Lex Anteinternet: The Killetarian Cookbook. Cooking Wild Game.

Lex Anteinternet: The Killetarian Cookbook. Cooking Wild Game.: 

The Killetarian Cookbook. Cooking Wild Game.

I'm sure that nobody would mistake me for a five-star chef, but I’m not helpless in the kitchen either.

One of the things that anyone who reads this blog (which, of course, are darned few people) will already know is that I'm pretty feral, for lack of a better way to put it.  An Agrarian and a Distributist at heart, I'd prefer a more agrarian world in every way, including getting as much as your table fare from the fields and streams where you live.  I'm a lifelong hunter, but not a head hunter.  That's the way hunting where I live when I was a kid.  You hunted to put food on the table.  I'm not saying that you can't and shouldn't put a trophy on the wall, or go for a big example of what you are after, but hunting is primarily for that.

Not only that, but it's the most honest and ethical way to put mean on the table.  I'll truck no arguments from vegetarians and vegans, and others who would maintain a deeply anti nature view of the world.  Hunters and Fish Hunters (fishermen) are the population that's most connected to nature, and part of the body of people who try to keep the plant livable for us all.  Meat hunters and fishermen most of all.

Wild game, moreover, is the meat source that's closest to what we're evolved to eat.

If I could have my way, the vegetables we'd eat here would come from our own garden, and the meat from the fields.  That is in fact partially true now, although I haven't put in a garden for several years as my well is down and, like a lot of things in my old age, I haven't gotten around to having it fixed.

Well, having spouted off.  I'll be putting in some recipes here, an endeavor that was inspired by something recent that I'll keep off-line.

I'll note here in addition that there are some links below.  I think these links are useful, which doesn't mean I've tried everything listed there.  I'm not, as noted, a trained chef.  The links are to sites by people who have a lot more food knowledge than I do.

My bonafides

Okay, so what, if anything, qualifies me to say anything about the topic of cooking wild game?

Well, quite a bit, really.

For one thing, I grew up eating wild fish and fowl, as well as wild leporids (i.e, rabbits).

My father was an avid outdoorsman.  Unlike me, he inclined more towards fishing than hunting, but when fall came he switched from fishing to bird hunting.  He started fishing in the spring as soon as you could, and then fished all summer, and into the fall  He continued fishing basically until the snow flew, even after he started bird hunting.  He didn't ice fish much, however, so he took the cold winter months off from fishing.

He started hunting birds when sage chicken season opened in the fall and soon started hunting ducks and geese after that, with an occasional mix of other birds as well.  When I was old enough to hunt and fish, which in the case of hunting was five years of age, I started that.  When I was just about that age, I started hunting rabbits as well.

My father had hunted big game when he was single, but some time after he married, he stopped for a while due to the pressures of work and having a small family. Also, in those days, hunting big game was more of an expedition than it is now, in spite of what people might think.  When I was about 10 or 12 or so, however, he started again, probably as he had more time and I wanted to. At that time, you couldn't hunt big game until you were 14, so I had a couple of years of observational experience before I started hunting big game too.

When my father started hunting big game again, it was antelope.  I don't recall him getting a big game license during my lifetime for anything else.  But I did.  I started hunting deer the same year I started hunting antelope, and added elk hunting as soon as I had the automotive freedom to do that.  By the time I was a late teen, I was fishing in the spring, but switched to hunting as soon as the season was on, and hunted until the last of the seasons.  I wasn't an ice fisherman at that point either.

Now, we were a family of three. And what this should tell you is that we were eating a lot of wild game.  When I was born Catholics still had meatless Fridays every week of the year, and therefore we normally had trout for Friday dinner.  We continued on with this even after it was no longer required, as we had lots of fish.  My father froze fish so we continued to have them long after it grew too cold to continue fishing.  And as this should also indicate, we ate a lot of waterfowl during the season as well as some other game birds.  Once my father started big game hunting, and then I did, we had antelope and deer as well. As both my father and I took antelope, and I usually got additional tags, we had quite a bit of antelope.

So I grew up in a household were wild game was a staple.

That doesn't mean, of course, well-prepared wild game.  My mother was an awful cook and that applied universally to everything.  But my father was a really good cook and when she could no longer cook, my father took over.  By observation, I started to learn how to cook wild game then.

To add to this, from 1983, when I graduated from community college, until 1995, when I got married, I lived pretty much exclusively on wild game.  That's a period of 12 years, of course, which is a significant period.  I didn't normally buy meat at the grocery store when I was a college student unless I flat out ran out of wild game, which would occur.  And when I was first practicing law and living at home, I was bringing home a lot of wild game.  When my father died, and it was my mother and me for a time, I did the cooking normally, and wild game it was.

Cook a lot of wild game, and you'll learn how to cook it.

An additional bonafide

My grandfather owned a packing house and my father had worked in it.  He knew how to butcher meat.  Watching him do it, I learned how to do it, although I was never anywhere as good at it as he was.

I don't like taking my game meat to a meat processor and for years I absolutely wouldn't.  I butchered things myself.  The pressures of work and life, and the fact that my wife didn't like me spending an entire day butchering, meant that I eventually relented, and I do now, and have for a number of years.  I'd still rather not, but I have made that compromise.

I've butchered or helped butcher everything from rabbits up to cattle.

A note on wild meat and how not to ruin it.

Eat wild mean and sooner or later you'll hear somebody say they don't like it, as "it's gamey".

Taste is an individual thing.  I heard one Marine Corps veteran of Afghanistan go long on praise on Afghan goat, for instance, which not everyone would, I'm sure.  Some of that observation, "it's gamey", really means that the person who is speaking has only eaten grain fed American beef or pork.  Grass fed beef, which is the kind we normally have here, tastes considerably different from the beef you buy at the grocery store or get at a steakhouse.  Indeed, this is so much the case that if you get used to grass fed beef and then have the latter, it's a shock and not necessarily a pleasant one.

In fact Plains Indians complained, soon after they were bound to reservations, that allotment beef they were give was "sweet" and they didn't like it.  Used to leaner bison, it tasted odd.  And I can vouch for something similar.  After over a decade of normally only eating wild game, getting used to store bought beef again was a bit difficult.  I like beef, but to go from lean antelope and deer to fed beef was strange and I found I had a preference for the wild game.

People, I note, make similar complaints about lamb, once an American staple, and all sorts of people claim to dislike mutton, even though they mostly have never eaten either.  I love lamb and I like mutton as well.

Which gets me next to this.  Some people think they don't like wild game as the meat has been ruined by how it was treated.

You can ruin any meant, and the easiest way to do that is to not remove the heat from it.

The other day I was at the meat processor to drop off an antelope.  I was stunned when I got there as the antelope I was dropping off was the only one that had been skinned.  I can think of no surer way to make antelope gamey than to not skin it in the field.  I can't imagine why people do not do this.

Learning to skin an animal is not hard, and its vital to do it.

When I shoot a big game animal, the very first thing I do is to bleed it by cutting its throat.  This involves, I'd note, an element of safety as a person should never ever draw a knife towards himself.  If you don't know how to do this, have somebody show you, least you slice yourself open accidentally.  People die in the field cutting themselves with hunting knives.  If its sharp enough to cut game, it's sharp enough to kill you.  Anyhow, you shouldn't be running a knife towards yourself.  I'm not going to explain how to do this as, if you don't know, you should have somebody show you so you don't slice yourself open.  Bleeding doesn't take long, however, and it removes a lot of heat, right away.

After that, you need dto field dress it.  I'm not going to explain how to do that either, but don't ever draw a knife towards  yourself or put yourself in a position where you can get cut.  Then you need to skin the animal.

The only reason not to skin an animal immediately is that you need to drag it to where you are loading it.  Okay, that's a reason.  But skin it as soon as you can.

On this, years ago I shot a moose in weather that was right at about 0F.  We field dressed it and skinned it and loaded it in my 1/2 ton pickup truck.  In spite of that, I still lost a little of it to spoilage.

I'm convinced that at least half of the claims that meat is gamey is due to the meat being absued.  The rest has to do with odd occurances, unfamilairity, and bad cooking.

What I'm noting, by the way, applies to smaller game as well.  When you shoot rabbits or birds, you really need to field dress them in the field.  Rabbits should have their fur removed in the field, both to cool them down, and because they always have fleas.  Birds are a little tougher call simply because sometimes you need the plumage to show game wardens what you have.  Indeed, that can be true for big game animals in terms of their heads and other evidence of sex.  Fish, of course, are easy as you simply remove their guts before you leave the stream.

Big Game

Okay, with all of that, we'll start on big game.

I'm going to really deal with two types of big game here, one being antelope and the other being Cervidae.  Cervidae are deer, and that includes all types of conventional deer in the United States, as well as elk, caribou and moose.  

This isn't to suggest, I'd note, that every Cervidae tastse the same.  Far from it. But they tend to be more similiar than different for the most part.  I.e., elk doesn't taste like mule deer, and neither taste like moose, but none of them are close to tasing the same as antelope.

What I'm not dealing with, therefore, are things like buffalo or bear.  I'm not, as I have no experience with cooking either.  I'm only dealing here with things I know.

Which brings up this.  Save for moose, which is a very dark rich meat, every recipe I'll give here works for everything, but you need to keep in mind they are different by degrees.  These meets have different characteristics, and a recipe that works really well with one meat, will be so so with another.

Useful Sites:

Hunter Angler Gardner Cook:  This site, I'd note, is the most useful, in my opinion. The Author also is sometimes featured in Wyoming Wildlife. He additionally has a podcast, although I haven't listed to much of it.

Wild Harvest Table.  This site is sponsored by New York's Cornell University extension and has very good practical recipes.  It was originally associated with a (then) young university professor who blogged a lot about hunting in New England, but whose cooperative blog on that topic seems to have gone into the ether, like so many blogs have over the years, but who was clearly, along with his wife who was the main driver of this blog, a fellow killetarian.

Food For Hunters.  This blog, like the first one mentioned, has some really good recipes, and it also brings some different prospective to recipes.

A 12 Gauge Girl.  Another blog with interesting recipes, from a killetarian prospective, although its very infrequently updated.

Chef In The Wild.  Interesting blog, but not updated since December 2020 at the time I'm putting this up.

Cowgirl's Country Life.  Not a  hunting specific site, but with some hunting recipes.  Also, infrequently updated.

The Prairie Homestead.  This site has a very active blog and a podcast that has a cult following.  I'll be frank that I don't know that this link really belongs here, and I'll also admit that I have some problems with the modern "homestead" movement, while also finding it interesting and sympathizing with it.

Cast Iron

Okay, the item above is cheating, but it's another page here on our site.

Lex Anteinternet: How Much Land Can A Horse Plough In A Day?

Lex Anteinternet: How Much Land Can A Horse Plough In A Day?

Lex Anteinternet: July 1, 1921 Field & Stream. A missed magazine co...

Lex Anteinternet: July 1, 1921 Field & Stream. A missed magazine co...: 

July 1, 1921 Field & Stream. A missed magazine cover and what it tells us about language and cluture.

This was one of the numerous saved threads I hadn't gotten back to, and then July 1 came and went, and I forgot about it.  Instead, as that day deal with the Chinese Communist Party, there was a big old hammer and sickle that appeared as the art for that day.

Wish I'd remembered this one.

This does bring up a bit of an interesting topic, or at least two such topics, one linguistic and the other cheesecake oriented.

Depictions of women fishing, and let us be more precise and say depictions of pretty young women fishing, are at least as old as print magazines in popular culture.  They're considerably more common than depictions of women hunting, even though fishing is simply fish hunting.  We sometimes forget that English has various words for various types of hunting, as fishing is the only one we commonly use to separate it out from hunting in general.  But there are others.

Fowling, for example, refers to hunting birds and was once a fairly common term. Offhand, I can't think of another sort of hunting other than fishing which is named for the prey, but there are some types that are named for the method.  For example, falconry, that type of hunting done with falcons, is named for the method.  Trapping, which is a controversial type of hunting that has been controversial my entire life, also is.

Of interest in this general topic, hunting of various types was so important in the Medieval era, when people started to first acquire family names, that various things associated with it or the practice itself gave us a series of last names that are still with us. This shows the degree to which it was significant, and even elemental.  Just as we have the last name "Farmer", for example, we have the last name "Hunter".  Noting that English is a Germanic language, and that this evolution occurred at the same time all over Northern Europe, and Europe in general, the same occupations are reflected in the common German last names of Bauer and Jaeger or Jäger.  It ought to be noted here that the last name Hunger more accurately reflects its Medieval origins, however, than "Farmer", as farmer actually meant "renter" at the time, reflecting that farmers tended to be tenants, if not actually serfs.

Jäger, interestingly, shows up as an English last name as well, in the form of Yaeger occasionally.  A name that sounds related, Jagger, isn't.  That name is a Yorkshire name meaning a horse packer.

Fisher, of course, also shows up as a last name, as does the German equivalent Fischer.

Falconer also shows up as a last name, that being for a person who kept and hunted with falcons.  Falconry was expensive back in the day and its pretty likely that anyone who was a falconer was in the permanent employment of a noble, so it's different from simply being a hunter or fisher.  The same occupation gave us the name Hawker as well.

Another name last name that may have a hunting origin is Bowman.  We tend to think of bows as military weapons, in a Medieval context, but in reality they were by far the most common hunting weapon at the time and, moreover, keeping standing armies was extremely rare.  While armies did employ bowmen in times of war, those guys were in other occupations the rest of the time, and they were likely using their bows for hunting.

Indeed, the significance of that may be demonstrated the only other weapon of the period which I can think of which reflects itself in a last name is Pike.  It would seem obvious that the name must derive from the weapon of that name, but it apparently isn't clear that this is the case.  It might be a corruption of "peak" or it might actually refer to the fish.  On that, Trout occurs as a last name, and it apparently stems from fishing for trout.  I.e., a person named Trout, back in the Middle Ages, was a trout fisherman, showing the importance of the species.  On the other hand, maybe Pike refers to the weapon, including its importance in Medieval warfare.  No other weapons directly resulted in last names, however, if that's the case, although the knife did give us the German last name of Messer.

Well so much for names.  Let's talk about clothing, or the depiction of it.

As noted above, depicting female fishermen was pretty common in the early 20th Century.  The depiction above is a little unusual in that the subject is deep sea fishing, but then deep sea fishing depictions in general were a little unusual.  Usually fishing subjects were fishing streams, or maybe rivers.

Depictions of women fishing early in the 20th Century weren't very different from those depicting men.  If you go all the way about to around 1900, they are different as women didn't usually wear trousers and therefore they're sometimes depicted wearing the bulky clothing of the day, fishing, which would have been extremely difficult, in actual practice.  By World War One, however, they were usually depicted just like men, with both tending to have the outdoor clothing, rather than the work clothing, of the day.  No doubt there were men, and women, who went out to the streams fully equipped with the period outdoor clothing, which tended to feature breeches and very high boots, but my guess is that most fishermen simply went out with the sort of clothing that they wore when mowing the lawn or working in the shop.

I note this as in the world of Reddit, Twitter, and Istagram, if you have any interest in fishing, you're going to be assaulted at some point with a photograph of a woman fishing wearing a bikini.

I don't know if any women really fish wearing bikini's. They don't fish wearing bikini's in the L.L. Bean or Orvis catalogs, that's for sure, and I've never seen a female bikini clad angler myself.  Of course, I don't have a boat, and maybe they're all on boats, rather than on your typical Wyoming stream or river where you'd be eaten alive by insects if you tried that.

Which brings me to this, wearing hardly anything outdoors is stupid in general, very stupid when you are more or less on the water where there's no shade, and who wants to smell all over like a fish?

All of which leads me to believe that such photos are in a certain category of adolescent male driving soft pornography, much like the weird Japanese cartoon depictions of World War Two ships as young women.  Maybe some young women on boats wear bikinis, but I bet they do it only once.

I was fishing the other day in a deep Wyoming canyon, the last fishing trip I'll make of the season, probably, as hunting season is now on, and even though I'm license impaired as I didn't draw anything, I'll be doing that on general tags.  On my way out, I encountered a young woman hiking in.

You could see she was a serious fisherman. She was carrying her pole in its tube and had on a large brimmed fishing cap of the type that's somewhat unique to fishermen, and wearing dark sunglasses.  Even from across the stream, and down in the canyon from where I was, you could also tell that she had on one of those bug and sun resistant pull on shirts that some fishermen now wear.  

She looked like a real fisherman of her vintage. I.e, one of the young fishermen in their 20s.

She was looking for a way down the canyon.  I pointed to a place up stream.  She nodded her head in affirmation. 

Lex Anteinternet: On Labor Day, 2021

Lex Anteinternet: On Labor Day, 2021: 

On Labor Day, 2021

Today is Labor Day, 2021.

Steel worker in Denver Colorado working on parts for the hull of a ship, 1942.  I recently had a jury in Denver in which not one single person had a blue collar job.

I'll be working.

That shouldn't be too surprising, as I'm a "professional", which means that I have hours and whatnot that are outside of the hourly concerns that many employees have.  But my first observation is that. 

Labor Day in the no holiday era.

It's a holiday, but a lot of people will be working.

That shouldn't be the case.

For that reason, I'm going to forego going to any stores that are open.  Indeed, my wife tries to do that on Sundays as well, and while I'm not as good as her about that, I agree with her.

An overseas view and the American economy

The second thing I'm going to do here is to link in the British Adam Smith's Institutes blog entry on Labor Day.  It's interesting how this British institute sees the American holiday

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LABOR DAY

The Adam Smith Institute is vigorously pro free market, so perhaps its view isn't too surprising.  It's notable as it takes a really cheery view of the American economy at a time at which Americans have been doubting it pretty rigorously, with the bizarre emergence of socialist thought gaining some currency, supposedly, in the country.

I don't think that the "socialist" who self declare as that really grasp what socialism is, and are actually social democrats, but that's another topic. The bigger topic is that lots of Americans don't feel that the economy works very well for them anymore.

One thing Adam Smith couldn't have foreseen is an economy that was controlled by corporations to the extent ours was.  Smith was a free marketer, but that was mostly a free market economy that was more like that which distributist imagine, rather than capitalists.  Smith probably didn't magine a world in which a lot of people from middle class backgrounds would find themselves working at Wall Mart, rather than owning stores of their own.

The disappearance of the blue collar holiday

It wasn't all that long ago that this day still had a very blue collar tinge to it.  Even when I was first practicing law the labor unions had a picnic on this day in City Park, and this region of the country has never been keen on unions.

Maybe they still do elsewhere, but labor in the US has taken a pounding by the capitalist exportation of manufacturing overseas, and the good blue collar jobs with it.

Probably only President Obama was really honest about this, in terms of a national leader.  He flatly noted that the jobs had gone and weren't coming back, taking the capitalist position that this was okay as new jobs came in their wake. That's the capitalist theory.  We sent jobs overseas we no longer wanted and got back great new high tech ones we did.

Except that's a view that's only really easy to hold if you are at the top of the economic ladder.  Most people aren't nearly as rah rah about that sort of evolution of work, as most people don't really want to work in a cubicle.  Office Space was a popular movie for a reason.

Indeed, an entire category of nostalgia is based simply on the idea of economically having your own.  Your own little store.  Your own farm.  Yours.  Nobody is going to get rich doing that, but you'd have your own.

Money is supposed to be the solution to that, and I've been hearing a lot about that recently.  You are supposed to enjoy this evolution, and move up into it, as there will be more money.

But then what?

Well, that's the thing.  You are supposed to make more money as you'll have more money.  And you'll like that as you'll have more money.

American money is just weird paper backed by nothing whatsoever, of course.  But in the spirit of the times, that's supposed to "bring you joy".

Gen X and Gen Y

But apparently it doesn't.

Indeed, as we've already noted here, Gen X and Gen Y, and even the Gap Generation, have many members who don't see it that way. They'd like to have a life, live where they want, have their friends, families, dogs and cats, and just, well, be.

And lots of them aren't going back to work post COVID at all.

Sooner or later they'll have to. And that will be pretty soon.  But the voting with their feet they're goind right now says a lot about how the economy, and the labor it entails, is viewed right now.

Lex Anteinternet: A blue grouse opener retrospective.

Lex Anteinternet: A blue grouse opener retrospective.:   

A blue grouse opener retrospective.

 

I'm missing the weekend opener for blue grouse.

I've probably missed it before, but when I did, I was almost certainly a college student.  I haven't missed it, I think, since that time.  So this will be the first time in 31 years.

I'm ashamed of that fact.

In the earliest photographs you can find of me, as a small boy, I'm wearing a cowboy hat.  Not that this is unusual for somebody my age.  We admired cowboys.  I don't know if little boys still do, but in my generation they did.  

But it was more than a passing thing with me, like being an astronaut (which I never had any desire to be) was with some others of my vintage.  When I was first old enough to drive, and had something reliable enough to make it out of town and back, the two not being the same thing, you'd find me out in the sticks as much as possible.  Fishing in the summer, or just wandering around, and hunting in the fall and winter.  By my college years, I was about as feral as could be.

Jeremiah Johnson would have, in those years, met me and have asked "geez man, don't you ever go indoors?"

And that was the center of me.  Not career aspirations or anything of the like.  It may be a major defect in my character, but I was never concerned with high dollar careers or anything of the like.  What I wanted to be was outdoors.  Preferably hunting, if not that fishing, but if not that, anything else, outdoors.

Now, it would be dishonest to say that my interests were completely singular.  Even as a very young person, I was extremely interested in history, something I inherited from my two parents. As I've noted here before, growing up in my household was like living in a graduate level history seminar, with the study of European history from the early Middle Ages through the Renaissance the specialty of my mother, and American history and post Enlightenment Europe the specialty of my father.  The historical education was both welcome and vast.  Other things that my parents knew very well, such as French on the part of my mother and mathematics on the part of my father, I took much less to, although oddly French, which didn't particularly take at the time, has snuck back in as I've aged.  I guess I learned more than I thought I did.

And that may be the reason that in my early teens I saw myself in a military service career.  Oddly, it wasn't so much the service, as the thought, really, of participating in history, and the knowledge, although it was fairly inaccurate, that servicemen worked outdoors.

By my late teens that desire was seriously waning, probably because by that time I had a better idea what military service actually entailed.  And part of what it entailed was a communal life, which I, as a real introvert, wouldn't like.

And by that time the desire to be outdoors had gone from a strong to extreme.  It's never left me.

Which is why I'm so bothered today.

Forty years ago when I was taking those first steps out into "career" I'd openly stated that I never wanted a job where I had to wear a tie (which were much more in daily use back then than now) and I'd never let anything, not job, not family, not anything, interfere with my going outdoors.

Well, 17-year-old self, you'd be pretty disappointed in me now.

I can say that safely as 58-year-old self definitely is.

Which probably seems silly.

I've worked really hard, and by external measurements I guess, really successfully, for the past 31 years. And for the nine years, or maybe eight years, prior to that I worked hard to get there, kind of.

That path was frankly a pretty meandering one.  My initial goal was to be a game warden, which I've written about before.  Then I switched to geology, not because I deeply loved it, but because I was okay at it, and it promised an outdoor life, albeit one that wasn't focused on the wild the way wildlife biology is.  In retrospect, I should have done what I first started out to do.  

Geology didn't work out due to a collapse in the oilfield and coal economy (sound familiar) and by that time law school had already been suggested to me, although I did reconsider game warden.  Where I was at, career wise, at the time would have required me to go on for a Masters degree in geology and I knew that I really didn't want to do it.  So I went to law school instead.

Now, that may not seem like the logical choice, but it actually was, at least somewhat.  Law school had first been suggested to me by Casper College Professor Jon Brady, who taught history at Casper College but who held a JD.  I don't know if he ever had practiced in the civilian world, but he had at least briefly practiced in the U.S. Navy as a JAG officer.  

I didn't know but one lawyer, one of my father's friends, and I didn't know him all that well.  I did know, however, a lot of doctors and dentists, and they were all outdoorsmen.  In some odd way, I equated that with how things must be for lawyers.

And maybe for some it is.

I became a "trial lawyer".  That something that actually didn't occur to me until very recently.  The reason for that is that I've done almost exclusively, in litigation, the defense side of civil litigation, and somehow the plaintiffs' bar has appropriated the term "trial lawyer".  I've done some plaintiff's work as well, but not anywhere near as much as defense work. That makes me, in English terms, a "barrister".  However, I do a lot of other things, so not exclusively so.  I could claim to be somewhat of a "solicitor" or "notary" in the language of other court systems, but barrister it would mostly be.

I note that as I don't know what the life of "transactional" lawyers is like, or that of criminal defense lawyers, or prosecutors, etc., is like.  I only know what the life of trail lawyers is like.

And it's pretty hard and requires a lot of sacrifices.

Maybe a lot more than other legal lines of work.  Trail lawyers give up their own time for a preset trial schedule, work long hours, and take the cause, whatever it is, above anything else.  We like to compare ourselves with such fictional characters as Palidan, but in reality we're more like World War Two Japanese infantry.  We're going there, going to suffer, going to fight in a clever fashion, and if need be, we're going to die in our trenches or in a massed Banzai charge.

It's an all absorbing career.

Indeed, for that reason, in part, I declined to go with one of my partners out for a beer in which he had invited a lawyer in a definitely different line of work that I'm wholly unfamiliar with but which I suspect isn't all absorbing.  The invite was in order to see if the fellow might wish to join us merry band of barristers, maybe.  But what am I going to say to that fellow?  My partner was clear what he was going to say.  He might make more money with us, rather than doing what he's doing.  And he was likely hoping that I'd regale the fellow with war stories, as that fellow isn't a trial lawyer either.  And every trial lawyer has a lot of war stories, myself included.  The problem is, of course, that war stories come from war, and watching Saving Private Ryan might be real entertainment, but actually landing in Normandy in June 1944 likely wasn't.

And indeed he might make more money as a trial lawyer than doing what he's doing, and he might live every freakin' second of it.  I have no idea, as I don't know him.

And he might, in a trial season, such as I am now in, work seven days a week, ten hours a day, with all that entails and implies.

Or, in other words, he might miss the opener of blue grouse season.

I know what 17-year-old Yeoman would think of that, and what he'd think of somebody who would do that.

I can't say he's wrong.

Lex Anteinternet: Maybe you "can't go home again". . .but you sure don't have to keep traveling in the same stupid direction.

Lex Anteinternet: Maybe you "can't go home again". . .but you sure d...: 

Maybe you "can't go home again". . .but you sure don't have to keep traveling in the same stupid direction.

"You can't go home again"

Thomas Wolfe, from the novel by the same name.*

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."

Adulterated version of a statement by George Santayana.**

"You are going home again."

Holscher's First Law of Human Behavior

The other day (actually quite a few days ago now), I published this rant:

Lex Anteinternet: How dense we've become. Denver Topless Day, How g...: This is, I'll confess, a full blown rant. Which means, perhaps, that I shouldn't publish it at all.  If I do, it means I've o...

Since that time I've published what might perhaps be an ancillary rant on a related topic.  And I've had to endure and endless number of political debates and Facebook posts on the current election, a lot of which are based on assumptions of a necessary straight line progression from point A to point B, with perhaps the only question being where point B is, although it's pretty evident that a lot of the debaters aren't very aware of where point A was.

It's time to rethink a lot of this.

It might at first blush (assuming that modern Americans are capable of even blushing, given that a sense of decency has declined to shocking level that the "cow town" city of Denver Colorado now features stoners on the street (and airport) and an annual Topless Day) seem that Denver Topless Day, local baloonification surgery, and political debates have nothing to do with the express purpose of this blog, as related in our very first post.  In that, of course, we claimed:

The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

But maybe it actually does.

As readers of this blog know, this blog focuses on the period of about 1890 until about 1920, although it strays a lot. Recently there's been a lot of threads on the year 1916 (which are on point, I'd note) which is due to the centennial of the Punitive Expedition.  Indeed, this year has featured a lot more posts than prior years, and in no small part due to that centennial.

One of the purposes of the blog was, as noted in the first post, was to look at life a century ago. And in doing that, we've learned a lot about that era in a way that we wouldn't necessarily have known otherwise.  I can't say that it's become on obsession, but once you learn stuff its hard to ignore it.  And it's hard not to draw conclusions and make some comparisons.

Now, I have no intent of romanticizing the past, which I've posted about before. The past wasn't really all that romantic and it had plenty of problems.  In 1916, rather obviously, there was a titanic problem in the works in the form of World War One, which any way you look at it is a war which doesn't really leave a person feeling all that nifty about it.  What was it about?  Even now, there's lots of answers to that question, but there's no real agreement on any of them.  Yesterday, as a recent example, we learned of the tragic loss of life on Lake Erie in a storm, much of which can be attributed to nonexistent, nearly, weather reporting in that era combined with a complete lack of ship to shore, or ship to ship, communications.  Those men died alone, as nobody could have known what was happening to the.

Pretty grim.

But we also have to admit that in some ways the past compares very favorably with the present, and there are definitely lessons to be learned. . . and applied.

Santayana actually said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"  That is undoubtedly true and there's plenty of evidence of that.  Some, or Americans any way, are fond of quoting Thomas Wolfe in the fashion quoted above, which came from a novel (making the utility of the quote at least somewhat questionable).  His actual expanded line, from the novel is:  "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

Well, maybe you can't go home again (or maybe you really can, in part). . . but you sure don't have to keep going in the same stupid direction.

 Straight line to somewhere, but where?  History doesn't have to work this way.

That often seems to be the lesson that people take away. That is, the opposite one.  In other words, if you can't go home again, which may not be an accurate statement in the first place, you have to keep on keeping on in the direction you are going.

Even if you don't like it.

And there's plenty of evidence that people actually aren't all that keen on the direction that the country and society is heading.

The country was never prefect by a long shot but what we can seemingly tell is that people did like the slower and much more rural aspect of American society in prior eras. As we've gotten away from that, and have been told that we had to, we've developed what seems to be a national psychosis.  Depression is rampant, a large number of Americans have to be medicated just to tolerate their daily lives and work lives.  Estimates are that up to, and even over, 70% of Americans don't like their jobs.  And it also seems fairly clear that the decay in social standards, which is encouraged by the political left on the country,  has not liberated anyone, but rather made quite a few miserable and many more confused.  The Justice Kennedyesque Utopia promised to be around the corner, hasn't been.

Huh. . . Utopia wasn't there. . . but maybe its off these tracks?

We're like the polar bear at the Denver Zoo.  It knows that Denver in the summertime isn't the high Arctic and there's nothing you can do to fool it.  Even putting in your employee cafeteria and exercise room isn't going to do it, just as it isn't doing it for the bear.

 

I'm not picking on the Denver Zoo.  But it knows that this isn't the Arctic and this isn't where it's supposed to be.  But maybe we know that a little too?

And yet we keep on keeping on in this direction.

We really don't have to.

There's no reason that, in 2016, we need to keep this direction going.  We don't need to become more urban. We really don't have to have an ever expanding population in order to support the old, an endgame which has a curious result at some point, and require people to be ever and ever tighter packed in terminally same cities. We really don't need to keep favoring larger and larger centralized entities over smaller and more local ones.  We don't really need to pretend that people don't have an ingrained natural nature, and that, in our imperfect world, many of us don't quite match it, but ignoring it in the name of diversity or equality is going to bring perpetual personal and connubial bliss.  We don't have accept that everyone everywhere can, or is even capable of, defining a personal reality that's separate from, well, reality.

We just seem to assume that we do.

Well, we don't have to.

And we shouldn't, the evidence seems clear, as its pretty clear that the Humanistic Millennial Age will, in fact, not be arriving.  And indeed, we can at least suspect that those prior generations at some point, perhaps in the era we focus on here, or perhaps slightly later, might actually have been more content, at least while not fighting in wars or struggling on sinking ships.

But it is also clear that to do nothing, is to elect to keep traveling the same direction we already are.

Lex Anteinternet: Munson Last Boots, or how I became a hipster and didn't een know it. And reflections on waht hipster affectations mean.

Lex Anteinternet: Munson Last Boots, or how I became a hipster and d...:     

Munson Last Boots, or how I became a hipster and didn't even know it. And reflections what hipster affectations mean.

 My old, old Maine Engineer Boots.  Based closely on Army Service Shoes, these were introduced by numerous civilian makers for civilian use under a variety of names quite early on.  This pair was made by Chippewa, which still makes them and related boots, but L. L. Bean's boot is now made by another manufacturer.

Last week I went to Denver for the day. Flew down and back.  I hit the train from the airport and rode downtown, and hiked to where I was working for the day.

I was accordingly walking downtown and saw a young man, dressed hipster style (Levis, work shirt, heavy beard) wearing Munson last, Service Shoe, type boots.  

"Huh, . . . .", I thought.

On my way back to the train, I was walking down 16th Street, which provides as fine of cross section of humanity as anywhere on Earth, and there was a young couple walking next to me.  I looked over, and he too had affected the anti style of Hipster.  Heavy beard (waxed mustache, one of at least two I'd see that day), ratty sweater (its been freakishly warm, we should all be wearing coats), dark blue Levi 501s, and Munson last boots.

Hmmmm. . . . .

Finally, in the airport, while I was waiting in the TSA line I saw a bearded young guy several lines over who had removed his boots to run them through the detector.

Munson last boots.

And he too was a hipster.

"Whoa!" thought I.  I am, clearly, a trendsetter.

Well, actually I just favor classic simple stuff, as a rule, and don't go in for trendy.  Fashions cycle back around to the durable over time, and that's a lot of this.  So, over time, I've found the simple round glasses I wear, the horsehide A2 flight jacket I wear, etc., go in and out of style in cycles.

And I've had a pair of ankle high Munson last boots for about 30 years.  The same pair, that is.  That pair depicted above.

But Munson last boots, as a trendy item, I'll confess, really surprises me.  Indeed, at least at one itme, I'd gets some sort of "where did you get those boots" comments that were of the, "where did you get those weird boots" vein.

Okay, what are Munson Last boots?

Well, the old pattern of Army Service Shoe.

Yeah, big help, right?

And what, pray tell, is a Munson Last?

Well, a really good description of that is provided here:

The Munson Army Last has been around since 1912. -Named after its inventor, Edward Luman Munson, A.M., -M.D., Lt. Col. Medial Corps, United States Army, the Munson Army Last was adopted by the U.S. Army to enhance the fit and comfort of military boots issued to soldiers. The Munson Army Last was and is one of the few lasts that ever approached normal feet shape and contour.

So that tells you what the last is, but it doesn't really tell you what the look of the boot I'm referring to is.

Shortly after Lt. Col Munson, M.D. designed his last with the welfare of the soldier in mind, the Army adopted its ankle high pattern of boot to it, or, more properly, designed a new ankle high pattern of boot using it. The Army itself had been suing ankle high boots for most things since, well, since it quite using shoes in the late 19th Century for everything.  The boot was, and is, extremely utilitarian.

 I'm not familiar with the U.S. National Army Shoe Company, but there were, and indeed there are, quite a few companies that make things for serviceman but which also offer them to any buyer.  Often forgotten, officers have to buy their own clothing, including  their boots, so there's a natural market here.  The boots depicted in this advertisement are virtually identical, and indeed probably are identical, to some of the Munson Last "engineer" boots that are out there today, right down to the little holes on the toe caps that some still feature.

Sticking with the term "shoe", Army boots became "Service Shoes".  Following the adoption of the Munson Last, and coming in a time of now unappreciated military technological innovation.

This doesn't tell you much about the appearance, however, of the boot, and indeed, adoption of the Munson last itself really didn't change its appearance. That goes back to 1902.

In 1902 the U.S. Army replaced the last of its 19th Century type of box toes boots with a new, more modern "shoe".  That year, the Army adopted more modern, round toe, boot with a toe cap.  It also adopted it in a new color, or actually an absence of a color, in that the leather for the new "shoe" was "neat", i.e., no color at all, other than the natural one.  Polishing rapidly gave it a light brown color which people generally think is russet and indeed it does resemble the color of a russet potato.

 

One of the best recruiting poster of World War One, in my view, this James Montgomery Flagg poster shows the Marine Corps uniform of the period that was very close to the Army's, including the use of the same pattern of boot. These boots show the russet color, but they are actually of the pre Munson Last pattern.

Thereafter there was a rapid series of boot evolution, and generally two pairs of boots for each soldier, a "marching" pair and a "garrison" pair. The garrison boots were ankle high and meant for everyday wear in garrison and on parade.  Today they're sometimes referred to as "dress" shoes, which they were, but they were not dress in the same way dress shoes in the Service are today.  Soldiers wearing their garrison boots did a lot of work wearing them.

The field boot, or "marching boot" was higher, basically the same approximate height as combat boots are today.

Either pair were intended to be worn with leggings, and soldiers did indeed do that.  Indeed, up until some point in the mid 20th Century, puttees and leggings were fairly common in general, even though they are a pain.  It wasn't until World War Two that they really disappeared in the US, including in military use, although they carried on in some other armies well after that.

Anyhow, in 1912 the Munson Last came in and was adopted for the Army boot, and a new boot, ankle high, came out for garrison and marching.  That boot has basically never left us.

The M1912 and M1917 saw use in World War One, and of course in the Punitive Expedition which we've been following here.  Following the Great War, the Service Shoe kept on keeping on, with some modifications such as eventually incorporating rubber half soles. The last two versions came in as the Type I and Type II Service Shoe and served all the way through World War Two.  In appearance, they're virtually identical to the M1912 and M1917 Service shoes.

 Solder getting a shave in Mexico, 1916.  This photo is interesting in that it shows the soldier wearing a M1912 pair of boots, made with the Munson Last, but the soldier is not wearing his leggings.  His socks are pulled up over his breeches.  All soldiers, not just cavalrymen, wore breeches at the time.

The boot, or rather Service Show, did receive some challengers during its long period of service, however.   Given the conditions of World War One, which was hard on footgear of any kind, the Army adopted the M1917 and M1918 Trench boots, which were influenced by British and French boots of the period. These latter boots had hobnails and were made of split leather, making them durable tough boots for fighting, but which also meant that they couldn't really be shined. 

 Pershing boots.  This varied significantly from the M1912 and M1917 boots in having split leather, a different last for construction, and an external heel counter.

Those boots left after the Great War, but following that huge conflict the Army began to adopt some specialized boots for specialized troops.  The Service Shoe was phased out for cavalrymen starting in 1931 in favor of a calf high riding boot that also used the Munson last and also featured a toe cap.  Lacing that boot up must have been a pain, as in 1940, the Army adopted another new pattern for cavalrymen, that being the M1940, which also featured use of the Munson last.  That boot went out of production after the last Type II Service shoe did, lasting all the way in to the late 1940s.  The last two patterns of Service Shoes, Type I and Type II, featured external heel counters, a change to the design.

 A pair of unused M1940 mounted service boots, as worn by cavalrymen, mounted artillerymen, and others who had the need to ride horses in the U.S. Army during the war. . . and yes there were those who fit that definition throughout the entire war.  These belong to me, and a person would be well within their rights to ask why.  The reason is that this pattern of boot is highly regarded by horsemen and I got them cheap, but as can be seen, I've never worn them.  I stick to packers and cowboy boots pretty much.  This boot is also made with the Munson last.  Note that the heel counter is internal,  not external, as was the case with most Service Shoes until the end.  Note also the fancy toe cap, which was a feature of Service Shoes, Paratrooper Boots, and mounted service boots, but which my L. L. Bean boots omit.  The boots I'm seeing Hipsters wear reincorporates that feature.

The Service Shoe itself fell victim to the M1943 Combat Boot, which replaced it in production during World War Two but which never managed to fully replace it.  The M1943 Combat Boot was a higher boot which buckled at the top.  It was itself based on the concept of combining the Service Shoes with reverse upper, a wartime pattern, with a buckle top, but that design strongly recalled civilian hunting boots of the same period.  The reverse upper boot was a wartime pattern itself, as noted, that was adopted to make use of the nonshinable, but more durable, roughout side of the leather and recalled, to some extent, the Pershing boots of World War One.  Anyhow, the M1943 boot officially was set to replace the M1943 but never managed to do so.  After World War Two, both were replaced by the M1948.

 This is a very famous poster advertising the Remington Model 1908 autoloading rifle.  No matter what Remington may have claimed, this guy is in a really bad spot  Anyhow, this poster is interesting in that it shows the concept of a two buckle hunting boot was already around by 1908, and really the Army's 1943 adoption of that idea merely incorporated a concept that was already around.

The M1948 was another Munson last boot but it was based on the M1942 Paratrooper boot.  That boot was, yet again, a Monson last boot and is widely regarded by many as one of the most comfortable military boots every made.  A highly coveted boot, it technically was slated for replacement after being in use for only a year by the M1943 Combat Boot.  However, its close association with paratroopers managed to keep the boot from going into extinction and its still around as a dress item, but not a combat item, for paratroopers today.

 U.S. Paratroopers during World War Two, in training. Their high M1941 paratrooper boots are clearly visible in this photograph.  Paratrooper boots became iconic for U.S. Paratroopers and oddly enough even Canadian paratroopers were sometimes equipped with American jump boots. The Army attempted to phase these out with the M1943 boots but where never really successful.  Paratroopers feared that  the buckles on the M1943 boots would catch their shroud lines.  This type of boot continued to be a functional working boot for paratroopers into the 1970s but but better parachutes (softer landings) and the adoption of a basic combat boot that accommodated the concerns of paratroopers on various things meant they were not longer really necessary by that time, and they became, and remain, a dress item.

Okay, so what, is this a history of the Combat Boot or something about Hipsters?

Well, yes, I guess.

The reason that I gave all that history is that it ties into something curious, and I think perhaps worth noting in a peculiar way. But first back to our ankle high Munson boot.

 French post World War Two version of the US M1943 boots.  These boots came via Sportsman's Warehouse and I got them as they were incredibly cheap and had vibram soles so I can wear them in gross weather without caring whether I wreck them or not. So far, they seem pretty impervious to wearing out.  These boots differ from the American ones in having Vibram soles (these were made in the late 1950s) and the upper portion is also split leather, which was not the case for the US ones.

After Dr. Monson designed his last its advantages were noted and the boot soon was offered to civilians.  L. L. Bean, the famous outdoor clothier, introduced the boot, with heavier leather than the Army variant, as the Maine Engineering Boot, ostensibly pitched to civil engineers.  When I bought my pair, all the way back in the late 1980s, they were still called that and they still may be.

But they're hardly alone.  Mine were made by Chippewa for LL Bean, and Chippewa still makes them, including variants under its own name.  Chippewa calls what it made for L. L. Bean the Renegade Homestead Boot, but interestingly, it also makes a Service Shoe variant in roughout leather, just like the Army used during World War Two, and markets it as a "Service Boot".

They aren't the only marketers, however, and some of the companies now offering a Service Shoe variant offers ones that are exceedingly close in appearance to the post World War One variants.  The Katahdin Iron Works boot strongly resembles the Chippewa boot made for L. L. Bean.  Red Wing makes one as well.  A company called Thorogood makes them, at a premium price, but which appear to be so close to the M1912 variant that it isn't funny.  And, as noted, at least one other manufacturer makes them, and it appears to be that variant that I saw on the sidewalks of Denver the other day.

Of course simply wearing a pair of boots a style does not affect.  What I otherwise saw was a selection of clothes that really had that throw back appearance, and which leaned on the old working world.  It's odd for me to see, as I've worn that clothing so often myself.

Taking again our young hipster friend on 16th Street in Denver, he was also wearing a fairly nondescript sweater, a type man of us have, but perhaps more significantly a pair of dark blue, nearly new, Levi 501s.  The cuffs were turned up to expose the top of the boots.

Turned up.

Man alive, I haven't seen that on anyone since I was a kid and our parents bought our pant too long, for a reason. Adults haven't worn their blue jeans that way since the 1950s, although it was common in the 1930s and 1940s.

 

From our old thread on Levis.  Photograph taken about 1940, or maybe the very late 1930s.

And Levi 501s!

I love Levi 501s, although I normally wear Lees, or at least often do.  I like Lees better, which were a more popular brand until after World War Two, and always have. Part of that, however, is that as I've grown over a half century old, Lees just fit a bit better.  They're a bit higher wasted. And they seem somewhat inconsistent on sizes since they started making Levis overseas.  Still, Levi 501s are the first clothing item I recall, as earlier related here, going out and buying for definite stylistic reasons:

In the popular imagination for those of a certain age, the Levi 501 has always been around. That's not really true, the jeans archetype actually took a real pounding in the late 1960s, when bell bottom jeans became inexplicably popular.  But they rebounded in the mid 1970s.  I can actually recall the exact moment when I knew that you could get them again here, locally.  I didn't like bell bottoms at all, but they were the only jeans you could get.  Walking one day in the hallway of the junior high I saw another student with the straight legged 501.  I went home that day and had my parents take me downtown and buy a pair.  That's probably the one and only time I ever had my parents go right out and get clothing for the reasons of "fashion.".  But I hated those bell bottoms and the 501s looked so much better.

Levies became the victim of fashion in the 1980s.  Denim is still around in strength, but an odd thing is that save for Levis, Lees and Wranglers, all of which have been around for a long time, and those jeans in their original or near original variants, a lot of the blue jeans in circulation now days amongst men affect an appearance that is characterized by a slur I hear teenagers use all the time, but which I will not repeat here.  Perhaps they're best summed up by a slam I heard hte other day for the first day, that being "dad jeans".  They don't look, well, very manly.

Lees, Levis, and Wranglers sure do.

And dark blue Levi 501s most definitely do.

So what's going on here?

Something most certainly is.

Young hirsute men, with semi ratty sweaters and plaid flannel shirts, wearing 501s with ankle high service shoes?

I mean, these young men sort of look like me on any given Sunday (I usually don't shave on Sundays unless I'm a lector, as I don't like shaving).  What gives.

Why, that is, do they look like they're working on a the Alaska Highway in 1942?

Alcan highway crew, 1942.  This crew is clearly an Army crew, which many were, based on their dress.  Indeed, these are African American engineers in the then segregated Army.  Of note, FWIW, the engineer on the right is wearing the very high boots that the Army purchased for engineers working on this project, something that was unique to them.

Okay, maybe not the Alcan in 42, but the style they're affecting definitely recalls an earlier, and much, much, more blue collar era.  One with in eye-shot of us now, looking back into the past, so familiar to us, but one that also definitely isn't our current era.

And I don't think that's an accident.

And it isn't the first time within the last seventy years this has happened, but you can't find examples of this, before that, of which I'm aware.

In the 1950s, now thought of as the epitome of clean cut, there was something going on that angled in this direction, although imperfectly.  Blue jeans had generally been the trousers of manual and agricultural labor.  Men wearing only t-shirts were generally hard at work.  Leather jackets had a strong association with the working class (leather was obviously much cheaper then) and, due to World War Two, with pilots. Cowboy boots retained their association (as they still do) with cowboys.  All of these items came into the affectation of rebellious youth at that time.  So, at a time when American industry was still very strong, but the World War Two generation was moving rapidly towards urbanization and while collar employment, American youth was affecting a rural and industrial style, and this at the same time that their immediate elders were becoming "The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit".

This continued in the 1960s.  Looked back at now styles of the 1960s and early 1970s were outlandish, but they're also a bit of a clue on how what was started in the 1950s kept on keeping on.  An easy, if not perfect, way to look at this is to view the film Easy Rider, which came out in 1969.  Quite a few of the styles depicted in the film, while 60ish, are highly rural. Broad brimmed hats, jeans recalling Spanish America, and cowboy boots are found throughout the film.  Taking another example, Jimi Hendrix, the high point of music form the 1960s, wore a style that very heavily recalled the appearance of the Californio, i.e., Caballero, of the 19th Century.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, this style had yielded, in some youth circles, to a style based on hiking gear, which is an odd thing to consider now.  The style was so common that when I was at the University of Wyoming in the 1980s I recall seeing an Army ROTC recruiting advertisement in the student newspaper showing three cartoon students, two men and one woman, wearing down vests, jeans, and classic mountaineering boots (of the type I still have, but which we don't see much anymore, and which we called "waffle stompers") with the catchphrase "And you say you don't like uniforms?".  That this clothing style was so dominant amongst some youth that Army ROTC could use it as a recruiting platform says something.

But what does it say?

Well, to get back to theme that's occurred here quite a bit in recent months, or even in the last couple of years, I think it expresses a desire to go back.

And I think that's because people don't much like the glass and steel world they built.

When a young man, with a possible intended, is walking down 16th Street in Denver looking like he's on the way to the cook shack at a Michigan lumber camp in 1928, or on his way to the feed store in 1939, I think it's saying something, and saying it pretty loudly.

Even if he doesn't realize it.

 Reproduction Service Shoes, Reverse Upper, sported by me at work, when I no doubt should have been wearing more formal clothes.  I have these as I have really small feet and some manufacturer was stuck with this pair, as a result, making them really, really cheap.  Look for a hipster trend here soon.