Noodling for Flatheads by Burkhard Bilger

Source of book: Borrowed from a friend of my brother. 

Generally speaking, unless it is a Dirk Pitt book, I tend to take my brother’s book recommendations seriously: he is a devoted reader with a taste for thoughtful and interesting books. When I saw his little Facebook review of this one, I really wanted to read it. Fortunately, his friend (who lent it to him) was gracious enough to let me borrow it too. Since at least two of my kids are interested in reading it now, I suspect it will get a lot of mileage before he gets it back.

Burkhard Bilger is an interesting character - as interesting as his unusual name. He has written for The New Yorker for a couple decades, as well as a variety of literary and scientific publications. But he was, believe it or not, born and raised in Oklahoma, to German immigrants, in a decidedly non-upper-crust family. He thus combines a deep sympathy and understanding of rural America with a well educated and broad perspective. Since I wasn’t that familiar with him before this book, I looked him up and discovered that he is often compared favorably with John McPhee, who I recently discovered. I would agree that his writing is indeed in the same basic vein as McPhee, although with his own unique and enjoyable voice. 

Noodling for Flatheads is a collection of eight long-form essays about interesting facets of Southern culture. Bilger writes, not from the coastal elite perspective of what he calls “southern grotesque,” but from a sympathetic, open-minded viewpoint. And, to that end, he experiences what he writes about. And yes, that includes catching giant catfish with his bare hands….by shoving his arm down their throats. (That’s the title essay, in case it wasn’t obvious.) What results is a series of fascinating looks at interesting people and the things they care about. As my brother put it, the essays are not in the least condescending, but bring a delightful degree of humanity to the people and things he writes about. (Again, definitely in the tradition of McPhee, and something that a lot of writers could learn from.) 

The topics are both broad and unusual. I figured I might list them, because they aren’t obvious from the title. First is, of course, catfish hunting. And then there is cock fighting, moonshining, squirrel hunting (including eating the brains…), frog farming, racoon hunting, soul food, and the rolley holers...which is kind of the game of marbles with a heavy dose of “ever so much more so.” It’s an interesting slice, with a bit of diversity too, not just the usual white southern stuff. 

I must say, I quite enjoyed this book. Bilger has a real knack for interviewing people, and he brings the characters to life. Also, because he participates in most of the activities he writes about, his essays feel more involved than a dispassionate observation. His writing is also excellent. (Again, I am reminded of McPhee: the prose isn’t flowery, but the command of the language and precise use of words is delightful. Things come alive because of the good writing.) 

Bilger essentially writes, as he says, of the difference between the “two Americas.” No, not, as John Edwards observed, the elites and the average person; but of the surface America and the grey market, so to speak, that exists beyond the official laws. 

I often felt as though there were two Americas: the one we legislate and the one just down the street, inside and abandoned warehouse or a neighbor’s basement; the one on television and the one where Santeria rituals are performed and snakes handled, where moonshine glimmers and gamecocks fight. 

This is in the context of cockfighting (which is actually pretty dang big here in Bakersfield, despite being illegal…), but it could apply to any number of things. I have certainly eaten grey market food, and seen enough stuff in the neighborhoods I have lived in (from chicharones to fireworks) that are not, strictly speaking, legal. Bilger does note, though, that as brutal as cockfighting is, the birds actually live a better life than those raised in factory farms. Morality is often relative… 

In the chapter about moonshine, Bilger makes another spot-on observation. 

American history, some say, could be written in terms of whiskey as well as wars and wandering tribes, and the result might say more about the American character -- about the perennial battle between liberty and the rule of law.

Booze has been a part of the history of the New World, for better or worse, from the rum trade that fed slavery to the moonshiners in my wife’s ancestry to Prohibition to the modern craft beer movement. There is something uniquely American about our relationship to ethanol. And, this being America, race is inseparably linked to pretty much everything. This bit is enlightening, following a history of moonshining, and the ways that nasty stuff was used to adulterate booze for the out-of-town market. 

A few of the moonshiners I talked to said these were nothing but scare stories, passed around by revenuers. But others admitted that there have always been two sorts of moonshine: the decent stuff, which is kept at home and sold to neighbors, and “nigger likker,” as they called it, shipped to anonymous shot houses and nip jounts in the big city. It’s in such areas that moonshine has taken its worst toll. In 1928 sixty died of wood alcohol poisoning in New York alone, and in 1930 authorities estimated that fifteen thousand people had been partially paralyzed by “Jake,” a type of moonshine made with Jamaica ginger. 

The chapter on squirrel hunting is likewise filled with fascinating intersections. During the AIDS crisis, “plague porn” really took off, and those wounded by the Southern Baptist horseshit of “AIDS is God’s wrath on gays” latched on to the “eating squirrel brains gives demented hillbillies mad cow disease” bandwagon. Neither was exactly true, of course. AIDS is a threat to humanity, and the victims are often the “innocent,” not the “guilty.” (Women and children in Africa and elsewhere come to mind.) Likewise, it turns out that squirrels most likely do not carry prion disease, and that the clusters in the South were simply genetic. But the comedians certainly took the story and ran with it. Dave Barry, one of my favorites in my teen years, asked the obvious question: “Since when do squirrels have brains?” 

I also enjoyed the chapter on frog farming. Which still isn’t a thing. Basically, frogs seem to resist being raised in captivity. Sure, they may breed, but diseases get them. Or any number of other issues. And they don’t make money. Anyway, I have had frog legs. They are delicious. But not easy to find, for reasons this chapter makes clear. (Also, not everyone likes them…) But there is a great line in the book about, well, here’s the whole paragraph. 

Ken Holyoak’s fish hatchery, frog farm, and wild hog preserve sits on a small gravel drive guarded by a very large fish. Eight feet long and six feet high, bristling with exotic fins and fluorescent purple-and-yellow scales, the fish looks like a cross between a bluegill and a beetle -- a Volkswagen Beetle, that is, circa 1969 -- and hovers above passing cars as if scanning for minnows. Even Holyoak doesn’t recognize its species. “I just asked this feller that goes to my church to make me a feesh,” he says, “and that’s what he come up with.”

Also excellent is the chapter on Soul Food. Which I rather enjoy eating, although I haven’t had all of the various entrails yet. Bilger opens with a quote from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. 

 

What a group of people we were, I thought. Why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked. Not all of us, but so many. Simply walking up and shaking a set of chitterlings or a well-boiled hog maw at them during the clear light of day!

Bilger notes, again, with great perception, that a lot of people see food as a matter of “purity”: they are pure, and the lower classes eat unclean food. (And yes, this is absolutely tied up with both race and class in our nation.) 

The world is full of people who define themselves by what they won’t eat: macrobiotics, vegetarians, weight watchers, and weight lifters. But sometimes the more difficult, more audacious act is to define yourself by what you will eat -- especially if it turns everyone else’s stomach. 

Both my wife and I have earned our bona fides by eating fish with the heads on -- and the eyeballs. Personally, I view food as (in part) a means of connecting with other cultures. Which means I will try all kinds of stuff, largely as a connection between others and myself. 

There is so much more in this book than the few things I have mentioned in this post. It is fascinating, with well-told stories, and a slice of life unfamiliar to Californians like myself. Bilger’s empathetic and human connection to those he interviews makes this book particularly sweet. It is a good read, worth seeking out. 

 

 

 

The Patch by John McPhee

Source of book: I own this.

It is always a treat when someone with good taste in books gives you a gift of one you hadn’t heard of. In this case, my wife’s brother-in-law (who is an all-around great guy), found this one for me this last Christmas. Even better, he got it at the historic Warwick’s in La Jolla, so now I have a cool bookmark from there. (I am getting a collection of them from various indie bookstores…) Let me take time to make a plug for local stores. Many are, during the Covid shutdown, offering free delivery within their city areas. We want them to be there when we get back to normal, so support them now. 

  

John McPhee is considered one of the key pioneers of the “creative non-fiction” genre. These days, we tend to take for granted the existence of enthralling long-form stories that combine accurate reporting and factual information yet use the techniques of literary writing to create the very opposite of a dry recitation of facts. It is the use of language, of narrative arc, of storybuilding, put to use to communicate and entertain. 

John McPhee is not only one of the originals, he is still one of the best. I am sure I must have read some of his work before, although I didn’t note the byline enough to remember it later. McPhee is also renowned as a teacher. His students look like a “who’s who” list of American writers - and he is still teaching at Princeton at age 89. What is most amazing about his work is just how broad his topics are. It seems there is little he hasn’t written about at some point, and he is able to make any topic interesting, no matter how arcane or “boring” it might seem at first glance. 

The Patch is his latest collection of essays, published in 2018. It might be more fair to call it a half-collection, however, as only the first half (6 essays) are new work. The second half is what he calls an “Album Quilt.” By that he means it is a motley collection of excerpts from other things he has written over his long career. The pieces cover literally five or six decades of writing, and cover such a crazy range of topics, it is hard to know where to start. I mean, there is a thing about Rock Hudson back when he was a big star (and alive, for that matter), and a bit on bird watching, a couple paragraphs about the Moscow State Circus, a look at the exclusive golf club congressmen (and it was ONLY men) used, a few articles on sports players and coaches, and so much more. And with very few exceptions, it was all fascinating. (And considering the range of topics, chances are everyone will find one that may not be as interesting to them…) 

The title essay, “The Patch,” is about he and his late father fishing for pickerel in shallow water where they hung out. I’m a terrible fisherman - I have too little patience for it - but I loved this essay. It is clear that McPhee’s skills haven’t declined, because he tells a great story, and brings the scene to life incredibly well. 

This isn’t the only new essay that mentions his dad - a few of the new essays serve in part as eulogies. His father was (among other things) the physician for the sports teams at Princeton, and, well, I’ll let McPhee tell it:

Early in the season, Princeton football practices often occurred in high heat. Not to mention humidity. Charging, blocking, punting, grunting, everybody dehydrated by the quart. My otherwise benevolent father forbad them to drink ordinary water. They were losing electrolytes, and they needed to hydrate and electrolyze. Buckets beside the practice fields held the only fluid my father would allow the players to drink. They complained. They further complained. But they were so thirsty they dipped ladles into the buckets and drank. The fluid tasted awful, as I can testify, because--age eight, age nine--I drank it too. It was an aqueous solution of sodium chloride, sodium phosphate, and potassium chloride. Why am I telling this story? Because, twenty years later, researchers at the University of Florida College of Medicine, responding to a request from Coach Ray Graves, developed a drink full of electrolytes to hydrolyze the Florida Gators. The difference between Gatorade and the solution in my father’s buckets was sugar and fruit flavoring--healthless components that were evidently of no interest to my father or I would be writing this from one of my seasonal villas. 

That short paragraph is a tour-de-force of good writing, from the careful plotting and pacing to the internal rhymes and rhythms to the perfect use of vocabulary. McPhee’s writing is adapted to his topics, but it is always excellent.  

Two of the new essays concern golf. Now, I am not a golfer, and don’t really care about golf as such. But I like good writing about golf very much - particularly P. G. Wodehouse. And, apparently, John McPhee. The first is about his hobby of collecting lost balls (so he can donate them to a program for kids who can’t afford $3.00 balls.) The second is about the original golf courses in Scotland, before they became the environmentally catastrophic artificial playgrounds for the rich they tend to be now. His description of the wind and the sheep and the ocean and so on is pretty good by itself. I rather enjoyed his explanation of where “links” come from. Many announcers get it completely wrong. It comes from the Old English “hlinc,” meaning “rising ground” - a hilly wind-sculpted coastal terrain that exists only in a few places in the world. 

The other original essays all connect in some way to sports, although not always in the expected way. The “Album Quilt” is the part where the topics get crazy. 

One particularly great one involves McPhee locking his keys in the car in a dodgy parking garage in Manhattan. He finds a coat hanger and attempts to unlock it himself. And then the cops show up. So he asks them to help him break into a car. Which they do. 

Then the two policemen got back into their own vehicle and prepared to drive away. 

“Wait,” I said.

They had asked for no papers, no identification of any kind. They had found me trying to insert a wire into a Ford. Were they just going to assume that the car was mine?

Sam, hearing all this, looked at his partner, then back at me. He said, “Listen, mister, if you’re stealing that car, and you had the chutzpah to get us to help you, take it. It’s yours. You can have it.”

Now sure, white privilege and all, to be sure. But I myself have been hassled by the cops about possibly stealing my old Camaro. (Both ended fine, but I had to show ID and registration…) 

I also liked the opening of a brief bit (obviously from a longer essay) praising puns. I am an inveterate punster, so I am highly in favor of the art form. And, of course, the beginning is a pun:

The pun also rises, even while maligned as the lowest form of humor. In good hands, words can be made to jump, molt, wiggle, shrink, flash, collide, fight, strut, and turn themselves inside out or upside down. 

One final excerpt I want to mention is a longer one on bird watching. McPhee isn’t a birder, exactly - at least before writing this essay - so he was surprised to be asked to write an article on birding. I have gotten into it the last few years (not coincidentally when I got a camera with a long enough zoom), although I am not as serious as many. You can see my birding collection here. Anyway, there is an intriguing quote from McPhee’s birding friend. I don’t feel quite the same quasi-sexual way about it, but it does capture the thrill of getting a good shot of a new bird. 

“One might as well be blunt about it and concede that the entire enterprise is redolent of sexuality,” he said. “The voyeurism is embarrassingly obvious. I mean your stealth, your luck, and a couple of ground lenses can bring you into a secret intimacy with some of the most beautiful, graceful, and sensual beings in nature. The perspective is unreal--it’s as if you were up there on a branch among the leaves with them, and you cease to be your earthbound self entirely for a bright, timeless flight as you strain to catch one more glimpse of the golden-crowned kinglet darting through the conifers. Did I really see that crimson streak running through the yellow cap, or did I imagine it? The excitement can be compared only to that I experienced as a fourteen-year-old gulping my way through Lady Chatterley’s Lover, looking for the dirty parts. And yet the fantasy is of an exquisitely purer intensity--the eroticism of angels, not of thrashing animals on the ground.” 

I think I will have to add McPhee to my list of authors who I would read no matter what the topic - those who elevate the English language and capture the essence and real-ness of whatever they write about. His gentle humor and lovely writing as well as his dedication to understanding his topics are delightful.