Reagan on the Thirtieth President

February 6, 2013February 6, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

When Reagan and Coolidge come up in the same sentence, it usually has something to do with Reagan’s placement of Coolidge’s portrait in the Cabinet Room shortly after Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. But not as well known is the radio program in which Reagan explained his reasons for recognizing the hidden worth of this predecessor. If the press corps had been tuning in during August of 1975, they might have better understood Reagan’s actions six years later. They might also have paused to consider what Coolidge accomplished, but then that could be asking too much. On this sixth day of February, Reagan’s one hundred and second birthday, here is an excerpt from that program entitled “Images,”

“Some day it might be worthwhile to find out how images are created–and even more worthwhile to learn how false images come into being…All of us have grown up accepting with little question certain images as accurate portraits of public figures–some living, some dead. Very seldom if ever do we ask if the images are true to the original. Even less so we question how the images were created. This is probably more true of Presidents in our country because of the intense spotlight which centers on their every move…One was Calvin Coolidge the dry, unexciting New Englander who is more often than not remembered as a lacklustre almost laughable figure who just happened to live in the White House for a while…Are these…images true or false? I’ll list a few facts & you can figure out the answer for yourself. Calvin Coolidge–the man H. L. Mencken said had been weaned on a pickle. Was he a kind of do nothing President in one of those lulls in our Nation’s history? If so we should have such lulls today. There was better than full employment–jobs were competing for workers. The cost of living went down 2.3%, the Federal budget was actually reduced and some of the National debt accumulated in WWI was paid off. During Silent Cal’s presidency the number of automobiles owned by Americans tripled and a great new industry, radio, went from $60 million in sales to $842 million. They laughed when Calvin Coolidge said ‘the business of America is business,’ but we had true peace & prosperity–those things we are promised so often but given so seldom…Well as I say you can make up your own mind about the images versus the man but maybe we ought to go back and see what they did that we aren’t doing. This is Ronald Reagan–Thanks for listening” (“Reagan In His Own Hand” pp.252-3).

Coolidge Fishing

Fishing near his home in Plymouth, 1924 / AP Photo/Vermont Division of Historic Protection

Coolidge Fishing

February 5, 2013March 12, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 2 Comments

On Fishing

February 5, 2013August 14, 2018 / gouverneurmorris / 2 Comments

It was “Colonel” Starling, the head of the President’s Secret Service Detail, who encouraged Coolidge’s fascination with fishing. He had certainly fished before, growing up in Plymouth, but it was due to the Kentuckian’s influence that he became an avid fisherman, including practice in the art of fly fishing. It was during Coolidge’s famous summer of 1927 in South Dakota that Starling recounted the President’s experience with the Royal Coachman and the Black Gnat,

“One of the first things he did was to admit to the newspapermen that he used worms to catch trout. This precipitated a hullabaloo, with all the fly fishermen in the region shouting that to use worms was unsportsmanlike. The controversy was silly–any fisherman will use worms rather than go home with an empty creel. But I planned to convert the President to flies if I could.

“A few days later he was fishing the same stream with a guide. I was behind about a quarter of a mile, trying my luck with a Royal Coachman. He went for me. ‘There’s an ol’ fish here that won’t bite,’ he said. ‘He keeps taking my bait.’

‘What are you using?’ I asked.

“He showed me his hook. On it he had a salmon egg and a grasshopper.

‘No wonder he won’t bite,’ I said. ‘The bait is too big for him to swallow. There isn’t a fish in the stream who could get all that in his mouth.’

“He ignored my criticism. ‘Suppose you try your dry fly,’ he said.

“I made a few casts with my Royal Coachman. The fish played with it but wouldn’t bite. Then I changed to an old, dilapidated Black Gnat. I put it on the grassy bank then pulled it back into the stream. Immediately it was sucked into the current, and the trout, with a mighty lunge, took it as if he had been waiting for it all his life.

“The little fellow [as Starling called the President] got so excited that he tangled his own line up in his rubber boots. He called to me, ‘Don’t lose him! Don’t lose him!’ He told me how to play him. Finally, unable to stand the excitement any longer, he grabbed the landing net and waded into the water above his boot tops. With a quick thrust he got the trout, then carried it ashore, where the guide removed the hook from its mouth. Without a word he carried the fish to the automobile, and that was the last I saw of it. But my purpose was accomplished. Thereafter he fished with flies” (“Starling of the White House” pp. 250-1).

As he prepared to leave the White House, Mr. Coolidge began planning to go on a cross-country fishing trip with Starling, once they both retired, spanning from the Brule River trout enjoyed the next summer to the salmon of Washington state and Oregon. Though, for various reasons, it never happened, the President wrote this, perhaps with his friend in mind, “At heart we are all fishermen. Some of us never had a chance to practice the art. Some have known it only through the use of expensive rods and fancy tackle, on elaborate artificial preserves. But the real fishermen associate the sport with a barefooted boyhood, where pole, bait, stream and the alder branch on which the fish were strung were all the product of nature…The open country, the unhurried silence, the refreshing leisure are a stimulation to the body and a benediction to the soul. Even the imagination expands and the credulity is disciplined in telling and listening to adventures with rod and reel. There is something natural, homely, wholesome and unspoiled about fishermen which we shall all do well to cultivate” (April 6, 1931).