When Captain Jim first brought this record up to the Club, I guess they call them CDs nowadays, we were all pretty skeptical. The old Captain had been talking about making a music tape for his mounted drill team and quadrille classes for so many years that nobody paid much attention anymore when he yapped on it. Plus everyone here at the Club knows that even though Jimbo loves opera, Puccini mostly, he has a tin ear. He can’t sing worth a darned, a real handicap for a whiskey drinking Irishman, and he can’t even play “Home on the Range” on the harmonica, but that’s just how it is. He’s so bad that nobody comes to the Club for the annual “St. Patrick’s Day in the Summer” party anymore because when he got deep into the Irish whiskey, instead of bourbon for that one day, he’d start hollering old Irish Revolution and drinking songs in an off-key tenor that run the eagles off their nests across the river. The party was always held in July, because the Club is closed for the winter now that most of the boys skip down to Florida after deer season to get out of the cold and snow. Anyway, we all thought that we should get pretty far into the bourbon before we let him stick it into the old player, not knowing what expect.

     The old Captain was a few horse lengths ahead of the boys as usual. He offered to sell copies of the CD, before he played it, for five bucks, but after it was played it would cost full retail of $16.95. Of course nobody bit on that. Old Uncle Alphonse said that if we all held out we could get one for free soon enough, owing to Jimmie being be too embarrassed to charge anyone after it was played and out in the open. Uncle Alphonse is wrong most of the time, so why we listen to him, I just don’t know.

     So anyway, once we banged on the player a few times and turned one of the speakers on its side, which is the only way anything comes out of it, Captain Jim spun up the volume and hit the “play” button.   Well, most of the boys were primed and hoping for the worst, so they could start right in on their helpful critiques. You could see by their smirky looks that most of them had already searched their repertoires for the best of their lowest comments. Only what came out of those ruptured woofers wasn’t all that bad. In fact it was quite good.  It appears that Captain Jim had spent considerable time and dough on getting this thing made. He hired real musicians and used a real recording studio. The whole thing is cavalry music that he had arranged for a fourteen piece brass band. He even had the tempo arranged to match the gaits of horses.

We were amazed. First the boys got real quiet, and then they started tapping their feet. Before you knew it they were all clapping and trotting and cantering around the lodge in time with the music. It wasn’t long before Captain Jim had them all formed up in sets of fours and they were trotting out onto the porch and down the two-track in a column of twos. Captain Jim in the lead calling the evolutions like he was back on the street with his mounted cops. By the time the boys got back they were all out of breath and pretty thirsty, so the Old Fashioned crock got filled again and everybody did a “water call”.  Everybody wanted to buy one of these CDs, which has the catchy title of, “The Brass Mounted Army, Music of the Old Horse Cavalry”, so the boys were pulling five dollar bills out of their money clips. Only, Captain Jim, who can be uncompromising and true to his word, told the boys that the price was $16.95. The $5.00 price was pre-introduction, and it was now post-introduction, in other words, $16.95 each.

The boys thought that he was kidding a bit, but he held firm. Some of the boys grumbled about it not being fair, and if it hadn’t been for Old Uncle Alphonse convincing them that they would get one for free anyway, they would have ponied up before hand. Blaming Alphonse is the usual, and often true, fall back when things don’t go right. It took a while, and another crock of Old Fashioneds, but by the end of the evening’s poker game most everyone had dredged up $17.00 for a CD, Captain Jim didn’t make change.

Like I said Captain Jim can be uncompromising, but he can also be generous. Once he had collected everyone’s cash, except for Lester’s who never has any when it’s needed, Captain Jim took the whole pile and put it into the grocery jar. That’s a big Mason jar that’s on top of the fridge that everyone is supposed to keep stocked with cash for incidentals like dish soap, toilet paper, mixes, onions and other sundries. The jar was just about empty and getting the boys to put a few bucks into it can be a real tough deal. But as usual Captain Jim found a way to get everyone to kick in without going to the gun rack. It cost the Captain a few extra bucks and some CDs, but there’s $170.00 in the Mason jar. That should last a few weeks, if we can keep Old Uncle Alphonse from pilfering it for beer money.

Go to the bottom of this page to listen to a selection from the CD

Well, trout season officially opens on the river in about ten days. The last Saturday in April is the traditional opener, but the Cavalry Club is located on the Blue Ribbon “flies only, catch and release” section of the upper river, so that stretch never officially closes in the fall. Still, the boys have always looked to the last Saturday in April as “opening day”, both for the fishing season and for opening of the Club.

Most of the boys usually show up to help get things ready for the season. We’ve got to start up the water pump; get rid of the dead mice and other critters; clean up the winter debris and dead fall; get the electric turned on; light the water heater and fill the propane tank. The last bunch of grouse hunters at the Club in November are supposed to clean up the place and close everything down for winter when they leave, but that doesn’t always get done completely right. So there is usually something out of whack that needs cleaning or fixing. Like someone leaving food in the fridge, that by now is either rotten, exploded or both. Using all the propane, or not draining and putting anti-freeze in the toilet so it freezes and busts a commode.

It’s usually Old Uncle Alphonse who gets up to the Club first, on Wednesday or early Thursday morning. It’s about the only time that you can count on him to do anything useful. He gets the pump going and turns on the propane. He does this only because he needs running water and wants gas for the stove and the space heater. It’s still pretty cold at night in late April on the river. There’s never any split fire wood left from last season, and old Alphonse is usually too lazy, or too tired to split any more for the big iron stove. He’d rather light the space heater and use up what’s left of our cooking propane. By the time the other fellows get there on Friday evening, Alphonse has undone any house cleaning that the boys might have done in November, but at least he’s got the water and heat on, so nobody does much complaining.

The boys get a pretty slow start in getting around to the chores. They usually start in on the bourbon and beer right away and are lounging around the big table catching up on winter stories about deer hunting, Florida fishing and such other adventures when Captain Jim rolls in. Then things get organized with discipline and cavalry precision. It doesn’t take long after that to get everything in order. Bunks made up, groceries put away, toilets scrubbed, bar stocked, and all the porch furniture and canoes brought up from the little cabin. Captain Jim isn’t exactly pushy about any of this, but all the boys know that there won’t be any more booze poured or venison steaks burned until everything is done to his satisfaction. Nobody ever questions the Captain’s authority in this. Except once in a while Old Uncle Alphonse puts up a challenge, but the Captain knows that old Alphonse is just testing the water, so he can usually put old Alphonse back in line with just a steady stare. Other than that, all the boys recognize that the Captain is in overall charge on the most important goings on at the Club.

Since Saturday morning is the “official” opening day, everyone feels obligated to get up by 7:00am and start stringing rods and sorting flies. Most everyone’s fishing bag is just as they packed them up last fall, so there is a lot of digging around in duffels for fly boxes, reels and other essential gear. If anyone bought a new rod over the winter or got one for Christmas from the grand kids, the boys will spend some time criticizing everything about it, from its flex to its finish, until the once proud owner is ready to pack it back up or sell it to the lowest bidder.

The river is still pretty high, fast and stained by winter run-off so none of the boys get too serious about wading, floating or fishing in general. Everyone will slip down the bank to the canoe dock and someone will observe that the water is too fast yet, or too stained, or too high, or the air is too cold to hatch anything. Someone else will agree with these age old observations and everyone will climb back up the old log stairs to the lodge. Having performed this opening day ritual, all the boys are content and satisfied and are ready to start the poker game and get the stew pot going.

            No one thinks much about not catching any fish this morning and, except for a few real serious anglers like the Captain and Old Uncle Alphonse, who will sneak off down to Portage Creek to fool some early Brookies with Woolie Buggers and Skunks, no one will during the whole weekend.  It’s more the principle of the thing that is important, not the doing. Most of the boys have been on the river for opening day since the early fifties. So nowadays, it’s enough just to be here on the last Saturday in April.