American Flamingo

Fishing Party, 1890s

14 Fishing Party, 1890s (Photograph by Myrta Wright Stevens) Of the party only one appears to be having fun. She is nearly knee deep in the cold water of Lolo Creek, her long skirt hiked up. Is she smiling goodbye to the nineteenth century or to her fly? Except for one of the dogs who looks at the camera, alert, eager, ready to run, she is the only one smiling, the only one fishing. The other women, flowered hats, long dresses and gloves, look uncomfortable holding rods as though this were someone else’s idea. They wait their turn while the one smiling is either enjoying the fishing or the comic absurdity of this posed photograph she will be a part of longer than she will live. The men look stern. The two with rifles seem to be armed guards. The older man with a rod, standing behind the woman fishing, gazes critically downstream as though he knew where the creek and the future were headed and didn’t approve. The dogs, of course, look just like twenty-first-century dogs. ...