The skiff glided over a turtle grass-covered flat. I raised the viewfinder of my camera and trained it upon an angler. Russell Chatham, the esteemed painter and writer, stood casting, his eyes shaded by a visor. Amidships, Jim Harrison looked on. Several islands shimmered in the middle distance. Panning the Nikon to a second skiff, Thomas McGuane stood out against a vast expanse of blue sky scanning a flat. Writer and filmmaker Guy de la Valdène, co-director of the 1973 cult film Tarpon, sat looking bored. The ratcheting sound of the M3’s motor drive felt satisfying as I fired off several bursts. McGuane turned toward me and—when he realized the telephoto lens was trained upon him—stuck out his tongue, mocking me.

Flats guide Harlan Franklin, white-bearded and wearing a Panama hat, tried to hold the skiff that acted as my platform steady. Key West lay several miles off in the distance. The camera felt cold in my hands. It was the spring of 1988; I was 37 years old and I was the photographer on what could be described as a dream magazine assignment...

Linda and Gil Drake Jr., top Key West flats guides, poled the other two skiffs. Drake’s father, Gil Sr., founded the legendary Bahamian fishing resort Deep Water Cay in 1958. Gil Jr. and Guy had been friends since childhood. Though a cold front had seemingly emptied the flats of game fish, the anglers posed uncomfortably for “action shots” before I was finally waved off. The Drakes lowered their engines and I heard them whine as the two skiffs parted and roared off into the Atlantic in opposing directions.

I badly wanted to make good on this assignment. What I’d just captured on the flats was filler. I wanted the cover, as would any photographer, and for the cover I needed a production, though on the assignment’s first morning I had no conception of what that production might be.

Harlan, all business, shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s go fish,” he said, as he moved us off the flat.

This can’t be happening, I thought. The boat picked up speed and trimmed to a plane. For a guy from Colorado, I’d been getting in plenty of flats fishing. For four straight years I’d targeted either bonefish or tarpon in both the Keys and the Abacos, twice with writer Jim Fergus on assignment. Now, not only was I in Key West getting some fishing in—I got to photograph my heroes too.

About 10 years into my freelance career I forged a partnership with Fergus, a hook-and-bullet freelance journalist who wrote out of a log cabin in North Park in the tiny hamlet of Rand, CO. After teaming up on a regional magazine assignment, flyfishing rapidly became the foundation of a budding friendship.

Fergus called to say he’d sold Rolling Stone on a feature about our literary and artistic idols; when he asked if I was interested in handling the photography, I was ecstatic. I’d been stuck in a creative slump, giving far too much attention to my sporting endeavors rather than my photographic métier.

Fergus and I nervously smoked unfiltered cigarettes in the Denver airport before we departed for Miami. In 1988, Rolling Stone was the pinnacle of hip, counter-culture journalism—way beyond any of the credits on my meager resume.

Unlike me, Fergus was acquainted with our legendary subjects. He’d befriended de la Valdène as a one-time tennis pro in Palm Beach, FL; had written a profile on McGuane for Rocky Mountain Magazine; had contributed to the forward in one of Chatham’s art books; and had interviewed Harrison for the Paris Review. He even owned a couple of Chatham’s popular series of lithographs. I’d brought a box of black and white silver prints of old West stock detectives I’d been working on to show the guys in hopes of advancing my credibility.

The get-together happened thanks to Sam Lawrence—the storied New York publisher of Richard Brautigan, J. P. Donleavy, Kurt Vonnegut and Jim Harrison, among others—lending the crew his charming Key West bungalow. Lawrence was not only Harrison’s publisher, but also a friend. Fergus had learned of this and pitched Rolling Stone. Our subjects, on a rare angling vacation together, had thereupon booked the Drakes for a week, tarpon their objective.

In the feature he would eventually write, Fergus recalled preparations one morning on the Drakes’ private dock as the skiffs were being readied:

This fine spring morning, McGuane, who hasn’t had a drink in nearly eight years, and takes the reformed drinker’s hard-won pleasure in feeling chipper and alert at dawn, inquires solicitously after Chatham’s health. Chatham, still known to take his vacation pleasures less temperately, may have stayed out later last night than is strictly prudent for the serious angler, and just looking at him elicits chortles of amusement from the others.

“Russell always shows up for fishing,” Harrison explains, “even if he falls weeping to the bottom of the boat.”

“Oh, let’s all criticize me,” Chatham says. “But just remember, I’m the one who makes your vacations interesting.”

At the pier I snapped candids; in one, Chatham kisses Harrison on the head in the skiff before they cruise out into the April chill. As there wasn’t room on the other skiffs, I had been lucky to hire Franklin last minute.

Back on another nameless flat, he noticed something.

“Do you see that white bucket?” he whispered with some urgency. “Cast right to it and let it sink. Good, now strip.” I did as directed and the rod jolted downward.

“Keep him away from that bucket; he’ll cut you off,” he cautioned. I’d hooked a hefty mutton snapper. Shortly, the fish was in the net and Franklin beamed. I scanned the horizon, the Caribbean Sea a palette of blues and greens, and was electrified. As a rabid hunter and fresh and saltwater angler (at least as far as my meager budget allowed), these guys represented a distinctive crosscurrent of sophistication and irreverence, not only to me but also to a generation of sportsmen/women and writers in general. I owed Fergus.

Later I would learn my snapper was the only fish boated that day.

Back at the motel my phone rang. It was Fergus. “Meet us at the bar at 6 p.m.,” he instructed.

Louie’s Backyard, a thatched-roof, outdoor establishment overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, was the end-of-day hangout. Back then it was the tropics’ literary equivalent of Elaine’s in New York City. Chatham, de la Valdène, Harrison and Fergus occupied a table. I pulled up a chair, squinting into the raking tropical sunlight. A very attractive bartender flirted with Fergus, and several local beauties buzzed around the drink-laden tables. McGuane, his “Captain Berserko” days a thing of the past, had chosen to bunk at his brother-in-law’s residence, music legend Jimmy Buffett, intending to avoid alcohol-fueled silliness.

Fergus quoted Harrison in his feature:

“I quit coming down after 1981, I think it was. I had to take out a bank loan to pay my share. They shipped me home in a body bag. When I got there, I couldn’t remember our cat’s name. I spent a lot of time staring off into the lonely middle distance. Guy wrote me a very touching letter. He said, ‘Maybe we’ve gone too far.’”

The following morning at a greasy spoon, an unusually subdued Fergus muttered, “Hey Steve, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the guys don’t want you to dog them back out on the flats. I’m really sorry.”

He paid the bill and hurriedly left to meet the gang for another day of fishing. I’d been banished, but I couldn’t afford to hire Franklin another day anyway. Sorely disappointed, I rationalized: at least I was in the tropics—not in the frigid Rockies. I resorted to walking the streets of Key West with a couple of cameras, shooting local color, street scenes and bar interiors.

That week the weather was chilly. When the guys were blown off the water one day, the Drakes took pity on me and took me on a tour of Key West, hoping they could make up for my disappointment and provide some local material. We walked the docks and toured an aquarium, where myriad sea turtles were on display. Back out on my own, with too much time on my hands, and in the panicked mental state Buddhists refer to as “monkey mind,” I wandered the funky neighborhoods, cameras at the ready—and a cover concept came into focus.

Back at Louie’s that evening I pitched the setup to the boys—if they agreed, I would hire a skiff. A guide would be on the poling platform and in the boat would be a woman, standing, wearing only a bikini bottom, her back turned to the camera. In knee-deep water my four subjects would hold fly rods in various poses. I would front fill the scene with strobes, the setting sun melting into the sea behind. It could almost serve as a movie poster for McGuane’s iconic early novel, Ninety-two in the Shade. Talk about swinging for the fences.

“Let’s do it,” was the near consensus, with McGuane the exception. I set out to put the elements together. There was no plan B.

At day’s end Fergus, billeted at the Lawrence bungalow and having the lion’s share of the fun, would relate observations about the previous night’s ribald behavior as we wandered the docks. The group was legendary not only for being consummate stylists in their artistic pursuits, but also for being wild men when it came to their capacity for excess. Fergus’ accounts of their exploits elicited feelings shared by Linda Drake: “shock, admiration and astonishment.”

In his story, Fergus recalled Linda laughing at Harrison one day on the flats:

“Where do you get this stuff Jim?” she finally asks. “I make it up, Linda,” he says, enunciating carefully. “It’s my job.”

“One day Tom and I decided that rather than go fishing,” he continues, “we’d drop a few hits of acid and ride our bicycles around town. So we did, and we were riding down the street, and he had this long ponytail flailing in the wind, and we were riding our bikes real fast, wearing short pants, and at the same moment we looked over at each other, and we smiled and we both knew that we’re actually children, you know, five year olds.”

It was here on the flats off Key West in the late ’60s that they came to know each other, learning to fish for tarpon and permit. Their friendships had lasted 20 years. From Fergus’s feature:

Surviving personal schisms, literary feuds, bouts with alcoholism, the death of friends and loved ones, and nine marriages collectively—three for McGuane, three for Chatham, two for de la Valdène (to the same woman) and one for Harrison. Through it all, the gang had held itself together—however tenuously—by a shared love of art and sport. And, in a culture where both art and sport seem increasingly defined and circumscribed by voguishness and the dollar, they may be among the last of a generation to go about their business with original intentions intact, on their own terms, without ever having kissed, as Russell Chatham once put it, “one single, undeserving ass.”

In my proposed cover shot I imagined immortalizing them, capturing their love of sport, of life, of each other. Thus energized, I knocked myself out assembling the key elements: a woman to model, statuesque enough; a skiff; and the fishing gear on standby. But as the days mounted, so did the gang’s excuses for their likely unavailability for my ambitious production. That the fishing was off wasn’t helping my cause. I was growing heartsick.

At breakfast one morning with Chatham, an opportunity arose whereupon I could advertise myself, as Norman Mailer so indelicately put it. I would show him my silver prints.

Of the four, Chatham, one of America’s finest landscape painters, was the most sensitive and generous with me. I recalled seeing posters of him on the streets of Livingston, MT, in the late ’70s with his wild hair and distinctive nose; it was a thrill to be breaking bread with the maestro.

My heart pounded as he lingered over the prints; he was complimentary as he casually mentioned he’d been toying with the idea of starting up a press in Livingston. He had already self-published several of his own titles and the books were stunning.

Dining alone one evening, my introduction to Cuban cuisine came as a revelation, as were the sunsets at Mallory Square. I tried to mitigate my anxiety as time ran out, alarmed by the meager amount of exposed film in my gear bag. I could only imagine my subjects and what was happening on the flats or at Lawrence’s beach house. On our last day in the Keys I heard from Fergus.

“Steve, I have some good news,” he reported. “The gang have invited us to a special game dinner at Buffett’s house and you can do your set up shots there.”

Buffett’s place was of the Florida ranch style, a rock star’s residence, spacious and comfortable, set back on a tree-lined waterway. Buffett himself was in Los Angeles cutting an album. I entered the stylish, expansive living area; in the large, open chef’s kitchen a custom-tiled bar held a mountain of stone crabs, accented by a ceramic plate bearing a hillock of white, powdery cocaine compliments of a local character who shall go unnamed.

McGuane sipped a club soda, playing DJ in his inimical, mischievous style; he cranked up the volume when “I Need a Man” by Eurythmics came on and the ruckus began.

I’d been transfixed by The Sporting Club, his first novel. In Silent Seasons, a collection of essays on flyfishing edited by Chatham, McGuane wrote:

You can’t say enough about fishing. Though the sport of kings, it’s just what the deadbeat ordered. Water is mysterious as fire: we stare into it for hours, a tendril of drool at the corner of the mouth, lips askew, with little or nothing on our minds. Time is permanently wasted as we fly into the face of reason. You can’t say enough about fishing; but that won’t stop me.

The very definition of a man of action, his lifelong passion for developing what he called “high specific skills” included not only hunting and fishing but also horsemanship. With regard to comparisons to Hemingway, in whose shadow these writer-sportsmen inevitably fell, McGuane replied to a question from Fergus with irritation:

“I know so many CPAs to whom the Hemingway myth applies more closely than it does to us. Not only that, the kind of hunting and fishing he liked to do is not the kind we like to do. A lot of it was that writer bullshit I find so tedious, just utter posturing—kind of grabbing your crotch Joe Piscopo style and saying, ‘I’m going out and fuck a big fish!’”

As rock blasted out of Buffet’s speakers the telephone rang. McGuane answered; it was his agent. After a lengthy conversation he hung up and shouted out to Harrison: “We just made a hundred grand! They’re buying the screenplay <Cold Feet—a McGuane and Harrison collaboration>.” Those were the salad days.

I grabbed the photo gear out of the rental car and strode past the mound of coke on the porcelain plate in the kitchen. I thought, Fuck it! and stopped. Reaching into my wallet I pulled out a crisp bill and rolled it up. I formed several lines with a kitchen knife, brought my nose to the improvised straw and hoovered them up. Courage or imitation—who gave a shit?

Chatham, Harrison and de la Valdène wrestled for control of the kitchen, each a passionate gourmand. They chattered amicably as butter was plied on mallards, the pellet wounds visible. I trudged by lugging gear as the evening’s dinner was constructed. Harrison intoned, “fishing, hunting and cooking are all part of the same process.”

I was rapidly losing light but had bag-checked battery-powered strobe lights and stands. I mounted my Hasselblad securely to a tripod and directed the guys around a plastic patio table that regrettably supported a beach umbrella. In order to get background detail, I needed a slow shutter speed. At some point it occurred to me to utilize a technique referred to at the time as “tungsten drag.” This entailed using a slower shutter speed while panning the camera during the strobe part of the exposure, a trendy ’80s technique that appealed to bored photo editors.

Ironically, Harrison appeared Hemingway-like, garbed in khaki as if outfitted for a safari. McGuane was stylish in his white guayabera shirt. A glass of water sat incongruously before Harrison on the table.

They were in fine spirits, both cooperative and patient. Photographing groups can be problematic. I feared their attention would be short lived. I don’t recall giving much direction, but I must have said the right things—or the weed and that fast-shrinking white mound must have kicked in—because they were mostly laughing. They were generous with their time, and I put them through their paces; sit there, stand, change places, “just one more.” And just like that, the sun sank below the horizon and it was over.

I’d not gotten my imagined shot. As I broke down my gear, I was not only demoralized, but ashamed. I’d asked the Drakes to act as guides and a lovely bartender had agreed to model in what I imagined would be an iconic picture. Where was my half-naked nymph on the skiff now? Given the time and a little cooperation I could have pulled it off. But out on Buffett’s back porch, my ambitious concept flared out like a cardboard match.

Back at the large dining room table, with McGuane acting as master of ceremonies, I tried to pull myself back into the moment. The scene was surreal. Ten pounds of stone crab was followed by linguine with fresh clams, but I’d lost my appetite. To mollify my disappointment, I drank far too much wine.

The brilliant—and hilarious—conversation spun my head from one luminary to the next as I nursed my wound. Another course appeared: the wild-shot roasted ducks, cooked rare, served on a bed of glazed green onions along with wild rice laced with mushrooms, pine nuts and venison sausage. It was all accompanied by several more bottles of fine red wine.

After dinner, the boys retired to the living room, sunburnt, sated by the exquisite meal, brandy and cigars, and each other’s company. There was a great deal of laughter. Chatham noticed my discomfort and took me aside; placing his meaty palm on my shoulder he assured me: “Everything is going to work out Steve, you’ll see.”

Rolling Stone would eventually, after several re-writes, kill Fergus’ piece and thus my photos. They wanted a hatchet job and felt Fergus, out of an excess of admiration and respect, had pulled his punches—written a “soft” piece. From a tabloid perspective they may have been right. But, if the sex and the drugs and the transgressions that took place had been revealed real damage would have been done, his friendships with these artists notwithstanding. Neither Fergus’ choices nor lifestyle mirrored Hunter S. Thompson’s. In the long run, his decorum paid huge dividends.

I would never get another opportunity to shoot for Rolling Stone. Outside Magazine picked up Jim’s feature and several of my images were published. Outside especially liked my coverage and I became the magazine’s fair-haired boy for a number of years.

Epilogue

In my Colorado studio, an early October cold front has plunged the temperature 60 degrees. I’ve sometimes felt that as a photographer, I’ve been on the outside looking in—somewhere off to the side, bearing witness, bitter as the weather beyond the studio door. Thirty years has given me a different perspective. I place several of the original Key West transparencies on my light table and focus into a four-power loupe.

It’s said a camera is a mirror with a memory. The chromes reveal a moment in time, a fleeting record of these unique artists, at their zenith, whose rollicking attitude and sophisticated approach to sport meant and still means so much to so many.

The Flyfish Journal Volume 11 Issue 3 Feature The Salad Days

above Left to right: Guy de la Valdene, Jim Harrison (seated), Tome McGuane and Russell Chatham. I was able to pry Harrison, Chatham and del Valdene from the kitchen and herd them, along with McGuane, to the waterfront at Jimmy Buffett's Key West residence. The ghosting effect is intentional; called "tungsten drag," I panned the camera using a slow shutter speed while firing several electronics flash units.

11.3 Issue Features

LABRADOR

JORDAN MANLEY GALLERY

KEY WEST

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