The Pinnacle of Luxury

I have bought many fancy things in my life. And I’ve overpaid for nearly all of them. Most of these splurges are modest, but when modest expenditures lay scattered on a floor and you bind them up with a thick cord and set them on a large desk, then and only then can the bulk of these many small luxuries be known. A fishing rod here, a watch there, a new depth finder to replace an old depth finder over there. Last Tuesday, I went to great lengths (East Troy) to find fresh chickens from Yuppie Hill Poultry so that I might tie them securely to the rotisserie on my wood fired grill that I had some old man build me out of steel and welds and sweat. Those chickens were not cheap. Interestingly, they tasted almost exactly like chicken.

These luxuries of mine are different from your luxuries, as luxuries might carry similar themes (jewelry, cars, chickens) but they are usually different. Unless, of course, we’re talking about iPhones, but those can hardly be considered a luxury anymore. Soon, I imagine, the federal government will see to it that access to an iPhone is an inalienable right, like high speed internet and chickens that were spoon fed unicorn tears from a very young age. It should be considered a luxury to own a Blackberry, but not in the way that it is a luxury to own an iPhone, because it isn’t anymore. Blackberry’s are more like relics, antiques held over from a day when RIMM board meetings were full of expensive cigars and laughing. There is no laughing there now, and not just because they are headquartered in Canada where laughter is severely punished.

But is it? Is laughter such a rarity there that they might consider that to be a luxury in the way that we used to consider iPhones and pretty, well groomed chickens the same? Likely not, but I do know that Farmer’s Sausage is a luxury there, as is anything fried with dark gravy poured over it. That’s how you know you’re in a land where luxuries are few and far between- when gravy enters into the luxurious. I have made gravy like this once, but it requires the browning of chicken or turkey bones, organic ones if at all possible, and then the browning of tomato paste to where it appears burnt and your mother asks why you feel burning something increases it’s flavor. That gravy was delicious, but I wasn’t able to buy it on Ebay, which is where I prefer to hunt for and then bag my luxuries. Nothing says luxury to me like a little note left in my post office box by the postmaster promising me a waiting parcel. Last week, my luxury parcel was actually a small envelope filled with three smaller white flies. If they catch me smallmouth from the bow of my boat with my 5 weight Sage rod in my hand, then they will be a luxury worth the price. The chickens cost $14 each, the flies only $2.95.

Some luxuries are bought to sit on shelves. Like figurines made out of blue glass and things made with shiny stones, those are the luxuries that my mom counts. Other people, like the new rich I read about in the Wall Street Journal today, buy watches that cost more than every car I’ve ever bought. These luxuries look pretty or handsome on whoever owns the wrist that the new watch calls home. But that’s assuming they wear that watch every day, which they likely don’t. Who would? This is why I prefer my luxuries to assist somehow in a lifestyle, not a toy count. If I collected blue glass figurines, I suppose it would be fine. I would line them up on a shelf inside a glass front cabinet, and my friends would come over and I would beam. Though they’d probably be happier if I gave them a leg off of my prized chicken, which smells sweetly of wood smoke.

No, all of these things might be fine but they are not for me. I’m more interested in luxuries that translate into a lifestyle, which is why I long for a Yeti cooler. Flip Pallot has told me for years that these are bear proof and that they’re wildly stronger and they keep ice longer. And when he stands on his $1000 cooler on the bow of a flats boat I feel as though I’m nothing without that cooler. But the cooler would go on a boat, which I captain on a great big lake- a lake so luxurious that it can only be bought in tiny slivers measuring mostly 50′ to 150′ in width. If I could buy one of these slivers and put my boat and its new Yeti cooler there, that would mean everything to me. If I could have my Yeti cooler and my Sage rods and my Simms gear bags stowed in my boat that I would tether to my white pier, then I would crank up that custom grill and watch as my delicious, precious little golden chickens turn and turn, adding flavor with each spin on the steel wheel that the guy from East Troy made for me a few years ago in his soot stained garage. I would sit on my lakeside patio, with my friends and family near and the setting sun giving way to the horizon, and we would toast the chickens and the cooler and the grill and that boat. That, my friends, would be the height of luxury.