The Good Old Days

[Traditionalist]

What happened to the good old days?

Well, it really depends what you mean by the "good old days".  They had some advantages to be sure, but they also had a lot of disadvantages.

When I first started fishing, I used whatever tackle I could lay my hands on, simply because I wanted to go fishing. Even the clunky, really unsuitable stuff I used at the time was often expensive, at least it was to me, as I had no money anyway!

My main reason for dressing my own flies, and building my own gear, was that I could not afford to buy them. Of course I found it interesting and rewarding, but it took a long time to be good enough at it that I was entirely satisfied with what I produced.

Obtaining suitable material was sometimes very difficult, and as I could rarely afford to buy them, I was often obliged to go to considerable lengths to get them. Buying them would have been a lot easier. Eventually. I built most of my own tackle. to my own specifications.  It worked all right, and I caught plenty of fish, but I always had an eye on some of the new manufactured tackle, in the fond belief that it was a lot better than mine. I remember the first "mail-order" fishing catalogue I got. It was form a firm called Herter?s in America.  Everything in it was the "best in the world", and I did not doubt this for a second. I spent hours perusing that book. No chance at all of me buying anything from it of course, but there is no harm in imagining?

Many things were indeed "better". No matter how much time and effort you put into making something, you will rarely be able to compete with a manufactured product. If you compare the time and effort involved, it is rarely even a viable proposition in the first place. Even at the time, I was aware of this, but I still made my own stuff, as did many others, as we simply had no choice in the matter. We did not have the cash to buy it.

My trials and tribulations in the acquisition of various things took me to quite a few places, and I met quite a few interesting people as a result of this.

He was called "Hazel Joe". I never knew his real name, or perhaps that was his real name.  He was quite old when I met him, but with that peculiar look many outdoorsmen have, making their age indefinable. He could have been any age really, from forty to eighty. I never did find out how old he was.

Disreputable looking clothes, an old scruffy jacket over a tattered looking "lumberjack" shirt of indeterminate colour and age, but mostly grey, a flat cap perched on unruly clumps of greying and greasy looking hair,  khaki trousers tied up at the waist, and down at the boots with coarse baling twine, and a generally unkempt appearance. Large clumps of dark hair growing from his nostrils and ears, completed the generally uninviting picture. The impression was of "greyness", and the odd feeling that he would disappear if one looked away.

Initially, my meeting him had nothing to do with fishing, or at least not directly. In those days, and even now, practically everything I did had something to do with fishing, if only incidentally.  Such was the case here.

Hazel Joe bred and trained ferrets, among other things.  His animals were renowned for their prowess and obedience. He usually had at least one of the creatures somewhere about his person, and this made him even more fascinating.  Pink enquiring noses issuing from the depths of his seemingly bottomless pockets made him a subject of considerable interest to many, and not only small boys.

Being sixteen years old when I met him, I was no longer a small boy, indeed I had already been working full time for two years, but the fascination remained.  Unlike many of my contemporaries, I had little or no interest in anything at all except fishing. Sport was OK, as long as I was participating, swimming, cricket, rugby, were all enjoyable, but watching it, or listening to people discuss it, especially football, bored me to death. It still does.

Anything to do with animals interested me greatly however, and not only did Hazel Joe have a collection of very interesting animals, he also trained and used them for a great number of very interesting things.  One of these things was catching rabbits.  One might think that catching rabbits is an easy matter, but this is not the case, as you will doubtless know if you have ever tried. Furthermore, if you are unable to catch them, they are very difficult to obtain, and I needed a rabbit.  Or to be more precise, a rabbit skin. Preferably several, and if possible from different seasons...............

My enquiries on these matters had led me to Hazel Joe, and his rather unprepossessing dwelling, an old and completely decrepit caravan, barely recognisable as such, half buried as it was under various boxes, cages, tin-sheeting, and a plethora of other miscellaneous junk, in the corner of a field, about a mile from the local railway station. Which itself was pretty far out of the way.

Rather tentatively knocking on the door of the caravan, in considerable trepidation that it might collapse if I knocked any harder, I was eventually rewarded by the door being flung open, and a filthy apparition in a nightshift which had presumably been bequeathed to him by Florence Nightingale, and never washed since, appearing in the opening and growling "What do you want boy?".

Somewhat taken aback, I gathered my wits enough to explain that I wished to buy a rabbit skin.

"You better come in then", was the growled retort, and he disappeared into the murky depths once again. I entered rather timidly, hoping that my eyes would adjust to the murk as quickly as possible.

"Born in a field were you? He growled, "Put ?t wood in ?t hole". Obligingly, I closed the door.

Pungent, but not entirely unpleasant, the smell inside was rather more bearable after a while.  While he messed about with a spirit stove, and an old battered kettle, he said "Sit down boy. Do you want tea?".

I most certainly did not want tea, I did not want to sit down either, apart from there being no obvious place to do so.  He swept a collection of paper off a bench onto the already full floor, and said again. "Sit down".

I sat.

He disappeared yet again into the recesses of the caravan, and returned in a remarkably short time wearing the clothes I described at the start, and the only ones I ever saw him wearing. Handing me a large cracked mug with no handle, of the filthiest brown colour imaginable, slopping over with a deep black liquid, he growled once again, "So you want to buy a rabbit skin eh? What for?".

Although only sixteen, I had already had numerous opportunities to regret telling people about my rather eccentric hobby of fly-dressing, as the reactions thereto were rarely foreseeable, and often unpleasant. In this particular case however, I could see no reason not to tell him the real reason, and so I embarked on an explanation.

After explaining why I needed skins from various seasons, and rabbits of various ages, he surprisingly nodded and said, "Hare?s better, more waterproof".  Having delivered what he obviously considered a nugget of untold wisdom, he sat back, slurped his tea through his teeth, making a disgusting noise, and viewed me penetratingly with his dark eyes over the rim of his huge handleless mug.

"Do you want to see some flies boy?"  He then asked.   Surprised, and a little worried that he might be completely off his rocker, I avowed my interest, and he once again disappeared into the recesses at the rear, emerging after a while with several large flat wooden boxes.

Each box was full to the brim with perfect serried ranks of absolutely beautiful flies!  "Go on, have a look" he said,  and I very carefully began removing one fly after another to inspect them.  They were perfect, at least as far as I was able to judge at the time. Many of the patterns I had never seen, although I recognised quite a few.  I spent quite a while looking at them, while he continued to inspect me over the rim of his mug with those startling deep dark eyes.

After a while, he got up, disappeared again into the back of the caravan, and returned with a large paper bag.  "Here", he said, "You might find this useful. You can visit me again if you want, I don?t get many visitors. Bring some decent tea, this stuff is like pisswater".

He then took the boxes, and disappeared back into the recesses of the caravan.

Rather nonplussed, and as he made no sign of returning, I got up after a while and left.

When I got home, I opened the bag and nearly fell off my chair with surprise. Contained therein were a number of skins. Mostly natural, and some obviously dyed. They were perfectly prepared, and did not smell of anything at all. They were also supple and pleasant to handle. Some I recognised, others not.

The following Saturday, I bought two pounds of the very best tea I could purchase, two pint  tea mugs, condensed milk, sugar, and several bottles of beer, and made my way out to his caravan with a few flies I had tied, in a tin in my pocket.

My knocking once again caused his appearance in the doorway, and he said "Hallo boy. Did you bring the tea?".

Following him in, I said "My name is Mike, thank you very much indeed for the skins. I would like to pay for them of course, I brought some tea, and here are some mugs, and a couple of bottles of beer".

"Beer eh?. Good. Sit down boy" he said, "We??ll  have a brew".   Taking the packages from my hand he once again began messing about with his spirit stove and the old battered kettle.

That was how I got to know him. I visited him regularly for a long time, and went on quite a few "trips" with him. I learned more from him about fishing, animals, and the countryside, than I ever have before or since from any other source.

Much of what I learned was not about fishing, but if anybody is interested, I can relate a few of the adventures here. I wrote extremely copious notes, ( much to his continued amusement), in a number of notebooks, all the time I knew him, a period of six years in total.

TL
MC

[haresear]

Brilliant, Mike. Give us more.

As someone said elsewhere, you really should write a book.

Alex

[Traditionalist]

Very good Mike ,you got any more stories about Hazel Joe that you would like to share

Indeed, I have a couple. Watch this space.........................


TL
MC