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Harry Krause
 
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Default Birthdate of Norman Maclean

This is the anniversary of the birth in 1902 of Norman Maclean, the
author of the wonderful book, "A River Runs Through It."

It is a wonderful book and it wasn't a bad movie. Here's an excerpt:

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and
our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his
own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being
fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all
first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that
John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.

It is true that one day a week was given over wholly to religion. On
Sunday mornings my brother, Paul, and I went to Sunday school and then
to "morning services" to hear our father preach and in the evenings to
Christian Endeavor and afterwards to "evening services" to hear our
father preach again. In between on Sunday afternoons we had to study The
Westminster Shorter Catechism for an hour and then recite before we
could walk the hills with him while he unwound between services. But he
never asked us more than the first question in the catechism, "What is
the chief end of man?" And we answered together so one of us could carry
on if the other forgot, "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy
Him forever." This always seemed to satisfy him, as indeed such a
beautiful answer should have, and besides he was anxious to be on the
hills where he could restore his soul and be filled again to overflowing
for the evening sermon. His chief way of recharging himself was to
recite to us from the sermon that was coming, enriched here and there
with selections from the most successful passages of his morning sermon.

Even so, in a typical week of our childhood Paul and I probably received
as many hours of instruction in fly fishing as we did in all other
spiritual matters.

After my brother and I became good fishermen, we realized that our
father was not a great fly caster, but he was accurate and stylish and
wore a glove on his casting hand. As he buttoned his glove in
preparation to giving us a lesson, he would say, "It is an art that is
performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o'clock."

As a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was
a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I early
developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree. As
for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician
but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up
God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Unlike many
Presbyterians, he often used the word "beautiful."

After he buttoned his glove, he would hold his rod straight out in front
of him, where it trembled with the beating of his heart. Although it was
eight and a half feet long, it weighed only four and a half ounces. It
was made of split bamboo cane from the far-off Bay of Tonkin. It was
wrapped with red and blue silk thread, and the wrappings were carefully
spaced to make the delicate rod powerful but not so stiff it could not
tremble.

Always it was to be called a rod. If someone called it a pole, my father
looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would look at a
recruit who had just called a rifle a gun.

My brother and I would have preferred to start learning how to fish by
going out and catching a few, omitting entirely anything difficult or
technical in the way of preparation that would take away from the fun.
But it wasn't by way of fun that we were introduced to our father's art.
If our father had had his say, nobody who did not know how to fish would
be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him. So you too will have to
approach the art Marine and Presbyterian-style, and, if you have never
picked up a fly rod before, you will soon find it factually and
theologically true that man by nature is a damn mess. The
four-and-a-half-ounce thing in silk wrappings that trembles with the
underskin motions of the flesh becomes a stick without brains, refusing
anything simple that is wanted of it. All that a rod has to do is lift
the line, the leader, and the fly off the water, give them a good toss
over the head, and then shoot them forward so they will land in the
water without a splash in the following order: fly, transparent leader,
and then the line—otherwise the fish will see the fly is a fake and be
gone. Of course, there are special casts that anyone could predict would
be difficult, and they require artistry—casts where the line can't go
over the fisherman's head because cliffs or trees are immediately
behind, sideways casts to get the fly under overhanging willows, and so
on. But what's remarkable about just a straight cast—just picking up a
rod with a line on it and tossing the line across the river?

Well, until man is redeemed he will always take a fly rod too far back,
just as natural man always overswings with an ax or golf club and loses
all his power somewhere in the air: only with a rod it's worse, because
the fly often comes so far back it gets caught behind in a bush or rock.
When my father said it was an art that ended at two o'clock, he often
added, "closer to ten than to two," meaning that the rod should be taken
back only slightly farther than overhead (straight overhead being twelve
o'clock).

Then, since it is natural for man to try to attain power without
recovering grace, he whips the line back and forth making it whistle
each way, and sometimes even snapping off the fly from the leader, but
the power that was going to transport the little fly across the river
somehow gets diverted into building a bird's nest of line, leader, and
fly that falls out of the air into the water about ten feet in front of
the fisherman. If, though, he pictures the round trip of the line,
transparent leader, and fly from the time they leave the water until
their return, they are easier to cast. They naturally come off the water
heavy line first and in front, and light transparent leader and fly
trailing behind. But, as they pass overhead, they have to have a little
beat of time so the light, transparent leader and fly can catch up to
the heavy line now starting forward and again fall behind it; otherwise,
the line starting on its return trip will collide with the leader and
fly still on their way up, and the mess will be the bird's nest that
splashes into the water ten feet in front of the fisherman.

Almost the moment, however, that the forward order of line, leader, and
fly is reestablished, it has to be reversed, because the fly and
transparent leader must be ahead of the heavy line when they settle on
the water. If what the fish sees is highly visible line, what the
fisherman will see are departing black darts, and he might as well start
for the next hole. High overhead, then, on the forward cast (at about
ten o'clock) the fisherman checks again.

The four-count rhythm, of course, is functional. The one count takes the
line, leader, and fly off the water; the two count tosses them seemingly
straight into the sky; the three count was my father's way of saying
that at the top the leader and fly have to be given a little beat of
time to get behind the line as it is starting forward; the four count
means put on the power and throw the line into the rod until you reach
ten o'clock—then check-cast, let the fly and leader get ahead of the
line, and coast to a soft and perfect landing. Power comes not from
power everywhere, but from knowing where to put it on. "Remember," as my
father kept saying, "it is an art that is performed on a four-count
rhythm between ten and two o'clock."

My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the
universe. To him, all good things—trout as well as eternal
salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.

So my brother and I learned to cast Presbyterian-style, on a metronome.
It was mother's metronome, which father had taken from the top of the
piano in town. She would occasionally peer down to the dock from the
front porch of the cabin, wondering nervously whether her metronome
could float if it had to. When she became so overwrought that she
thumped down the dock to reclaim it, my father would clap out the
four-count rhythm with his cupped hands.

Eventually, he introduced us to literature on the subject. He tried
always to say something stylish as he buttoned the glove on his casting
hand. "Izaak Walton," he told us when my brother was thirteen or
fourteen, "is not a respectable writer. He was an Episcopalian and a
bait fisherman."" Although Paul was three years younger than I was, he
was already far ahead of me in anything relating to fishing and it was
he who first found a copy of The Compleat Angler and reported back to
me, "The ******* doesn't even know how to spell 'complete.' Besides, he
has songs to sing to dairymaids." I borrowed his copy, and reported back
to him, "Some of those songs are pretty good." He said, "Whoever saw a
dairymaid on the Big Blackfoot River?

"I would like," he said, "to get him for a day's fishing on the Big
Blackfoot—with a bet on the side."

The boy was very angry, and there has never been a doubt in my mind that
the boy would have taken the Episcopalian money.

When you are in your teens—maybe throughout your life—being three years
older than your brother often makes you feel he is a boy. However, I
knew already that he was going to be a master with a rod. He had those
extra things besides fine training—genius, luck, and plenty of
self-confidence. Even at this age he liked to bet on himself against
anybody who would fish with him, including me, his older brother. It was
sometimes funny and sometimes not so funny, to see a boy always wanting
to bet on himself and almost sure to win. Although I was three years
older, I did not yet feel old enough to bet. Betting, I assumed, was for
men who wore straw hats on the backs of their heads. So I was confused
and embarrassed the first couple of times he asked me if I didn't want
"a small bet on the side just to make things interesting." The third
time he asked me must have made me angry because he never again spoke to
me about money, not even about borrowing a few dollars when he was
having real money problems.

We had to be very careful in dealing with each other. I often thought of
him as a boy, but I never could treat him that way. He was never "my kid
brother." He was a master of an art. He did not want any big brother
advice or money or help, and, in the end, I could not help him.






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Ron White
 
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Default Birthdate of Norman Maclean

At least now I won't have to re-read the book, which was indeed a good one.

--
Ron White
My boatbuilding website is:
www.concentric.net/~knotreel


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