Spurious: A Frozen Fish Story
NOTE: The ❤️Miami Beach Cupid Splash❤️ is not the first event I have hosted on Valentine's Day weekend. I hope that you enjoy this column I wrote for the Boston Phoenix ( under my pseudonym Spurious) about the Crystal Lake Invitational Presidential Ice Fishing and Credibility Derby that I hosted in Manchester, New Hampshire during the 1988 Presidential Primary.
It was the Thursday before the New Hampshire primary. I had just finished
the first draft of my New Hampshire wrap-up, declaring Dan Rather and CBS — who
had been among the big winners in Iowa (as Dole beat Bush) — the preliminary
and marginal losers in New Hampshire (as Bush beat Dole). I was beginning to go
through the extensive collection of fraudulent but credible (though undated)
Manchester, Nashua, and Conway hotel, motel, and restaurant receipts that my
agents had assembled for the amusement of those bastards in accounting. That’s
when I noticed an increase in both the frequency and intensity of the telephone
calls from my friend, the outdoors editor of our town's newspaper.
It seemed that the arrangements for the First Quadrennial Valentine's Day
Invitational Presidential Ice Fishing and Credibility Derby, which he and I
were sponsoring at Crystal Lake in Manchester, New Hampshire, were starting to
get out of hand.
“Spurious, pal,” he wheezed in his charming Southern fashion. “This is
big. Maybe too big. USA Today has confirmed in print that some of the
presidential candidates are actually going to show up. And as if that isn’t bad
enough, the United States Information Agency called to make arrangements for a
busload of Norwegian journalists or something. And now the Secret Service wants
to know what the security arrangements are. People around here are starting to
take this thing too seriously. If it keeps up, they’re going to take it out of
my hands. I need some help.”
I tried to calm him down, but it was too late for that. So I told him to
ignore the candidates and the press reports for a while, to concentrate on
clearing the snow off the frozen lake, and to arrange chowder, bait, and
ice-fishing equipment. “Try to relax, pal. Chill out. And just to be safe, why
don’t you keep one of those big ice augers handy to defend yourself with if
anybody tries to screw with us on this,” I suggested.
“I don’t even have an auger yet,” he whined. “And what about security?”
“Just call the Secret Service and tell them that they’re welcome to come
by but that they can’t fish unless they have New Hampshire fishing licenses.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I can’t call them because they are
here. At the paper. Now. Live, with black-and-white shoes and everything.
Meeting with management about this doomed Republican debate that they are
hoping to salvage. I think they are taking this thing pretty seriously. Maybe
too seriously.”
The Birth of the Crystal Lake Derby
The Crystal Lake Derby was conceived back in January when my buddy and I
were complaining because none of the candidates for president had accepted our
invitations to go ice fishing in Massachusetts. What better way to find out
which candidates were “real” and which were not? Bait a hook, crack a brew, and
sit back to talk about trout, bass, acid rain, or God.
But try as we might — and we did get a couple of nibbles — we were unable
to lure any of them into spending a couple of hours off the beaten trail, alone
in a natural setting, fishing by a stream or on a lake in the wilds of
Massachusetts. Even though there are a thousand times as many fishermen as
there are NRA members, and despite the candidates’ deep attraction to
environmentalists and sportsmen, there was no well-organized fishing
constituency or serious fishing lobby to arrange a forum for us. We would have
to do it ourselves.
We needed a media event designed to bait the presidential candidates into
going fishing with us. So it had to be in New Hampshire right before the New
Hampshire primary, and it had to be good enough to attract the press. This
didn’t seem too much of a challenge. You remember the toilet poll out of Iowa?
Dukakis won on the flush. What we had in mind was much more legitimate, more
responsible from a conservationist point of view (it wouldn’t waste water), and
ever so much more visual: the first-ever ichthyological caucus — the ultimate
fishing poll.
The press was sure to eat it up. If the candidates showed up, we could
guarantee some great shots: a squeamish George Bush trying to bait his own hook
with a shiner, an overdressed Simon hand-reeling a giant pike through the ice,
or Pat Robertson hauling a 1,000-pound blue marlin through the hole in the ice
and galvanizing everyone to the right of the Unitarians to his crusade. And if
the candidates didn’t show, we could go with surrogates. All we had to do was
drill 12 holes, assign one to each candidate, rig up the tip-ups with hooks,
sinkers, and shiners, set them out on the lake, and wait. The candidate whose
hole yielded the biggest (or first) fish would be the winner.
All we needed was the right bait: for the candidates, in any season, the
right bait is the press; for the press, in the week before the New Hampshire
primary, the right bait is the candidates engaged in some contest, the sillier
the better. All we had to do was tell the candidates that the press was coming,
and they would take the bait. And once the press found out that the candidates
were going fishing in New Hampshire, they would rise to the occasion like trout
to a mayfly hatch.
Chaos and Snowfall
By Friday evening, the situation had deteriorated further. It was
snowing, and there was likely to be a foot or more of fresh snow on top of what
was still on the lake. Our sources told us that the snow was still waist-deep
in the parking lot, and Clem, our contact in the Manchester Parks Department,
was avoiding our calls. Apparently, he wasn’t up to plowing the snow off
Crystal Lake “after what happened last time,” though no one would tell us what
exactly had happened. Worse, the Murdoch rag had withdrawn its institutional
support of the event, likely due to the embarrassment following the
cancellation of its planned Republican debate. This meant it wouldn’t pay for
the chowder or the equipment and probably wouldn’t cover the event.
Finally, by Saturday, several candidates had listed the event in their
schedules. On Sunday morning, the Boston Globe was reporting that DuPont and
Kemp had confirmed their attendance. By then, dozens of journalists were
arriving at an unplowed parking lot near a snow-covered lake to attend an
ice-fishing derby sponsored by two guys from Massachusetts — one of whom had
never even been ice fishing before.
The Event Unfolds
On Sunday morning, my friend called to tell me he was in the throes of a
severe asthma attack. He informed me that the parking lot at Crystal Lake was
still unplowed and that he wouldn’t be able to make it. “It’s in your hands,
pal,” he said. “Make me proud. And try not to lose anybody.”
Saddened by my buddy’s illness but delighted to be free of the Murdochian
influence, I set off with my editor and a long-time fishing companion, Vann.
After gathering supplies — and charging them to the Murdoch tab — we arrived at
the freshly plowed parking lot adjacent to Crystal Lake. With the help of a
local fisherman named Glenn, we drilled holes, set up the tip-ups, and prepared
for the press.
The media showed up en masse, as did Gordon Robertson, Pat Robertson’s
son. Despite my mixed feelings about his father’s politics, Gordon was a decent
guy. He reeled in the first fish — a nine-inch jumbo yellow perch — making him
and Babbitt the mutual winners.
Reflections on the Ice
As we packed up, I reflected on the day. A Norwegian journalist had asked
if I was disappointed by the event. I had told him no — the entire experience
had been so absurd it was almost transcendental.
In the end, the derby was a ridiculous spectacle, a microcosm of the New
Hampshire primary itself. The whole “first in the nation” primary process often
feels like a parasitic relationship between the media and the campaigns they
cover. Who the real suckers are remains uncertain, but one thing is clear:
there’s something undeniably fishy about the New Hampshire primary.
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