“Ooh, it really makes me wonder…”
Dateline: Lake Hartwell
“A little magic can take you a long way.”
Roald Dahl
It is said somewhere, least I hope it is so, that your life will become a masterpiece once you master peace, meaning that even though we have different names for it, be it miracles, be it God, be it Karma that sometimes when seemingly bad things happen to you, there be a bit of magic underfoot.
Wait for it, get out of your own way and, wait for it.
Only life and death, is life and death, everything else is frankly just a pain in the arse if you know deep within that there may in fact be miracles, there may in fact be someone watching over us, there may in fact be Karma.
But there is damn sure, Magic.
Elite Angler, Randy Pierson: “Sometimes things are just meant to be, you know db.”
I do…Magic.
“…yes, there are two paths…”
When you don’t have a spreadsheet to look at, when math or numbers aren’t available you must go by words, and more importantly, pauses.
Before we launch this Lake Hartwell Elite gig this week here’s Randy’s Elite spreadsheet:
Four total tourneys, one being the Classic, one being in 2003, total winnings $20,000.
What’s not listed, but I know it to be true because I was sitting next to him, is this: BASS Nation Champion 2018.
Champion, the dude came from California to Pickwick in Alabama and won it all, got himself some cash (I think), got him a new boat and truck, and got the ticket into the Elites earned when he hoisted the hardware that has engraved upon it Nation Champion.
That’s the spreadsheet, dig now his words.
“… you can go by…”
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
Robert Frost
“It was the day after Christmas when I got fired.”
Would only have been a bigger Grinch if the company he worked for a decade of his life had booted him on Christmas Eve. I mean most of the Christmas wrapping paper hadn’t even been picked up yet and he was out of a job.
Except for one big detail, “I had already said yes to joining the Elites because of winning the Nation Championship but I was going to do it and stay with my company, but you know…”
Reporting 101, never up-cut a pause.
“…sometimes things just happen for a reason.”
Randy and his wife, Jan (married in 1995) have two children, Jacob 20 & Meghan 18, they live in the Central Valley of California in a small town called, Oakdale (“Cowboy Capital of the World,” population 20,000) which on a clear night you can hear the sounds of American Graffiti which was filmed in Modesto just 20 or minutes away, and two hours north of my old stompin’ grounds of Fresno.
It’s a town 90 minutes from the Pacific Ocean one way, and 90 minutes the other way to Yosemite.
“When I’m home I love to spend time with my family, my daughter loves to fish, you could if you wanted to in the same day stick your toes in the Pacific and later that day stick them in snow in the mountains.”
It’s not a town, or job, that is 90 minutes to any Elite event this year, “Yeah I realize now that there is no way I would have been able to work on the West Coast and fish on the East Coast and Southeast, knew that when I drove to my first Elite event….”
Dig this I Mapquested that trip: 2,750 miles, 38hours of windshield time.
“…you know maybe…”
“…but in the long run…”
Here comes the magic part, exactly 43 days from the day he was fired from his job of 10 years I watched him stand behind the Elite stage in Palatka and sign autographs.
43 days.
I stood back to watch these new guys, I know they know what to do around fish but how will they act around people, around fans, lots of fans, and more importantly, around the kids, the young people who come to see them.
“You know db I’m a huge fan of the San Francisco Giants, been one all my life, one time as a kid I got to meet Will Clark (Giants 1st baseman 1986-93) and he was so nice to me, took the time to talk to me and listen to what I said, I never forgot it.”
I know he didn’t forget it because I saw him with a young fan, I didn’t know it then but I kind of figured there was a “Will Clark” type meeting in his past.
There comes a pause, California now is a couple thousand miles away, Will Clark meeting is a few decades past, two tournaments are under his belt, “You know db, to be honest, when it really hit me, when all of this really hit me was at The Classic…”
“…it was, you know…”
“…just wow…”
“…I’m here you know, just wow, got emotional when I was there…”
I can hear that emotion is still there, “…I wonder a lot…”
“…what if.”
“…there’s still time…”
“Sometimes, I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
What if, how many times have you laid in the dark and thought, “What if.”
What if you zigged instead of zagged, turned left instead of right, got up or stayed in bed, ate right or not.
‘I am here, to be honest, to be honest because of the B.A.S.S. Nation, because of belonging to the B.A.S.S. Nation no “what if’s” about that.”
He means you!
“People come up to me all the time, they tell me if I need to have a place to stay I can stay with them and I don’t even know them. The nation was and is everything to me, I have no idea what I would be doing today, right now, if not for the B.A.S.S. Nation.”
Something this way comes to all of us who leave room for it to come within us.
Maybe, we all question to much what it is exactly that brings us what we need in times of need, when all that may be needed on our part is to be open to the magic that we, and this planet of ours, truly is.
The magic of us isn’t the “abracadabra” of top hats and disappearing pigeons, the magic of us is when we step back, and watch what happens as we master peace within us while making a masterpiece out of all of us including Randy and all the new Elites.
“… to change the road you’re on, and it makes me wonder.”
Stairway to Heaven
Led Zeppelin
db
“Listen to the musn’ts, child, listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me. Anything can happen, child, anything can be.”
Shel Silverstein
Listen to the Musn’ts