My Hometown: Britt & Missy Myers

This year, when Don Barone gets within a 100 miles or so of an Elite angler's residence, he's going to swing by their hometown and visit.

“I know guys in my hometown who drive by feel and sound.”
Evel Knievel

Dateline: USA

Yeah, I live in New England.

Yeah, I live in Connecticut, Rob & Laura Petrie-ville.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the town I live in was founded in 1645.

Yeah, I have neighbors in town whose ancestors booked the Mayflower to America.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you think I’m a New England guy, huh.

Huh, huh.

Well I ain’t.

New England is where I live, live, but home, home, where my soul was born and raised, home for me is…Buffalo, N.Y.

I’m a Buffalo guy.

My white collars are stained blue underneath.

I got Penny Loafers one time, yeah, yeah, yeah, took the cash out of them and threw the freakin’ shoes away.

My father came home from World War II and helped hammer together the post-war home I was born in.

I grew up smelling hard work, steel plants, auto plants, chemical refineries, patted on the head by the hands of the UAW, Teamsters, AFL-CIO.

Back when you could write with a pen on job applications when I came to the box that asked me to write down my nationality I once wrote down, “Buffaloian.”

The guy behind the desk said to me, “Wha-da-ya-a-smart-arse…”

“Yep,” I said, he hadn’t come to the race box yet, wrote in there under “My Race,” yeah, I wrote, “Red, White & Blue.”

I didn’t get that job, but I got this one and this year doing my job I will travel all over this Red, White and Blue America, so we are going to do something new here, this year when I’m traveling here and there, down yonder, up yonder, and I get near, near being within a 100 miles or so, of an Elite angler, I’m going to swing by their hometown and visit some.

To really know me, you need to know I’m a born and bred Buffalo guy.

To really know these anglers you need to go home with them, you know, sort of speaking, I’ll do the driving.

So first up for Elite 2015: Britt & Missy Myers.

After the Bassmaster Classic ended in Greenville, South Carolina, I drove the 81 miles through the Carolina’s snow to the automotive shop that Britt & Missy own in Gastonia, North Carolina…CS Motorsports…and Britt, it turns out…

…was there. Britt has been working in the biz since, “I was a junior in high school, after school I worked part time in a car stereo store, I just knew then it was something I loved to do…”

21 years ago Britt took out a title loan on his car to start the biz, worked two jobs back then, “I would work on a loading dock from 5 a.m. until 10 a.m., then get in my beat-up old car and drive to my store, open it and work 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., did that for a couple of years to make it work.”

At about the same time…Missy came into his life…

…both now own and work in the store, “I do the books db, that is after I get our two children off to school, take care of all the other stuff that comes with family life, I’m busy but I love it, love working together with my husband.”

Hang around with Britt, hang around with Missy and it doesn’t take long to hear how much love plays in their lives. They have been married now for 17 years, have two boys 15 year old Britt, and 11 year old Carson, and it all began…

…here.

Missy: “We met right here at this church, I was his sister’s Maid of Honor at her wedding…”

Britt: “…and I was a groomsman in the wedding…”

They first laid eyes on each other almost at the exact spot where they are sitting on the steps of East Belmont Baptist Church.

It was love at first sight.

Britt: “I knew in my mind pretty much the moment I saw her that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.”

Missy: “I knew he couldn’t stand it, he had just met the woman of his dreams.”

But it wasn’t until here…

…at the Ranch House Restaurant, during the rehearsal dinner that the two actually got to talk to each other…

“I sat next to her and started talking to her and…”

“I fell for him almost instantly, both of us fell hard and fast for each other.”

So after the rehearsal dinner…

Britt: “We both went home and changed our clothes and went…

Missy: “Cruising in his car and talking, we actually ended up going to a drive-in that night…”

I look at Britt, he knows my question before I even ask it, “…ah db, I have no idea what the movie that was playing that night was…”

I didn’t think so.

Missy: “Encino Man.”

I figured she knew that.

On the way back to the shop Britt took a detour and drove through his old neighborhood where he lived and his first fishing hole that was about a mile walk from his house, “I haven’t been here in 30 years, db.”

You could tell, it’s one of the coolest things of doing the My Hometown series, taking people back to important places in their lives, and watching them remember, it is always emotional, always shows you the real person.

“I was 10 years old, used to walk down here by myself with my old Zebco and go fishing…”

But…

…I’m thinking days of fishing that childhood “pond” behind them, are gone.

“db it is here, right here where I fell in love with bass fishing. I would come here and I could see the bass chase my bait, and as a child I would watch where that bass would go, and the very next day I would come back to that exact spot and try to catch him. I was just 10 years old.”

And for awhile Britt just stood there looking, looking at what was left of the pond, looking for the bass hiding spot, looking for the 10-year-old who once stood on its banks.

Britt is a hard working guy both in season and off season. When I asked him how many hours a week he works at the store, like small business owners everywhere, he couldn’t even come close to telling me how many hours a week he puts in.

He could tell me this, “The fishing business has been really good to me here though.”

And he’s not lying…

…when I pulled up to the store this guy…Elite angler Aaron Martens was there buying tires and rims and having a bunch of custom work done on his truck.

Many of the Elite anglers bring their trucks to Britt to customize, as do other anglers, when I took a tour of the shop there was a Tundra in there from a woman angler in California who wanted Britt to customize it so much that she shipped it to him so it would have his touch…

…and when we got back from our drive around his hometown we pulled up to this, while I was gone Britt installed and donated fishing rod holder tubes on top of my Tundra so that I would be able to transport fishing rods for Tackle The Storm foundation and give the rods to kids who have lost all their fishing stuff to storms in their lives.

We made one final stop before I left town…

…here.

Britt and Missy are standing in front of their original shop. “I was 19 years old, just opened the business, it was about 1,000 square feet in there, had one ‘employee,’ this kid who would show up after school and hang around and help me out.”

My father never once asked me what I wanted to be in life.

Dad was never a long-term planning kind of guy.

This was his exact, and only career advice to me, “Work harder.”

Exhaustion, was job success to my father.

My family fit, Buffalo.

Buffalo of old, now it is a whiney, backroom politics swamp hole.

But it is to the blue collar-working stiffs of my hometown that I swear allegiance.

To them, as a Buffalo guy out in the world I pledge to always “work harder.”

And while on the road out here I will find the Buffalo guys/gals whether they have stepped a foot in Buffalo or not.

I will find the, “work harders.”

Britt and Missy Myers, are Buffalo people, working stiffs who work harder and this final photo is proof of that…

…from that old shop of 1,000 square feet and one after high school kid…comes this from working harder:

A new 25,000-square-foot shop.

18 full-time employees with benefits including health care.

Britt: “These people who work for me, db, they are family. I say I never dreamed back in the beginning it would amount to this…”

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that, you don’t work loading docks in the morning and your shop job the rest of the day, if you don’t have vision of what could be…

…what could be if you work harder.

To Britt, to Missy, let me give you the best compliment I can give anyone, my father would love you guys.

Career advice of “work harder” seems to be lost on some anymore, and frankly I’m getting tired of working harder so some work not at all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Working harder, works.

When it came time for me to give career advice to my son I upped dad some, I said two things to my boy:

I told him, “Love what you do, it’s not about the cash it’s about the love, love it and you will have a happier life.”

And then: “Empty the tank. Leave nothing on the field. Work until you can’t, then work some more. Empty the tank.”

Coming up at Elite event #2, My Hometown with JTodd Tucker.

My father would love this guy, not sure he would understand his Georgia drawl though…

“Home is where one starts from.”
T. S. Eliot

Go Bills,

db