Daily Limit: Storm blows trees into Livesay’s home

“Gloom, despair and agony on me, whoa.”

Elite angler Lee Livesay might be singing that old “Hee Haw” hymn if he wasn’t taking his latest disaster with a chuckle.

Just days after a disappointing showing on his home lake, Wednesday’s storm sent four trees crashing through the roof of his home in Longview, Texas, leaving him scrambling to plug them up and save as much of his stuff as he could from the water gushing in his house.

“No crying, man,” Livesay said with a laugh. “I’m just taking it this week, man.”

Rain-soaking storms have been rolling through the Midwest this spring. Flood conditions even forced the postponement of this week’s Elite event on Fort Gipson Lake in Oklahoma to September. Livesay was on the phone with fellow Elite Jason Williamson discussing those possibilities when the raging storm made him walk out onto his covered porch.

“I heard the wind pick up really hard,” he said. “Man, maybe there’s a tornado. Maybe I need to check the radar. I opened my back door and was just standing there. The trees directly in front of me go, “Eeerrraaaagh!’ I ran back inside. They fell to my left and ‘Sha-boom!’

“They just smash into my house. Jason went, ‘What the hell is going on?’ I said, ‘Let me get off the phone real quick.’”

As Livesay ran back inside, debris was flying. For years, he had predicted the 60-plus foot pine trees about 25 feet from his slab might fall. They shared the same root system and seemed to be dying, but he couldn’t do anything since they were on an adjacent empty lot.

“It was loud. It happened so fast. They would have missed me,” Livesay said. “The branches all exploded. All the particulars and stuff hit me. It’s everywhere. It’s on the other side of my house, too.

“I opened my attic door and a big ole branch fell through the roof, and I could see the sky. You can see branches sticking through my roof like somebody was stabbing them.”

With it still pouring rain, Livesay made some quick fixes on his 15-year-old brick house and moved items from the wet areas. He was waiting for the rain to stop to do more work before going out for tarps, plywood and nails, but he worried what stores might be open with the town’s power out.

“I’m going to patch what I can tonight and get my roofing company here in the morning to fix everything, then go on from there with the insurance company,” he said. “I can rig something with a boat tarp or trash bags or something. Rigged a little bit but don’t want to be on roof with lightning.”

One positive for Livesay is that help is on the way from one of the clients he’s guided on Lake Fork.

“Luckily, I’m actually sponsored by a roofing company out of Dallas,” he said. “Thank God I got Blake (Snow of First Out Roofing). He’s said he’ll have the guys out here in the morning.

“Everything on my jersey or on my truck is a previous client. That’s why when anybody says, ‘You going to quit guiding?’ ‘Nope, that’s how I made all my connections.’”

After finishing 39th in this month’s Toyota Bassmaster Texas Fest, Livesay was ready to get back into fishing competition. Livesay, who has guided on Fork for about 300 days each of the past five years, had sang from the rooftop about his chances there. But the in-between state of the fish, which had him swinging for the fences, also left a hole in his roof.

Livesay left Fork angrier at the fish than he is about the trees hitting his house. He kinda hee-hawed at the absurdity that nature ain’t doing him right of late.

“Gotta roll with the punches,” he said. “It never ends. Just go on to the next one, ain’t no doubt.”

Writer’s note: The Daily Limit does not endorse becoming the disaster writer at B.A.S.S. On Monday, just 5 miles short of his destination after a 1,000-mile drive from Fork to Shelby, N.C., Matt Arey’s boat was hit by a police cruiser in pursuit of a bad guy. All are uninjured, but it’s interesting whose boat Arey will use as a replacement. Be safe out there, and cut this stuff out.