Freestone Radicals

Conversation overheard in a flyshop last week, between the counter clerk and a local river guide.

CC: ...Yeah, traffic has been way down this year, but what can you expect with gas prices? Gas up to here from most downstate venues could cost $100 for some people.

RG: That's going to hurt a lot of people around here eventually.

CC: Sure, the motels, the stores, especially the canoe liveries are hurting.

RG: What I don't understand is why people aren't complaining. Back in the 70s when gas hit 60, 70 cents, a dollar a gallon, people were throwing a fit. Now? Nothing.

CC: Things are different now. Seems like since about the time Reagan got in, people have just become more complacent.

RG: Sheep to slaughter.

CC: You know what the problem is, don't you? You've got about 6% of the people in this country controlling 80% of the wealth.

RG: I think the bigger problem is the 1% that controls 60% of the money. Those guys have got the government working for them.

CC: Well, there's definitely a "face behind the face" problem. I don't know what to do about it.

***long silence****

Not exactly the sort of thing I expect to hear in most flyshops. Looking at those guys, the clerk in the sort of refined denim shirt and chinos they sell in the back of Orvis catlogues, the guide in camo with a wiry beard, I never would have imagined those words coming out of their mouths. Lynne Cheney said once that if you wanted to wanted to understand her husband, you had to understand fly fishing, because everything he did and believed came from that. If the sport does make the man, then either Dick Cheney or these guys (as well as myself) got something very wrong along the way. I don't know if there's a particular influence that fly fishing has on anyone, but from what I've seen, it surely does lure in people of all sorts.

The liberal-progressive in me wants to believe that those guys represent a large group of anglers. They probably do--but only insofar as they aren't afraid to speak their minds, and they love their rivers. That much the sport does seem to impress on its devotees. And sometimes, that translates into wonderful politics, not strictly aligned with any of the customary factions that jockey for power.

But still, there's Dick Cheney and plenty more like him, determined to freeze politics as usual into place. Like the clerk, I don't know what to do.