D.A.M. Quick
On fishing reels and this present time
Recently, I took up this hobby where I fix up old fishing reels. I find them on ebay or in junk stores and bring them home and open them up and take out all the parts and clean them and (try to) fix or replace busted springs, gears, screws, etc. Depending on a given reel’s condition, this may take approximately 1 million Q-tips and 100 gallons of Dawn dish soap. Gobs and gobs of old grease in these things. The idea, though, is to move them from “non-working” to “working.” I guess this all grew out of another activity I also fairly recently took up and that is: fishing. It’s interesting, I suppose, how one thing leads to another. But I even joined a club. It’s called ORCA (not like Free Willy, but Old Reel Collectors Association.) All in all, I’ve gone pretty far in on the hobby.
Pictured here is probably my favorite reel that I’ve worked on so far. A D.A.M. Quick 330 freshwater spinning reel, manufactured in West Germany—West Berlin specifically, somewhere between 1970 and 1973. D.A.M. is the abbreviation for Deutsche Angelgerate Manufaktur. I don’t speak German, but I think that roughly translates to German Fishing-stuff Manufacturer. I read somewhere that “quick” was added to the name for the American market so it didn’t appear on the shelves of American sporting good stores with a great big cuss word homophone. Though, to my ear, “quick” adds a kind of delicious venom to the kinetic cuss-energy of D.A.M.
What was happening in West Berlin in 1970? Well, it was the height of the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification were 19 years off. West Berlin, though free, was entirely surrounded by East Germany—communist, authoritarian, oppressive. Everything George Orwell warned us about. The Stasi was lurking. Enemies all around. 25 years prior, it was Hitler and the Nazis. West Berlin was constantly under threat and constantly on a slide under the world’s microscope. So scrutinized, how could you even live?
I’m happy to say that I was able to get my D.A.M. Quick 330 restored. I put line on it and I could take it to the creek tomorrow if I wanted and catch fish with it. It would still do now what it was made to do back then. Where it came from and what all was happening there when this reel was made is now fundamentally different. Berlin, of course, has been reunited for quite some time. Germany is free now. No Stasi, no SS enforcing the mad will of a bloviating dictator. From the constant cataclysm of its 20th century history, Germany emerged as a leading European democracy.
To Germans, though, under Hitler and then under communism, it must’ve felt like the totalitarianism of these tyrannical regimes would last forever. It’s one of the oldest sleights-of-hand of authoritarianism. Welcome forever to your glorious new normal! How thin a promise. Anyway, I’ll probably use my D.A.M. Quick 330 for actual fishing at some point. Now, though, I just like to hold it, to feel its weight in my hands, to turn the handle, spin the bail wire, listen to it click.