A closer study of Jimmy’s home revealed an elegant riot — less a cabin than a plank-walled meeting hall or church converted to home-cum-forest full of decorative figs, local willows and immature oak trees in wine barrels, planter boxes brimming with herbs and spices and God knows what else. The flora reached out toward dusk light streaming through banks of big windows and, set crudely into the sloping roof, three dusty skylights. Below, sets of Japanese folding screens created sections; the one Jimmy and I now shared had in addition to the table an iron bust of Rodin’s “Thinker,” a map of the world circa 1700, a bookcase full of insect specimen vials, another of flies, both topped by vases growing ostrich, peacock and pheasant feathers.
— “Of Grace and a Caddis Case,” Fly Rod & Reel, July/October 1994
New neurological research compels reexamination of fly fishers’ habits and brains, also interior decorating, in this country and maybe around the world. It turns out that things are more complicated than they seem because science is like that. Extreme behaviors frame and inform the ordinary, and, even better, are often entertaining to observe. Here we address what look to be opposite ends of a spectrum:
— People who accumulate things, with or without purpose, who claim to see endless “possibilities” in items of no apparent value, who store these haphazardly, in quantities ranging from mildly inappropriate “collecting” through to random hoarding.
— Those who organize for efficiency, orderliness, attending to detail, but in some cases may march several bridges too far, keeping and arranging compulsively.
At the poles, both of these conditions are obsessions related to anxiety, revealed clearly with brain imaging, producing interpretations from soft-science experts who present complex, confusing, and fiercely contradictory theories. Nonexpert observations put most of our tribe nearer to the organized end, mainly for practical reasons. It’s lots harder to prep your equipment for an outing than to pick up a bowling ball, lace squirrely shoes, and roll. That’s why many of us create or buy brilliant systems that put everything in place and at hand, from tying materials stored in refinished Dewy Decimal card cabinets to laundered vests where one pocket has never held anything but mayfly boxes. Just for the heck of it, ask a fly fisher with zippers closed tight if you can borrow a dab of line dressing, and he or she will reach right for it, almost as if they’ve used it this season.
Across the horizon of this personality scale, many fly fishers are proud of tackle we like to see every day and are willing to share with the world. Sadly, that’s a challenge. Keeping stuff in semipublic view — such as in your living room — often requires pitched battles with people who assert they are relations, by law or blood. Some may make comparisons to Hoarders, a reality show that films tragic cases of folks whose lives are collapsing, literally, into heaps of detritus. But the pressure to pare living environments to “essentials” began long before that, when fascist interior decorators opted for “spare” looks forbidding the display of mementos, evidence of lives and times, also images related to representational art (all), sports (ditto), animals (except Siamese cats, and later, dogs that fit into purses), and anything else that fails to resemble a flower evolved to mimic, erotically, parts of the human body. Quickly enough, treasures turned to “knick-knacks,” and a Rodin bust became “clutter.”
Stark is still so chic that you, too, may have entered a stranger’s living room so sterile you wonder if Hazmat just left or the spotless children you spy were in a sensory-deprivation tank. The day we reduce conversation that far, we’ll be stuck with one pronoun and three passive-tense verbs — two Danish — and “Spot” will again stand in for all dogs, throwing his lonely shadow on a cave wall painted “Plato White.”
This trend has really hurt golfers and bowlers, and deservedly so. But proud anglers also take it in the neck. A few continue to display fly plates in prominent places, nestled between paintings by Winslow Homer and Bob White, landscapes photos and modest hero shots, perhaps a rack of elegant bamboo rods.
The rest of us are married. Poor sods and sodettes. If lucky, our artifacts are banished to distant rooms; if less fortunate, to root cellars. For me, this means exile to a working office modeled on a combination of Einstein’s desk, the back room of Andy Puyans’s Creative Sports, and Alexandria’s library between fires. Any flat surface not buried deep isn’t doing its job, and, since this sometimes includes the carpet, guests are forbidden. That means nobody sees the split-cane Winston I’m afraid to fish, a box of flies gifted by my old club, brilliant bird skins and plush animal pelts, a conservation award, Father’s Day cards pinned to corkboards by Muddler Minnow patterns, and a pair of mounted Rajah Brooke butterflies (front and back sides) won in a Malaysian Ping-Pong tournament in 1977. If anybody has snuck into this lair in a the last decade, I will find them eventually, though maybe not, since that cranky brown cat has been missing so long that a suspicious “organic” smell has faded.
I’m not proud of this chaos. Indeed, I am frustrated and embarrassed, and following a three-day mission to set things straight, baffled that I’ve failed. No excuses seem worthy.
But there is one fact that I assert absolutely and that I will expand upon: when I am writing in here, or tying flies, I notice nothing beyond the milky glow of my computer screen or a vise in a penumbra of lamplight . . . often for many hours at a time.
I am not alone in this condition — a rarity, maybe, though it’s hard to know, since few people confess the sin. (Bill Schaadt’s was famously exposed.) For them, and for others very tidy — even those excessively so — comes news of a paradox and an unexpected connection. Context: For more than half a century, most of my fishing companions have ranged somewhere between middling-neat sorts to pals clinically diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder or its sibling, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. That’s been fortunate for me, frankly — they do love to plan, to battle mightily against entropy unfolding in the truck and tent. Even better, they have wondered at my habits without finding them problematic (or perhaps are too polite to say so to me, although I’ve fished with most for years). Some have been puzzled when I keep up, in their relentless — but not really competitive — comparison of fish caught. I suspect they believe a good and moral fly fisher is efficient, orderly of gear and mind.
Perhaps you agree. So do I (about the good part). And it’s de rigueur to be told that the first thing to look for in a guide is a ship-shape boat. Anything with angles or straps, points or protrusions, will surely catch casts all day and loose line before you get it on the reel. Beyond that, a mess suggests the sloppy habits of a careless and unprofessional dude.
I won’t argue. On the other hand, when a friend has washed the skin off of his hands, so now they are fissured and bleeding; when he can’t go fishing because he has to refold socks or must return early because he might have left a toaster plugged in — not turned on, just plugged in and ready to go. . . .
Too sad. And too extreme. Let’s instead examine a sloppy fly-fishing friend who’s not suffering at all and whose life illustrates the connection to which I alluded.
For the last 19 months, M@lcox (not his real name) has rented a medium-size, two-story structure located 10 miles from town. Actually an extensively remodeled commercial chicken coop, it sits in back of an old farmhouse, directly across from a weathered red barn half the size of a Safeway — big enough to hold M@lcox’s several boats, his camper truck, and who knows what else. These buildings are surrounded by grassy acres sufficient to graze several horses and a small herd of milking goats, plus free-range laying hens, possibly descendants of those relocated by the coop remodel. There’s also room for an ancient, thread-bare gray cat whose great eagerness to meet and greet visitors, staggering on arthritic legs, I find particularly endearing.
That’s the setting. Inside, M@lcox sleeps, eats, and distills hard cider for daily consumption in a tiny studio apartment on the second floor: nothing special. The majority of his home, however, downstairs, where his life plays out, is dedicated to a living room–cum-workshop-cumoffice-cum-museum-cum-hatchery that I would estimate at 30 feet by 30. About 75 percent of the floor is occupied by objects. So are the wood walls up to 8 feet — M@lcox is 6 feet 5 inches — including two lined entirely by workbenches. As described in Better Lairs & Man Caves (not a real magazine) the décor is “relentlessly rustic . . . shamelessly purposeful . . . and while absent modern conveniences such as television, suffused with the sights, feels, and smells of the outdoors, of light industry — of the material and artifacts of this one man’s life . . . and, here and there, the products of lives before his. Comfortable, too, if you can excavate a chair.”
A proper tour of all this space would require readers to break for lunch. I tried to draw it from memory, but was missing so much that I called M@lcox, asking him to play docent with cell phone in hand. He was glad to, for 32 minutes, the last 10 interrupted repeatedly by pleas of “stick to the big stuff.” He tried, but could not help but celebrate when he found his first small tying kit, given to him at age 8, and then — “Here it is!” — a larger kit he built into a suitcase at 11. “Wonder what’s still in here”
That may give you a general idea. And since I’m trying to make a point, let me distill four pages of quotes into this:
“So way at the back, south or southwest corner maybe, some house plants and a clothes hamper filled with a bunch of crappy rods, some usable, I guess, some blanks, PVC tubes that could be empty. Got a small bookcase — tying books, mostly — with a cabinet on top . . . level-wind reels, some Mitchell 300s, paints for making poppers. Next to that is a trolling motor for my pontoon raft hanging over there, from what I’m pretty sure is an engine hoist. Then there’s shelves of feathers, furs in packages, plastic material for streamers . . . small storage drawers filled with thread, ferrules — half of them silver — another for beads. Then a sewing stand of some kind, with wheels, compartments: rabbit feet, lead wire, spare tying tools, at the bottom a bunch of packaged lines and leaders . . . getting kind of yellow. . . .
“Hang on — did you want just the fishing stuff? Everything? OK. Here’s my hatchery: six tanks with my babies and breeders” — an elevated island, bubbling and humming — “a jug full of algae to feed to Daphnia — remember sea monkeys? Weren’t they great? — ’nother jug of mosquito larvae, just to, you know, vary their diet. . . .
“Crossways . . . f ly displays on the crossbeam — hah — a wooden reel from England, boxes of wine corks, also for poppers, and this press I made to shape them — have to show this to you sometime . . . an old line dryer for silk lines
. . . oh, and a bigger cabinet full of tied flies. Thousands, I’m serious, so just let me know if you need anything.”
Elsewhere . . . a chest also full of furs and feathers — “some nice hackle in there, if I remember correctly” — along with a half-full bottle of “‘Miss Clairol Bleach,’ which of course I use for dying.”
“Shoe box jammed with more tippet here. Some semi-antique bass lures hanging from a stud — collectibles, I hope will get valuable — yeah right. Two wicker creels, neither worth anything; trays of wood-finishing products, rack of dowels, including, by the way, three feet of boxwood burl I was incredibly lucky to find and never will again, nobody will, and these are sections of different tree barks I’m experimenting with, for when good cork disappears.
“Now in the middle, on all those long shelves ”
Two small lathes. Routers. Grinders. More boxes of yarns and chenilles, threads and tinsel, fingerless gloves, another cache of unfinished popper bodies, a couple of “I’m not really sure about these” things “of an electrical nature, some kind of motors,” and a radio from the 1930s. Scattered round these stand five tables, total, these in addition to the 30 feet of workbenches: for tying; for “fishing gear
ready to go”; for conventional terminal tackle he’ll sell on eBay someday; and one buried in items “to sort someday, I guess.” Add two tall dressers full of more tying materials, two bins stuffed with hides . . . freestanding table, band and scroll saws
. . . . “Way back in that corner there’s kind of a pile, you know. Waders and boots, four or five vests — oh look, my old May Wests, nets, a gaff. Up on a rack above — wait let me just count these . . . one, two
. . . 27 rods, some tubed, some not. Lot of great Fenwicks in there. And hang on, I forgot another barrel of rods, way over on the other side, 15 or 20 more, some probably broken ”
“Boy,” M@lcox says at last, with a not unsatisfied sigh, “Have I ever got a lot of stuff.”
Boy, does he. And just wait until he gets the rest out of storage.
Reader, you have guessed that M@lcox is not married. You’re right: divorced — moved out 19 months ago. You may suspect, from the redundancy of similar objects stored here and yon that he has some form of diagnosed attention-deficit disorder. He does. But here’s the rub: M@lcox is a fine jeweler by trade, has been for 30-odd years. Not the crafty variety, but the kind who cuts and sets precious stones, sculpts gold and silver for custom pendants, wedding rings, formal earrings, diamond-studded platinum bands. His work is exquisite.
On the side, he carves and paints those bass poppers, which are prominently and permanently displayed in museums. The grinder, the lathes, saws, and router: he also makes f ly-rod handles from exotic woods, framed by fittings of German silver and gold, which he sells to highest-end rod makers. The one he gave me is burl, with insets and an end piece turned from petrified mammoth tusk. There’s not a glue spot anywhere, crossed wrap, flat spot, or crack (save what’s natural to petrificaction). It’s seamless.
Paradox: M@lcox’s lair is grand chaos, but functional (though it may take him three hours — or days — to get ready for a quick fishing trip), an environment typical also typical of attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder. But his excruciating craftsmanship on projects requiring focus and control might seem also lean toward obsessive-compulsive disorder or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder — although sometimes, strangely, intense concentration is an “attention-deficit” talent. One of the last pair is also suggested, mildly and occasionally, by M@lcox’s conversation; endlessly curious when he gets hold of a topic of interest. Prying him loose takes an oyster knife, despite his very good manners. He’s e-mailed me hundreds of health-related articles. I might even have seen evidence of an obsession. Provoked and wholly justified, it lasted three years while his wife’s Alzheimer’s allowed in-laws to seize her person and assets worth three-quarters of a million dollars . . . also to evict M@lcox from their home, and then, incredibly, convince a prosecutor to charge him with felony spousal abuse — without any police investigation — for treating her with legal vitamins, perhaps the first-ever “battery by nutritional supplements.”
That rod M@lcox gave me was a thanks for support during that time. But you may have noticed his fly offer in the monologue above. Unlike a hoarder, M@lcox gives things away all the time, is generous to a fault. Flies, lines, books — his hands are always opening.
The same has been true for my other OCD-ish partners. It’s a characteristic of fly fishers in general, but not an accident that two of the boxes on my office shelf came from fellows who counted wraps on each tie . . . and took or take medications.
That’s where things get interesting.
Here comes the real science.
Along with grievous loss, depression, and crippling anxiety, both ADHD and OCD are the prime suspects in hoarding disorders, singly and sometimes in combination: recent psych studies suggest the two overlap roughly about 30 percent of the time. (Or, per one review of the literature, between “0% and 59%.”)
It seems counterintuitive to me. Also to some critics, partly because ADHD is related to low dopamine levels and OCD to low levels of serotonin — neurotransmitters with such different functions that medications taken for one seriously aggravate the other condition. One theory suggests that kids with attention deficits lose this in early adulthood, then OCD kicks in. Another hypothesizes that children with OCD are misdiagnosed with ADHD, because they act out in class when conditions are not exactly right for them. What’s certain is this: imaging equipment clearly shows that when threatened with loss of an object, hoarders with either or both conditions show anomalous activity in the same parts of the brain, the parts associated with intense anxiety. If these are not opposite sides of a coin — and they are not — it’s possible they’re of the same currency.
And the implications? For those leaning one way or the other — and the majority living near the middle?
However vigorously debated, there’s simply no question that for millions of people, meds mitigate — sometimes miraculously — attention-deficit and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Many more, especially adults, remain undiagnosed (and you know some), but that’s not by way of encouraging people happy with who they are to make changes. (If that’s not the case, consider the possibilities.) To my knowledge, however, relieving pathological hoarding is tough. As to people suffering from both disorders at the same time — “comorbidity,” is the technical term for what I’ve been discussing — Internet bulletin boards are filled with their trials and dismay.
Now for the normal among us.
This isn’t much of a sample, but over the years, I’ve taught — or tried to teach — a dozen kids to fish, ages six years to late teens. Four of these were whirlwinds, antic of speech and action. Three turned into herons on the water: completely absorbed, absolutely intent — “Can’t we stay another hour? It’s hardly dark at all!” The pair I put at vises focused hard enough to make their parents wonder what the hell was going on.
Needless to say, they’re still fishing. Another, a carefully contained boy, very exacting, found casting uncomfortable and a lake too alien. He, too, liked tying and an entomology book that he studied, but not enough to stay with it.
Then there was the kid who found fish so terrifying that he latched onto my leg like a lamprey, shrieking until the little smallmouth swam away.
The rest just had a good time, doing something interesting that they want to do again someday.
I think there’s more here — would love to see studies of how fishing affects “difficult” kids who are hiding hunter instincts or eager to count wraps. I suspect there are reasons why fishing captures some so quickly and completely and keeps them so long.
That’s not to suggest it takes an eccentric. Extremes are not fly-fishing norms . . . if the “obsession” we acknowledge is, you know, ordinary. That said . . . I laugh out loud.
This Meander has probably taken 30 hours to write, over a total of 11 days. That includes 1400 words omitted — mostly about neuroscience — but leaves out three false starts, which if history repeats itself, I will finish later. Ten more hours, five more edits, and I might have it where I want it, until the next time I see it on a page. Instead, I send it off, because I know I’m more likely to insert errors, tired as I am, and because I have a deadline. I look out over my wild office, beyond the white glow of this screen, past vases of peacock and pheasant, and know I can’t do better without time I don’t have. Some other day, I’ll inlay this essay with ancient ivory, trim it in silver and gold, turn it so smooth no sentence jars. But not today.
Note: the cat came back. I’m serious. Living elsewhere for awhile, a neater home where they fattened her up and groomed her better.
From the camera of Robert Ketley…
“Not the World’s Smartest Surfer”
