You know how every now and then you think about someone, maybe a shade uneasily, now that they’re gone and you wish maybe you’d kept a little better in touch? That’s how I was thinking about Ed Hartzell a little earlier today. When I learned to build rods, he, along with Daryll Whitehead and Wayne Cattanach, was someone I called when I got stumped, which happened fairly often so I tried to spread the annoyance around.
The time during which I learned to build fly rods was a bit unsettled. The New Mexico Symphony, of which I had been principal clarinet for two years (my first full-time orchestra job) had turned into a patient on life support, kept alive mainly by the players playing even though we weren’t getting paid regularly, with the board and management seemingly trying to pull the plug, only in such a way that it would look like they had tried really hard to keep it going. Nobody knew if there was going to be an orchestra next month or even next week, and I can’t say I was completely confident about my future as a musician. On one hand, I had beaten long odds to get this job so there was a chance I could do it again, but on the other hand, the odds would always be long, and like a young actor who had gotten a spot on a TV show that was about to be cancelled, I could hope, but if the phone never rang again it wouldn't have been a complete surprise. Other musicians were leaving for other orchestras if they could, doing whatever came along to pay their bills if they couldn’t. The bass trombonist did computer consulting. The tuba player took a job as greenskeeper at Tanoan Country Club.
That was when I decided to start building fly rods. In retrospect, it would have been more responsible to try to find something a little more secure, but if that sort of argument had been persuasive to me I wouldn’t have been a musician in the first place. Gas was cheap, I had the summer off, I had some friends in the northwest and phone numbers for Ed and Daryll, so I packed my camping and fishing stuff in my Oldsmobile Cutlass and headed out.
Ed, in Portland, was my first stop. I’m not sure if I would, today, invite someone to stay at my house based on nothing more than a phone call, but anybody you talk to about Ed will say what a gentleman he was, and how generous. A retired teacher, precise in speech and appearance, punctual in his routine. I showed up in the afternoon, having driven hard from some KOA campground in Idaho that morning, not having eaten or stopped except for gas, probably a little dehydrated. I’d been in the house just a few minutes when Ed said, “Time for cocktails!” As I learned, he said this precisely at 5pm every day; no cuckoo clock could have been more reliable. He mixed a martini that knocked me right on my ass and started asking me questions.
Ed had a lovely house in one of the best cities in America, lovely wife Kimmie, lovely black Labrador Nick. As far as I could tell, he did exactly what he wanted to do, and he wanted to make stuff. Bamboo rods, cedar strip canoes. At the time I visited, Ed was making a single seat scull for the retiring headmaster of the school at which he had taught. Everybody has struggles and I’m sure Ed had his, but to a young guy who wasn’t all that sure he’d be able to make a living at all, ever, it seemed idyllic; a long, distinguished career followed by an absorbing, peaceful retirement. Ed taught rodmaking classes and took in aspiring rodmakers like me off the street, went to the rodmakers conclave pretty regularly, and even back then the northwest was a real center for bamboo rodmaking so he was probably even more influential than I think, and I give him plenty of credit. You can’t be that approachable and helpful and not be on speed dial for a lot of rodmakers.
Ed’s technique was pretty standard, although he used hard maple for forms rather than steel. He didn’t seem concerned about the possibility that they would warp or flex or wear out. His argument was that adjustment accounted for everything, that his forms could be resurfaced and regrooved a number of times, and if they needed to be replaced they were easier to make than steel forms. He had built a milling machine that seemed just on the verge of working, but it stayed like that for one reason or another as I talked to him over the years and I don’t know if he ever got any finished strips out of it. Wonder what happened to it. He used aliphatic resin glues, did very little heat treating if any, and made lovely, light, blonde rods. Something he DID do was ammonia toning, which I'd read about in the Kreider book but hadn't ever seen an example. And I haven't since. He showed me a rod where he had scarfed out all the nodes, but the aliphatic resin had crept so the varnish had cracked at the scarf joints. But not at the seams. Interesting.
Ed was of the school of thought where if you didn’t make all the parts, including reel seat and ferrules, you weren’t a rod builder, you were a rod assembler. He was too gentlemanly to put it quite like that, but he made sure to show me all of his machining steps for making rod hardware, which I had previously not done. He made graceful Leonard-style sliding band reel seats, and he showed me how he made the tiny, narrow knurls to knurl narrow decorative grooves. He made one for me that I still use now and then.
A day at Ed’s -- sleeping in my tent on his deck, I was up with the sun and he was up before I was -- started with a leisurely breakfast and coffee, followed by a bit of a walk and playing with Nick the dog, then working in the shop and talking. It’s been a long time, but I remember Ed asking a lot of questions. It seems that sometimes people get to a certain age and start repeating themselves, building a wall of memories and hardened attitudes between themselves and a world that is changing too fast, but Ed was thinking and wanted to discuss things. Kimmie was no less inquisitive, and it was a wonderful, challenging few days.
Ed was about 80 then, though you wouldn’t have guessed it. We stayed in touch by phone for a few years. He was always putting together group purchases for rodmakers, so I went in with him and a bunch of other guys on a mill run of nickel silver tubing for reel seats, and on some milling cutters. I wouldn’t have thought about him getting older, but one day I called and he didn’t seem to feel like talking. Nick had been having hip problems which surgery hadn’t made better, Ed said, and the pain made him crazy. One day he bit Kimmie severely, so Ed had him put down. Ed seemed crushed, but that's my interpretation of him just not having anything else to say, whereas before he had never been at a loss for words.
We only talked a couple more times after that. It’s hard to know when you’re doing some good even if it doesn’t seem like it, or when you’re bothering someone who would rather be left alone, but then things changed for me too, and when Ed died it was a while before I found out. Now and then I’ll think of him, at his lathe in his shop. Reel seat cap shellacked to a mandrel, shaping the decorative shoulder and grooves. Glancing at the clock, snapping off the lathe and the light, and announcing briskly:
“Time for cocktails.”