“I’ve looked under chairs…”
Dateline: Cherokee Lake…Elite No. 1 2017
“I like to watch.”
Chance The Gardner
Being There (1979)
So, I’m cold turkeying bacon and donuts.
I look bad enough for two guys my age.
This cold turkeying is not going well. I just came back to my hotel room from the breakfast buffet with an orange in my hand.
An orange.
I’m assuming it’s not usual to walk out of the buffet holding just an orange since all the looks I got.
I have on a black fleece top and pants with one brown shoe and one black shoe.
I have never left anywhere in life with just an orange in my hand.
I’m new to this, just thought you should know, help you understand.
I miss bacon and donuts.
I’m playing catch with the orange.
Welcome to my season 10 of chasing those who chase the bass.
Buckle up.
“I’ve looked under chairs…”
This now marks my 36th year in the telling the news biz in one form or another.
More than half my life.
This is my secret for telling the news biz…go out and look around.
Being there and seeing what’s up.
Telling the news biz is all about being quiet and watching. All about asking some and listening more. Toss in some facts and not try and bigshot what you do.
I’m asked a lot about how to get into the biz, I always say, “Don’t, it’s nuts out here now,” and that if I was in journalism school right now I would minor in muscle car repair mechanics, “You’d be happier.”
Here’s how I do the news telling biz about the bass: I show up to the gig on Sunday and drag an almost technically hoarding amount of stuff into my hotel room, I then find Trip, Chuck and the rest of the B.A.S.S. crew and give them hugs.
Even Trip is almost used to that by now.
On Monday I start to glance at the many emails that B.A.S.S. has sent me about the gig I’m at throughout the preceding months. I try to never pay attention to much until I’m standing in it, that’s how I prepare.
After a nap or two on Monday morning I shower, go climb in my truck and go hunt up some sweet tea then start cruising around watching and looking.
Normally my first stop to be watching and looking at is wherever the B.A.S.S. stage and weigh-in stuff is going to be and that information is always written down in those emails I’m sent months ago but I’ve shortened the process some via my cellphone:
Ring…
“Hello…”
“Hey Trip, db here, where you at?”
And then I go to where he is at.
$42,500.79 in j-school loans to figure that out.
“…I’ve looked under tables…”
“Wherever I go, I’m watching. Even on vacation, when I’m in an airport or a railroad station, I look around, snap pictures, and find out how people do things.”
Richard Scarry
I watched a man with a crooked back walk down a path with a straight fishing pole.
With every car that passed him by he would slow his walk down some, look up, smile a grin that was minus some teeth and nod his head slightly to the right in acknowledgment and manners.
If you know who James Stewart is, you’ve seen the nod.
Every car, truck, bicycle, jogger or person walking by was welcomed by the man with the bent back and straight fishing rod.
I was double, quite possibly tripled parked watching the gentleman walk slowly and proudly my way. When he got side by side to the passenger side of my truck I hit the window button and asked him this, “Hey man how you doing?”
“Fine, I’m fine, how you?” then came the smile.
“Catch anything?”
“Yep,” another smile that would hide saying where his fishing spot may be.
“You mind if we talk some, I’m with B.A.S.S., who you with?”
“Nope don’t mind none, me I’m with me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Me I’m Herbert, Herbert Pratt the river rat.”
“Stay right there.”
“…I’ve tried to find the key…”
Meet Herbert Pratt, the river rat:
“I see them B.A.S.S. boys are in town and fishing Cherokee Lake…”
“What do you think about that?”
“I think it’s great, they ain’t hurtin’ nothing they bring business and money into town, they drive those nice boats pretty fast all over the place, me I just fish my bank for trout or catfish or whatever is dumb enough to bite.”
“Why do you call yourself the river rat?”
“Ha, everybody in town here calls me that. I was born and raised and still live right over there down that street, can almost see my house from here.”
“You fish much?”
“Ha, everyday, I come over and fish every day. I’m 69 years old, I grab my pole and walk over here fish some then walk back to the gas station and get me some lunch, good food right over there.”
“Everyday…”
“Yes sir, everyday for the past 50 years.”
I thank Herbert for taking the time to talk to me, click my pen off, flip my notebook closed, shake his hand and start to walk away…
“Uh Mr. B.A.S.S.…”
“Huh, db, call me db…”
“Ha, okay, Mr. db will you do me one favor? Would you add to what you wrote down there, would you add something for me?”
“You bet what?”
And with that the man with the crooked back and straight fishing pole took off his ball cap and leaned forward to me, bowed his head some and said:
“Would you please add when I said I fish it everyday that I don’t fish on Sunday? That’s God’s day and I let him have the river on his day.”
Being there.
“…to fifty million fables…”
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”
Jonathan Swift
There sits on the hood of a grey truck a dirty rag put there by the hand of an honest child.
The rag is black.
The rag is wet.
The rag laid on the ground between two fancy and colorful Elite anglers’ trucks.
On eBay it would be called “game used B.A.S.S. Elite memorabilia.”
I stood at the top of the boat ramp, up near the service crew and watched the young boy in the yellow t-shirt go from Elite truck to Elite truck taking photos, one by one.
The child never came close to the trucks, never touched a one, but at each he held up a cellphone, framed the shot and took the photo, then moved on.
Down near the end he suddenly bent over and picked up something, it was wet and dripping wet. The child looked around, saw no one, not even me, and then while holding the rag with one hand walked back up the hill to the service crew, showed them the rag and I’m assuming asked what he should do with it.
I watched as the child then turned around with the rag in his hand and walked back to the truck area where he found the rag laying on the ground, watched as he put his cellphone in his pocket and then rang the rag out, shook it out some and then gently folded it up and placed it on the hood of one of the trucks.
Then he walked away and began taking photos again.
He could have taken this rag.
Stuck it in his pocket and left with the souvenir.
Could have just thrown it back down on the ground where he found it.
He did neither.
Instead he gently folded it and with respect, put it back.
And this is the most important part, put it back when no one was watching what he was doing.
Except me who he never saw standing there until I walked up to him and said, “Hey, what’s your name?”
“…they call me…”
Meet 11-year-old, sixth grader, Owen Stamm.
Now, to be honest, me looking as bad as I do most of the time and walking up to a young child could, and should, cause a whole bunch of angst in this day and age so this is exactly what I said to Owen:
“Hi, I’m Don Barone with B.A.S.S. is your mom or dad here and can I talk with them?”
“Sure sir, my mom is just over there in that car, I’ve been sick the past few days and just felt a little better so my mom thought it would be good to bring me down here to see the Elites and get some fresh air. I’m not skipping school or anything.”
“You’re good dude don’t worry about it,” while I remember that when I was this kid’s age and skipped school I would have been long gone before any stranger was even close enough to ask any kind of question.
I figured him not high-tailing out meant he was legal.
Mom rolls down the car window and is not freaked either, both good signs.
Once I get her permission I take Owens photo, “Wait can you take it with me showing off some of the fish I’ve caught here…”
I do and watch as he scrolls through 20-30 photos of him holding fish until he gets to this one:
Owen and I talk some within sight of Mom, I ask him: “Do you have a favorite angler?”
“I do, you know, KVD and you know…”
Fifteen, 17, maybe 23 Elite angler names later he stops naming his favorite Elite dude.
“You pretty much like them all huh?”
“Yep, I do.”
In the car I see mom nodding “yes” as well.
More talk about fishing, him and them Elites, talk some of sore throats and ear aches, something about bait, his plans of being at the weigh-in both here and in Knoxville, several reassurances of being in school tomorrow, and then this…
“So you have an idea what you want to be when you grow up?”
If you would have asked me that at age 11 this is exactly what I would have said: “I’d like to hold Mary McPherson’s hand and be going steady.”
That’s not what Owen told me.
“I want to be a Bassmaster Classic Champion.”
Not “make” the Bassmaster Classic.
Not “fish” the Bassmaster Classic.
Champion of the Bassmaster Classic.
“I fish every chance I get, I love to fish and one day I will win the Classic.”
I looked over at mom in the car who sat watching her son and smiled, looking back all Owen was doing was smiling at me.
The smile of a champion.
I know I may never see it but when I shook his hand this is what I told him, “See you on the big stage dude.”
Being there.
“…The Seeker…”
“The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
– Marcel Proust
If there be a job description for what I do I’ve never seen it, wouldn’t read it if there was one.
If I had to write one this is what it would say:
Watch.
Listen.
Ask.
Tell you.
And then I would whisper to you my secret of hanging around in this news biz this long.
“Pssst….it’s all about…knowing where it’s at and…”
Being there.
“…I’ve been searching low and high.”
The Seeker
The Who
db
“You can observe a lot by just watching.”
Yogi Berra