Paul O'Neil is 101

WCA member and frequent Woodland Valley View contributor Mike O'Neil sent this to me a few days ago.

June 9, 2010

As I did a few years ago, I’d like to share the EDITORS’ NOTE from LIFE’s August 28, 1970 issue because it extols my father and his writing, and is a fitting way to celebrate his birthday, June 9. Depending on how you look at these things, he is—or would have been—101 years old.
Happy Birthday, Pop.

MO'N

EDITORS’ NOTE
He knows an Iron Fraudator When he sees one

This week’s article about Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel, the man in charge of so much of our environment, is the work of Paul O’Neil, who has an abiding interest in the environment himself. Paul’s interest is specific: he is a fisherman. In a memorable story that he wrote for us six years ago, Paul made his position unequivocally clear: “I am against roads, I am against detergents, I am against insecticides, I am against logging. I am against flood control. I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout, but I pity them for playing it when they could be putting a fly on the water.”

Paul found that he had something in common with nonangler Hickel. The Secretary had first gone to Alaska as a steerage passenger on the steamship Yukon, a vessel on which O’Neil once worked as a steerage steward during a college summer. “My job was carrying garbage cans of stew and boiled potatoes down impossible companionways,” he says. “When I asked Hickel how he had liked the steerage food, he admitted he used to sneak upstairs to eat in first class. I am happy to report that I also dined in first class, along with the rest of the crew, including one man who ate raw bacon all the time.”

During trout season, when he is not writing, Paul can generally be found on Esopus Creek, a Catskill stream which he knows with astonishing intimacy down to the last rock, pool and riffle. He is apt to greet a fellow angler with a hearty “Ah, Piscator!” He slinks along the stream like a cat so as not to scare the fish. His casting is infuriatingly impeccable. His streamside entomological lore is impressive. “This dry fly,” he will exclaim, holding up a tiny bit of steel and feathers, “imitates the adult stage of the mayfly Iron Fraudator, which appears on the streams during the last week of April almost always at 1 p.m. EST.”

On the hard-fished Esopus even Paul’s skill does not always guarantee victory, and he has evolved a philosophy to cope with the vicissitudes of the stream. “Fly fishing is an exercise in masochism anyway. I knew a man who fished a remote Canadian stream where the fish were so unwary he caught beautiful trout on a hook baited with a cigar butt. But that’s no fun. If you can’t be continuously defeated, the charm of the whole thing would evaporate.” He also has a formula for victory: “Roll in corn meal, sizzle for four or five minutes in bacon fat (better, for reasons I do not understand, than butter) and serve with a fresh green vegetable, a baked potato, or macaroni with a bland cheese sauce.”

RALPH GRAVES
Managing Editor