.
Consider certain other one-time low-rent activities. Beer used to be reserved for the lower orders; our betters drank scotch or vintage wine. Although I cherish the tasty potations now available from the microbreweries of Colorado, I despise the associated snobbery that has emerged.
In certain venues, one cannot merely enjoy a beer. One must instead comment authoritatively on the relative bitterness qualities of Hallertauer and Cascade hops and the varied malting properties of two-row and six-row barley.
A four-wheel-drive vehicle once indicated that you were too poor to buy developed property in or near town; instead you lived on cheap land, far from the amenities of civilization, and needed that mud-splattered oil-burning Cornbinder just to go shopping on Saturday afternoon.
Now four-wheel-drive means a $30,000 sport utility vehicle, and if the price isn't enough to brag on, there's the ability to kill poor people in cheap little cars while you walk out unscathed.
Take the recently fashionable cigar, especially $10 an up -- cigars used to be the emblem of low-lifes like boxing promoters, pool hustlers and sportswriters. Or the simple pleasure of cool, clear water -- now available at $1.50 a quart and up, imported from selected foreign springs. Or the cheap, reliable bicycle -- now a sophisticated $1,500 machine.
Based on this, we should be able to predict future status enhancers -- that is, items and activities that currently suffer from a downscale reputation.
Thus we should soon see a fashionable revival of the spittoon, along with the chewing tobacco that requires it. As it is, you see chew only at rural regular-guy places like feed stores and rodeo stalls -- but that will change.
The high-rollers currently hire gardeners, while we in the lower orders merely mow our lawns. This means we should soon see $2,500 hand-powered graphite-handle stainless-steel-blade lawnmowers.
And certainly the humble clothesline could be upgraded to a $2,000 solar-powered Apparel Moisture Removal System with electric motors, aircraft-grade cables and heart-cut redwood posts.
So, if you need to improve your mood, going fishing will just make you feel worse. Go about your life, and take heart with the realization that you're probably setting a trend.
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