trout fishing in america

From the time we were very small my brother and I would spend a week a year at my grandparents' house in Rawlins, Wyoming. Their house was Union Pacific White, as I suspect all of their houses had been for the last 50 years. It sat next to the railroad tracks, as they all had. Behind the house there was a coal shed, a predecessor of the grating covered gas furnace in the center of the house. Further behind the house there was a concrete building that had housed dynamite for the railroad crews. Even further behind the house were three giant mountains of cinders, left over from the days of steam engines. The front driveway was a railroad loading dock for Uranium ore, which most likely contributed to my grandfather's eventual losing battle with tumors and cancer.

My grandfather worked on the Railroad for 50 years. When he was a teenager, his father had left him alone for weeks at a time on a homestead near Tie Siding, Wyoming. My great grandfather would go and work on the railroad bridge gangs, my great grandmother would cook for the bridge gangs, and my grandfather would stay on the homestead alone as part of the "proving up" requirements of homesteading land. He would travel the several miles to school and back on horseback each day.

I was a child when my grandfather was already an old man. Five decades of railroading had made my grandfather weathered and strong, like saddle leather. At 65 he was still as strong as John Henry.

But this is not a story about railroad houses or railroaders. The U.P. White house was not the object of our trips, it was merely a staging area. Our trips to Wyoming were all about fishing with our grandparents. This is a story of fishing gear and fishermen.

Part one in on-going series in which the World's Best Mechanical Engineer, aka B1-67er, will write about fishing gear and fishermen.

Stay tuned.