“And when the night is cloudy…”
Dateline: To all the Nation members
“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.” ~Tommy Lasorda
Across the table from me sits a woman in love.
She is stirring a red drink with a white swizzle stick.
Her hair is brown, her lips are pinkish, her outfit is coordinated.
She is talking to me but she is looking to her left, my right, where sits the man she loves.
She is 45, he is 50, they have been married almost 25 years. I am not watching her, I am watching the swizzle stick in her hand.
Counter clockwise she stirs, it rotates first fast, then it starts to slow, slow, slow, and when it stops I look up into her eyes as she turns her gaze directly into my eyes.
“I got the call db, I got the horrible call.”
And the swizzle stick comes out of the drink and is placed gently on the white linen cloth covered dinner table, her empty hand reaches out, skims the linen as her head once again turns left.
I follow her hand and raise my eyes to the man on my right.
He sits quietly, soberly, he looks to her first, then to me, then back to her, what he says though is directed to me.
“I called home, told her I love you…”
“…then told me he had an accident…”
“…I told her I loved her because I thought I was dying.”
And with that one lone tear ran down his cheek and dropped into the white linen napkin in his lap.
The determination of Daniel…to live.
“…there is still a light that shines on me…”
“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” ~Colin Powell
I want you to stare into the eyes of that man sitting in that boat.
His name is Daniel Elsner, non-boater from Green Bay, Wis. Look close at his eyes, look close at his face and now I’m going to tell you exactly what he is thinking at this moment because he told me.
“Six years ago today, six years ago at almost this very minute, I thought I was about to die, when I walk up on that stage there, six years ago to the very moment I was dying in intensive care.”
That is the look of a man living in two worlds.
One of the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship.
One of the memory of ICU.
“I was working a construction site, framing a set of stairs, I had put the nail gun a couple stairs above me when I moved the nail gun started to fall and I instinctively reached up to catch it, when I caught it my hand hit the trigger and the gun fired, it shot a 3-inch nail directly into my chest, right here.”
And when he pointed to right here he pointed to his heart.
To his heart.
“I was wearing leather bib overalls and the nail went right through the suspenders that went over my shoulder, went right between two ribs, just missed my major artery and stopped less then an eighth of an inch from my heart.”
Then, “I didn’t know it at the time but what I instinctively did was pull off my overalls and that pulled the nail back out, suddenly my lungs started filling up with blood, I turned not white, but all gray.”
The guys on the job first rushed Daniel to his primary care doc’s office which was just a couple blocks away, from there a life support ambulance took him to the major trauma center in Green Bay.
“I remember laying there and they needed to drain my lung so I could breathe so without an anesthesia they cut open my side and broke a rib so they could get a tube into my lung before it collapsed.”
All this time I’m watching the white swizzle stick in the red cocktail turn slower and slower.
“…shine until tomorrow…”
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
~ Mario Andretti
Look closely into the face of this women, it is the face of a wife six years past “…the horrible call.”
Look closely as she tries to take a photograph of the man, her husband, who called to tell her how much he loved her because he thought he was about to die.
Look closely if you want to see what joy looks like, see what relief looks like, see what amazement looks like.
See how love hurts.
See how love heals.
See, love.
Laura Elsner: “We’ve been to hell and back, db.”
Laura and Daniel are the forgotten people, regular arse working stiffs. Daniel owns a small construction framing company, Laura is the night auditor of the Comfort Suites in Green Bay.
He works days, she works nights to make ends meet, the working stiff ends meet generation.
“We pass each other at home like two ships in the night.”
They have two girls one 15, one 22.
Both Daniel and Laura are die-hard Green Bay Packer fans, Daniel told me that, “Both my father and my grandfather were at The Ice Bowl game, season tickets in the end zone, Gramps wouldn’t miss a Packer game, while they were at that game my mother went into labor…with me.”
Daniel’s brother lives within an errant kickoff from Lambeau Field. On game day for a few bucks you can park your car on his lawn, he takes that money to buy Packer season tickets.
You can’t get any better American than that.
“Daniel, it was rough on him, he didn’t fish for a couple of years, he was laid up a while as you can imagine, during that time all he could think about was how close he came to dying, thought about all the time he had spent fishing and away from Amber and Alicia (their daughters), he just couldn’t go back, it messed with his head, major depression.”
Daniel is saying nothing, is not moving, not eating, eyes looking only at the sea of linen in front of him.
The only sound is the ice clinking in the glass and tables around us being cleared.
When, “It was a life altering experience, db,” and as I turned to the sound I found Daniel looking straight at me, through me.
“…I wake up to the sound of music…”
“I have had dreams, and I’ve had nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.”
~Jonas Salk
“I thought I blew it with my kids, with my family, with my wife.”
I don’t say anything, I have no answers, to be honest I’ve been on the road so much with my career these last 30 years I know exactly how Daniel feels, those are the nightmares Barb feels me fight asleep at night.
“But slowly, slowly I got back into fishing, not doing tournaments much, just going out with buddies and little by little it started coming back, the dream started coming back.”
“What dream?”
“db, this dream, the dream of being here at the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship, it is something I have wanted to do for a decade, be right here, fish this event.”
I want you to take a moment and look at the face of Daniel as he steps on the Bassmaster stage to talk to B.A.S.S. emcee, Dave Mercer, follow where he is looking.
He is looking for Laura.
Between the stage and the crowd a man’s dream beat a man’s depression.
“I’m at peace now, db, peace.”
And with that I watched Daniel and Laura leave the restaurant and walk into the night back to their hotel room, hand in hand, her head leaning for a second on his shoulder.
Dreams Squared.
“…Mother Mary comes to me…”
“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”
~Christopher Reeve
Daniel told me that his dream, while it would be great to win this event and make it to the Bassmaster Classic, his dream was to be here for “the camaraderie, in fact whenever I say that it gives me goose bumps.”
He added, “If some of these guys came here only for the competition they are missing half the reason for being here.”
When I hit send on this story and it magically appears on Bassmaster.com it will be my final story sent in from the road this year, 26 weeks of traveling America, 26 weeks to be witness to the privilege of meeting people like Daniel and Laura…and many of you.
I want to take a moment here and thank the dozens and dozens of my road family, some of the best at doing what they do that I’ve ever been around.
A few weeks back we tragically lost one of our own, camera man and all around great guy, Rick Mason. Trust me when I say this, no location event will ever be the same without him around.
We’ve also though had babies born, employees get married and new folks added to the crew, welcome to them all.
All of us out here do this for many reasons, dreams though may in fact be the number one reason we crisscross this country.
Your dreams, our dreams, doesn’t matter, if it was up to me the motto on the side of all our rigs would say simply this: Lose Not Your Dream
Some say there is but one book, one word: The Bible.
To that I add there is but one story: The Human Spirit.
It is what binds us all, the spirit within us that lights the fire of determination, that fuels the stuff of our dreams.
From all of us out here.
From myself, Barb and my kids.
Thank you for all you do for us.
May all your dreams come true, and may we be a part of those dreams.
Peace,
db
“…speaking words of wisdom.”
Let It Be
The Beatles
“20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~Mark Twain