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I love looking over the elegantly simple Scott rods, here and in another current posting of a recent build from a vintage blank. I'm perfectly happy with utility stuff a lot of the time, but seeing these and reading various accounts of their use takes me past a lingering sense of stupidity for being too cheap to get one back in their heyday, when I likewise admired them. Great stuff needs no ornamentation to call attention to itself; no decor, just functional detail such as the alignment dots at the ferrule.

There is an interesting point of perspective be noted here as to how one sees the world--not to be critical but only to examine. A few years ago my wife had an upscale urban guest up to visit on the ridgetop for a tour of huge perenniel gardens--hers and our neighbors--sweeping out towards a cape farmhouse, pale red barn and silos, secondary barn, old orchard, back fields, stonewall lane, faint path to the lower fields and so on. She was a great person and acquaintance who'd recently gotten a summer/retirement place nearby.

They sat in the garden as late morning sun lit up the the various flowers in bloom. Exquisite. Seeing them there on the benches on the cobblestoned space my wife had built for such perfect days, I figured a little refreshment was in order. I took a little floral tray, set two cobalt glasses of icewater with a wedge of lemon, and set it down for them with barely a word. Afterwards, my wife told me that her guest had found the whole experience delightful, and with the sweating cobalt glasses after a cool drink had said, "Beautiful, just like in the magazines." There's perspective--I was pleased she enjoyed that touch as a witness mark to the gardens and growing friendship. I said to my wife, "Great, but you know, it's reversed. "

"The beauty is here in the gardens, and the magazines try to make it just like this."

I had a parallel experience last night when an elderly aquaintance--I've known him 30 years--went to his safe (I didn't know he had a safe) and brought out a matched pair of bespoke Holland and Holland 12 gauge driven-bird sidelock doubles--leather case, all the documentation, snap caps, and so on, complete family history from the time they--the family and the H&H--left Europe in the face of World War II. A cover shot for the Double Gun Journal, but that will never happen. It already did in this special moment.

And so for the Scotts and their discerning admirers. It is so interesting to me to read of them described as "just like the work of . . ." and one of the very fine contemporary builders is named. Yes. But it is their work that is very much like the Scotts--no wonder if they like good stuff. It is pleasing to think that others have their own rods and gardens to develop. After about 25 years, we moved from that spot, and I don't miss it a bit. I have photos and an original painting of the gardens, but nothing from a magazine. I brought my fishing tackle with me, and my wife already transplanted the first levels of the new gardens. Here and there I've grabbed a cobblestone or slate rock, we got a load from the stone walls back there, and it's already laid out in smaller scale, along with the benches.

Thanks for displaying those rods.