Still standIng...

.. to write at the upright desk novelist Brad Watson gave me in Laramie- or as we say here automatically,"Still staggering".

Teal Meal

Courtesy of Thomas Quinn: four Greenwings, roasted in a 500 degree oven for 5 minutes, with only olive oil, sea salt, and cracked pepper:

Unusual Honor

I dont know what to say. A friend has just named a hotel after one of my books!
Khanat Chiryazdan, my old guide and the proprietor of Blue Wolf Travel, IMAO the most interesting travel service in Mongolia (especially if you like eagles), has built a hotel in Olgii city and called it.... "Eagle Dreams Hotel-!!!!
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Khanat always wanted to have a hotel, and advertises my book, but this was totally unexpected...

Pics- I lost over 1000 on this computer alone, and must look for good ones. Meanwhile, this one of the cocky young ex- commando in his "Bad Dog" days should do..

Normally I would have links but I have lost (or SOMETHING) the memory to write even modest HTML during my"hiatus". Could someone who could give me comprehensible help -Chas?- check in? Meanwhile info the hotel is available on Blue Wolf and on Khanat's Facebook page

Falconry Goddesses

Ourc regnant falconry goddesses, Helen Maconald and Lauren McGough, do a podcast TOGETHER at the BBC.More please!
https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenJMacdonald/status/909753333317095424?p=v

Full of good sense and unexpected insights-; as Helen says., only Lauren would fly an eagle because it is so SERENE.

Lauren is currently in S Africa chasing drunken  monkeys with  a "little" male Crowned eagle. We hope to see her here soon.

Gordon Hall Wasley Austin RIP

When my old friend and editor at Gray's, Reed Austin, wrote a piece on how he met his wife, Gordon Hall Wasley, on a business fishing trip in which he ended up getting a treble hook bass plug stuck in his butt, and Gordon had to remove it, I thought it was hilarious and wrote him to tell him so. (Link TK; Anglers Journal Vol 2 no 4)). It wasn't until last week that I learned that he had written it originally as a love letter to Gordon to celebrate their 30th anniversary, never imagining it would serve as the centerpiece to her eulogy four years later at her funeral.

It was inexplicable. For me they are the very image of WASP golden youth, forever young. That they were happy grandparents is hard for me to get my head around. I remember all the years that Reed and I spent doing crazy versions of fishing and hunting. Once he jokingly asked me not to tell Bill Sisson, our editor at Anglers about our high times. (What he actually said was "Buy anything he writes, and don't believe a word about anything we ever did.")

I remember Gordon's aureole of golden hair around her face when we were jumps- hooting ducks on Duxbury Marsh.(Duxbury Marsh was so much native habitat for Reed; his grandfather Francis (Frannie) was one of the three young men hunting Duxbury Marsh in van Campen Heilner's canonical duck hunting book; another was Reed's then landlord, Parker).

But mostly what I remember of Gordon Hall Wasley was her genuine interest in everyone else's passions. A brash and somewhat insecure kid from what was very much the other side of the tracks in those days at first could not believe this exotic creature was asking questions about my passions, with interest. By the time they were married I was with Betsy Huntington, and another interesting virtue was added to the Austin repertoire: utter loyalty. Betsy was of a haut-Boston background and was much older than me; this made us a little too odd for some of the more conventional gatherings we were invited to. Somehow,inevitably, Reed and Gordon would end up at our table where they would spend the rest of the evening. No fuss was made -- they just came and sat with us and had fun. As I said to Reed this week, "Do you think we never noticed?"

I last saw Reed at Betsy's funeral. He had gotten out of his hospital bed, and slashed the leg of his Brooks Brothers suit to fit it over his cast. It was a typical gesture. Through the years we stayed lightly in touch but were involved very much in our own pursuits. It took Gordon's death to bring us together. I told him "We all loved her, and she loved you."

Now he has his own battles to fight, alone. I hope the children and grandchildren are of comfort. Meanwhile, I grieve with you, old buddy -- she was glorious. Keep writing, and hang in there.

Gordon fishing the Battenkill

John takes off

Our favorite gun geek John Besse left for his summer home on a tributary of the Snake in Idaho in the middle of the night so nobody  would make a fuss. I wasn't too surprised.

Here he is with his latest project, a restored M99 Savage in the uncommon  "250- 3000" caliber.

He is partial to my favorite retriever, the ever - quirky Chesapeake, and has two: grumpy middle- aged Willie and young goofy Andy.

This M 92 isn't quite done yet. It had a surface as pitted as the moon's .

 

 Now look-as smooth as velvet, but with all its edges...

Paul's cane

Paul Schmolke is one of my oldest friends in Albuquerque, where he worked st Ron Peterson's when I first met him. He is a gunmaker, a poet, and a student of Zen Buddhism, which combination made him a natural for our "circle". In the photo above he is examining a big- frame Parker in our
motel room in Santa Fe, while his wife and childhood sweetheart Lynne talks about something OTHER than guns behind.

I was up to Alb lasrt week for an oil change  and tuneup last week. and met the Schmolkes and Paul Domski for lunch at the usual Chinese hipster place for lunch.Paul handed me this stout cane he had just made, more weapon than walking stick, like something out of Game of Thrones. It is hickory and a little bit shorter than my current regular, though stouter. It it is suitable for taking down dark streets.
Here it stands in front of he upright computer desk I write this on, given to me by novelist tBrad Waatson-- two of the many reasons I always say ..... (see "Labels" )

If you were to have three English Shotguns

.. you know, if you HAD to...

You could do worse than these three:

Or if it came to two:

Top: Frederick Scott  12 bore SLE proofed for heavy loads, but weighs only 6 1/4 lbs

16 bore Cogswell & Harrison from London, 30" Damascus barrels. 6 lbs

.410 Thomas Turner with 26" barrels, again modern proof for loads I wont use, 15" stock! 4 lbs even.

All have exactly the same proportioms of stock, though the Cog needs a leather- covered pad to bring it up to length.

 

Thanks to Ron Peterson, John Besse, Gerry Cox, and Tom Qunn, among others.

Above: Gerry, John, Scott; Magdalena; Scott Locks

   UPDATE:Tom, you don't usually find these on Gunbroker  (maybe from GI); you ind them from friends, whether dealers (like Ron Peterson) or no.t You also need a good gunsmith on standby.

Friends who help

Kim Nesvig, our only animal hand and the one who fills in for all emergencies.I  will try to print her card later...

Domenic "Doc" Conca, DDS- 1925- 2016, R.I.P.: on Conca's Lawn.

 One of my unmentioned mentors died at 91 a couple of days ago: Dr Domenic Conca of Randolph, Massachusetts.

 “Doc” was the father of my oldest friend, Michael Conca, who was my schoolmate from first grade through my first year in college (BC: I dropped out), as well as my housemate and partner in a firewood business in the wintry January Hills west of the Quabbin Reservoir an east of the Connecticut valley, one of the wildest parts of Massachusetts, for several years, during my second attempt at higher education; he lives there still, with his wife Mary Lou; more of his story later...

Mike at Rick Rozen's in Golfito, Costa Rica; Mike and Mary Lou a couple of years ago at Karen and George's.

"Doc"' as we called him--- his contemporaries preferred "Dom"-- was born in Rhode Island and went to Tufts. .There he met the love of his life and perfect  partner, "Rose" or sometimes "Ro": Ella Rose Simon, who was working as a secretary at the University. They married on June 30, 1948 at Saint Agnes Church in Arlington, MA. Rose was a Lutheran of Hungarian descent, but converted to Catholicism...

"

Doc was a dentist and a cultivated man, with a bunch of pleasing contradictions. He was the first man with a beard I knew outside of the the tonsured, sandaled  Franciscan monks whose monastery was south of Brush Hill Road in Milton, Mass, where  our weird Catholic private school,  Jeanne d'Arc Academy, was housed in Frances Hamrstrom's  childhood  estate on the north side of the same road). The old Flint ballroom to the right of the entry was our chapel, still with its enormous cut glass chandelier.

Jeanne d'Arc/ Slater- Flint mansion by Elva Paulsen, Fran's daughter

He was also the first man I knew who cooked, seriously;  he was a New England Republican; he was a motorcyclist, a recreational pilot late in life, and an unabashed car nut the way I am a gun nut, with an "enabler", a German dealer and mechanic -- Karl?-- who would let him take and drive cars until he HAD to have them. (Think Ron Petersen with me and guns).

When I first met him, when I was in first grade, he picked up the kids at school in a 1929 Hupmobile with an Irish water spaniel in the rumble seat. That dog was succeeded by Cindy, a long -lived basset of mournful visage who was so self - effacing that one kid-- Chris?-- suggested that she be stuffed and put on wheels when she died because "nobody would know the difference"., especially if they equipped her with a recording of her baying voice.

 He must have been relatively wealthy, as his many antique cars and being able to send his kids to Jeanne d’Arc show, but he had no rich man’s attitudes. His lawn always looked like a used car lo, albeit one with strange taste. There was an antique Mercedes ("The Yellow Car" --all cars were identified primarily by their colors), a 1950-ish job with a black leather roof,  landau irons, and a burl walnut dash, the ONE car none of us "kids" were allowed to drive; this early 50's 220 cabriolet is very close:

...and new ones, like a pagoda- roofed 280 SL:

This one was capable of an honest 140 mph at LEAST-- Mike and I both took it that high, and I took another borrowed one to 160 to beat an old townie rival, Joey Donnelly, in a drag race.We called it the Brown Car; it was  actually a sort of dark cranberry maroon color.

They were parked up against his old red  Cadillac, a finned one ca 1962, that he kept as an antique, a kind of cosmic mechanical dinosaur; my father later offered Betsy and me one just like it that he had long since stopped diving,  for a pet after I told him there were two Edsel and a red and white '56 Chevy with a continental kit in my town owned by the original buyers or at least their familes; no, I do not live in Cuba. At the time, he had  sighed "Cadillacs are irresistible to contractors, whether they are  Armenians, Bomb throwers [Siciilians] or Swiss; at least mine wasn't purple!" but we were afraid  of the gas it would take to get to Magdalena.

 Mike's Fiat Spyder, which he drove for about thirteen years, lived there then, and various  Japanese motorcycles, plus Triumph and Harley choppers owned by Rick Rozen and Jack Semensi, two other schoolmates, Randolph neighbors  and hunting and fishing buddies (Rick, who joined our circle at 13 at Xaverian Bothers, our Catholic prep school, is known to readers of this blog as "CAPTAIN" Rick of the Novi fishing boat Half- Fast, then out of Brant Rock: he was the first of the guys I grew up with to get a classic shotgun, an LC Smith, which we all envied, especially as he got it for $75 and a roll of carpet; he still has it. He made a fortune in the "Tuna Wars" of the late seventies and early 80's-- and drove two identical International Harvesters with  canoes on top-- that story too is still to be told. Jack was another J d'A alum; he was known as Joe there. He is the only person I ever knew who drove a Lotus Elan; it too was often parked on the  Conca's lawn...

Rose, our perfect den mother, was a Catholic convert with a green thumb who used to grow marijuana ornamentally in the 70s, though she wouldn't let her kids smoke it. They raised   their kids and a  whole pack of others in an amiable laissez- faire manner that came as  as a great contrast and relief to me in comparison  to my (then- Betsy Huntington would change him) controlling, rigid father. To give an example, I once went to their house and asked where Mike was. I got the following answers from the kids and Doc: 1) “He’s up in his room.” 2) "He’s at ‘Summahaus' (that’s what they called their house in Plymouth)” 3) “No, he’s on Key Marathon.” It turns out he was in Green Harbor on the Irish Riviera, where we nautical hunter-gatherers used to live.

(At the same time, two typical remarks by my father were "Take your  dog and your wife and get the hell off my property!" and "Look, John; my asshole son just bought a rich man's gun!" It was a 28 bore AyA No 2; that he had a Model  21 Winchester  worth ten of it didn't matter, though it took another decade for me to find one I could afford to buy!)

On the cusp of prep and hippieiedom, 1966?--  me & Mike on the way to the Lime Rock sports car races, in my Morris Minor Shooting Brake:

Doc was, I realize now,  my second father figure, the one I could talk to. From the age of 17, when I left home, until I went to western Mass in the mid seventies, I probably spent more time at the Conca’s house than any other place. During that time, from 1967 to around 74, I barely spoke to my father.

Rose suddenly came down with lung cancer in 1990, though as far as I know she never smoked. She died horribly quickly, and I never got a chance to say good- bye. Doc married  a younger Lydia Miils in 1992. I never met her, but she apparently took good care of Doc for the rest of his days.

Doc also did things  like take out my terrible infected wisdom teeth after I spent two sleepless days drinking his booze to numb the pain while he was away. He did nothing more than shake his head and he didn't even charge me. I called my first wife Bronwen in North Carolina last night, and she said “Shit Steve — we LIVED there!” So did Semensi and our friend Teddy Neves, now among those who went missing because of schizophrenia. (The Rozens, whose extremely original family lived  across the back fence from the Concas, deserve their own post. Soon!) Rather than oppose my hunting as "a waste of time”, as my father tended to do, Doc joined our Thanksgiving double gun hunt in Easton with his Model 12.

Not that he was sentimental about kids. One of Doc’s outstanding accomplishments was to teach the younger bunch of his kids to stand in the doorway when I showed up and chant “Steve’s here — HIDE THE BEER!”,  over and over again. But he also taught me how to do things like pickle squid- and MAKE beer. Both Rozen and Semensi eventually rented houses from him behind the dentist's office, filling the space with bird dogs and sailboats; Doc told us, puffing on his pipe,  that a friend had inquired after his "commune", a pretty funny thing for a life- long Goldwater Republican to have. Both were at his funeral.

Rozen in those days:

Doc (front center) and Rose  (lower left) ca 1983, with the younger kids:

I more or less lost touch with him in recent years. When Libby was living in Bozeman, he flew his personal plane out to see us. I don’t think they took his plane keys away until he was 90. I will add photos as I get them.; Mike has promised one with his plane. He was a man, who will be missed. And he has prompted me to begin what may be a memoir, just by making me think of that time.

A special thanks to Megan (McKenzie) Conca of Santa Fe, for photos and material.Obviously, more TK.

UPDATE: Here is a photo of Doc in his plane! And Mary Lou is sending more by snail mail....

And who is that with him? I am not sure.

Photo Session

Stefan Wachs came down for another photo shoot, this time of me flying Matt Mitchell's sweet Harris. There will be more...

Isabella's pups

..In Virginia- 5 boys,  5 girls:

0ur pick is the small brown- collared girl, who has a white blaze and the prospect of a dark muzzle and ears. She might resemble the late lamented Pax. They, and Ataika, are all closely related. Our current thought on a name is Alema, Kazakh for Milky Way, after Lauren's Kazakh eagle.

 Pax.

Alema

Brad's Miss Jane

Brad Watson's new novel makes the NYTBR-- above the fold, with a photo one that one friend teased "has that Sam Shepard vibe". Congratulations!

I like all of Brad's work, but this one is rich- ma ybe his best? I will give it proper review when I finish

UPDATE: Here is an even better review in the Denver Post, c/o Reid.

Maybe some of his skill or at least luck will rub off on the standing desk he brought to the blog party for me.. The computer swivels two ways for Libby and me (notice  I am so eager to test it that I am still wearing my hat- I am generally not so "cow" as to wear my hat when writing)...

Brad, Carlos, and me at the party