In A Happy Hunting Ground

I am a Catalog Freak. With the help of God I will not grab an order blank and checkbook today. For, on long winter evenings, when the grouse hunter has cleaned his shotgun for the last time and gourmets sit reading crayfish recipes to each other in French from Larousse Gastronomique, I love to heave myself back in a reclining easy chair with a stack of sports catalogs and dream, perchance to order.

My story is not unusual, judging from the confessions I've heard, but retelling it here may offer some insight into the perilous and psychotic world of the Catalog Freak (hereafter referred to simply as "C.F."). Every sportsman is aware of catalogs; his local shop is out of a certain brand of dry fly, or he gets on one of those sucker mailing lists—"A Special Offer Just For You: Uncle Bob's Fish Smeller, With 5' Cord, Only $16.95!"—or he goes to the Sears order desk for a new inflatable station wagon. The catalogs that matter are not as easily found and are never, never, inflicted on you. They have to be sought. You might go on for years without running across the magic world of the C.F.

My own enlightenment came about in 1967. I was sitting in Gallagher's Steak House in New York, pulling on an overpriced cigar and waiting for my lunch partner, a literary critic. When he arrived I thought it was Sir Edmund Hillary. There was a commotion as he made his way toward me; well-dressed brokers rose from their chairs in anger, turning florid and bullish, waiters brandished heavy plates menacingly. He sat down, threw a leg up on the table and hissed mysteriously, " Eddie Bauer!" He was wearing the thickest pair of Malone Pants in the world. And that was the least of it. He pointed to his sweater and whispered, "Hand Knit Icelandic, L.L. Bean." His boots: "Herter's Mountain Man's Hiking, Walking and Climbing." It was probably the first pair of Vibram lug soles ever to trod the boards of Gallagher's. He had topped off the outfit with a German rucksack of the '30s, mildewed and bruised, its name branded across the leather flap—Russerhauserstein—or something equally suggestive. Just before we got the bum's rush, I realized that I never again could wear a good three-button blazer. I had to gel my hands on beautiful things like the ones he was wearing. Mind you, this was some time before you saw young men headed to the office in water buffalo boots and suede bush jackets with designer initials on the belt. Back in 1967 my friend simply looked like a mad Scandinavian ornithologist who had pursued a songbird out of Central Park. But he opened up a new world to me: L.L. Bean, Inc. ( Freeport, Maine), Eddie Bauer (Expedition Outfitter), Norm Thompson (Escape From The Ordinary), Herter's (Tenacious For Quality).

Equipment freaking is a well-established, rampant form of American leisure. The C.F. may deride the young man in a new pickup, equipped with Wowie mud flaps and enough running lights to satisfy international maritime regulations; or consider with disgust the Tool Pervert who peeps at a new set of socket wrenches half a day in the hardware store; or look with repugnance on the Power Attachment Cretin, searching like Job for an ice-cream maker to affix to the power takeoff of his snowblower, but their diseases are almost the same as his. I once mentioned this to a contractor in a local tavern. His eyes lit up, and he hauled me to the back of his latest model Sportswagon to unpack a brand new Milwaukee�" drill, Cosmoline still on the bits. There were kegs of fresh nails in there, unused chain saws, extension cords still in their blister packs, smooth, white shovel handles and clean aprons: New. New. New.

The first requirement for becoming an E.F., and consequently a C.F., is: it must be new. There are used-equipment freaks, of course. Moms and Dads who drive a hundred miles in their Sunliner to auctions, from whence they return with wormy wagon tongues and rotting horse collars to place on the lawn by the iron duck; but the sports equipment freak is obsessed with virginity. When the C.F.'s first catalog order arrives, he tears open the box, removes the plastic, unfolds It, sets It up, tries It on. He is very near to Eden, a pre-Freud, pre-Pill world where everything is so innocent it squeaks. The C.F. catches his own glance in the mirror and thinks, "This stuff has never been touched!" And the C.F. may even keep it that way. A friend of mine, a journeyman C.F., once ordered a matched set of Tycoon Fin-Nor saltwater reels because he could not resist the mahogany presentation case they came in. He still has them in their box at home, pristine. For what he calls "the harsh reality of angling," he uses a reel he bought in the back of a barbershop in White Cloud, Mich., and a rod from a drugstore rack. The C.F. is never as interested in using equipment as he is in owning it. His is an un-explainable sort of Quartermaster Corps complex.

The C.F. is the kind of person who hates libraries because someone else may have read the books before him. He finds it an offensive notion to recycle paper. He cannot scribble grocery lists on the backs of used envelopes when there is a fresh note pad at hand. If only there could be a transplant of an unused heart....

The C.F.'s main attraction to catalog shopping is that he never has to see the equipment and clothing in the tawdry reality of a store. There they are, beautiful color photos of marvelously described items right in your hands. Everything is between you, your checkbook and an 8� stamp. You do not have to get in the car, drive to some Saturday-morning shopping center massacre, park, get out and hobble into a sporting goods store full of whiffle balls, children's life preservers and epoxy stench. Stores are full of inferior equipment and people. What the C.F. really wants is to be alone with all that stuff. He would like to have the janitor's position in Abercrombie & Fitch, riding the elevator all night, each floor his separate stock room. The merchandising of even the finest emporiums does not approach the C.F.'s high standards. The store has two or three models of everything. When the C.F. opens a catalog, he is told that the firm has "shopped the world" and now is simply offering the best damn plastic jerry can that exists. In a store the folding hunter's knife he wants is always in a case with a lot of cheaper blades. For $2.50 less, he is told, he can have the same knife except it does not have a chrome swivel loop. To hell with it. The C.F. never compromises.

The C.F.'s hatred of other people and tawdry merchandise leads him into strange paths. I know a master C.F. who has reached a state of catalog Nirvana. He claims he never has to leave his house anymore. One of his favorite mail-order places has begun stocking freeze-dried camper meals. He found he can order water from the Maryland Gourmet catalog. He displays a Buddha-like confidence in his new role of hermit, an attitude no store-bought mouthwash or deodorant could ever give him. Though completely dependent on the U.S. Postal Service, he sees the world with new eyes.

The second requirement of the C.F. is that each item ordered must have a new doohickey on it. If there is not an improvement, he does not want it. But a new flap or strap or solid state ignition excites his overtaxed heart and he reaches for the phone and the special 24-hour number of his favorite catalog house.

The C.F. becomes immune to certain criticism. A friend who has not been initiated into the mysterious rites of catalog freaking will say, "But you could have picked up those snowshoes down at Hudson's for $6.19 less." The C.F. makes a great show of concern, wagging his head and clucking, but in his heart he could not care less. His body and soul belong in Portland, Seattle, Freeport, Waseca, Livingston. Also, the C.F. knows that in the long run he will spend no more than the store shopper, because he rarely gets burned with bad merchandise, and if he does, the respectable catalog houses will take care of him promptly, efficiently and without his having to face some dour servant of the Returns Department. His waders do not melt at 75�, his wool shirt never comes apart like a tear-away jersey. The catalogs save the C.F. money because he is never tempted to order a cheaper item. It isn't there. The C.F. is likely to register surprise when someone tells him that there is a lack of craftsmanship in equipment these days. He hasn't heard of it.