“Well, we all have a face…”
Dateline: A steak joint
“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”
– Agatha Christie
The face of this morning will soon change.
It is a black and white face now, darkness and fog it’s makeup.
It is 4:40 a.m., Saturday morning, Okeechobee, Fla., outside my Hampton ground floor room window I can see a white bird roosting in a dark tree, a white moon in the sky backlights the fog on earth.
It is still, even the ever present lizards that scurry everywhere, are gone.
The parking lot light illuminates a drop of dew running down the side of my black truck, the tiny white car next to it is making a dark puddle on the pavement with it’s morning drips.
Seven-point-four miles south of me on the other end of town Tommy Biffle is making one last round of making sure his boat cover is tied down tight, he has just woken up, skipped the morning shower, dressed and with a Gene Larew ball cap pressed tight and square on his head he is pulling slowly out of his motel parking lot, turning left for one-point-two miles, then a right turn north.
In a black and white morning Tommy Biffle will begin his 1,200 mile 18 plus hour drive North to his next tournament, the BASS Central Open on Table Rock.
In a black and white morning Tommy Biffle will leave behind him two Elite tournaments where his average finish was 87th place.
In a black and white morning Tommy Biffle leaves empty handed, hasn’t made a check so far this year.
It is 4:54am now.
All is quiet outside, I can smell the fog seeping around the window sill.
I am alone in my room with only the song in my headphones for company.
My notes from last night’s dinner with Tommy are spread across the creaky Hampton desk, I smile as I pick up the piece of paper numbered 1 and read in a whisper to myself the first question I asked Tommy last night:
“Dude, are you always as grumpy as you look?”
“…that we hide away forever…”
“You play to win the game…Hello. You play to win the game.”
~Herman Edwards
Be yourself, everyone else is taken.
“I ain’t always grumpy, I don’t just naturally smile.”
If Tommy Biffle is anything, he is himself.
I’ve know him for a long time, we both consider each other friends, and I find that fascinating because I tend to see the world in shades of colors, while Tommy tends to see it in black and white.
“Smiling is work.”
I smile as I write that quote down and I didn’t have to work at it.
I’m buying tonight, I’ve made checks this year, Tommy is sitting across from me eating baked French onion soup and pulling the cheese off the bowl with his hands.
“You smile much.”
I’m an inney smile kind of guy, I’m smiling you just don’t see it.
“Some.”
“I got me game face you know and it just never changes.”
A green plate is put down in front of him, rib-eye medium rare, steak fries with ketchup, he picks up a sliced carrot from the relish plate and dips it into the ranch dressing, double dips, I’m eating the black olives he could triple dip for all I care.
Like I said, I know Tommy, know him well enough that if I just sit here and not say anything he will answer a question I haven’t asked.
I dump butter into my baked potato and cut my rib eye, I’m buying Tommy time.
“Nothing wrong with being a private kind of guy is there, you know I love the fans and signing autographs, like most of the guys I fish with but you know it’s competition out here…”
Tommy chews some on the rib-eye.
“…we ain’t weighing in smiles.”
“…and we take them out…”
Tommy has not been weighing in smiles now for some 32 years as a professional angler.
2017 won’t be his year to be in the Classic, missed it by 4 AOY points, but he has made it 19 times, finished 2nd twice and has won 7 tournaments and over $2.2 million dollars.
“Yeah divide those winnings by 32 years see what you come up with.”
I did: $69,800 a year, not rich, not poor, “…take out all your expenses sometimes you up some, sometimes you down some.”
In America that’s pretty much the definition for the Middle Class.
“The competition today is so much tougher, I use to maybe miss two checks a year and that was bad, a decent year was missing just one check, now that’s almost impossible you pretty much can’t count on making even half the checks.”
“So why do you do it.”
A refill of sweet tea is being filled.
“I love the competition, that’s my favorite part I love…”
Suddenly I’m tapped on my shoulder, Tommy stops talking and looks up, I turn and see Bradley Roy and his mom and dad standing next to me, after hugs and hand shakes I tell Tommy that Bradley is fishing his first Classic and, “…you got any advice for him.”
“Well I can’t tell him how to fish but I can tell him this…”
Tommy looks up and Bradley bends down slightly to hear.
“Go to bed early and get over the excitement, it’s just another tournament unless you win, then your whole life will change.”
Bradley smiled.
Tommy did not.
“…and show ourselves…”
“Do whatever you do intensely.”
~ Robert Henri
Tommy is using a fork to swirl his steak fries in ketchup with the hopes of sopping up as much of the tomato stuff per fry that is physically possible.
“So tell me Tommy, what do you do to relax.”
“I don’t.”
I get that, I’m not much into relaxing myself, to much relaxation and I’m pacing looking for something to do, most times when I relax I get in trouble, the crazier stuff is the more relaxed I become.
“I’m pretty intense even when I’m home.”
Home is in Oklahoma where he lives in a house, “that’s partially underground.”
Tommy, now 59 years old, owns a Polaris dealership, Tommy Biffle Lakeside Polaris in Wagoner, Oklahoma. “My wife Sharon pretty much runs the place when I’m gone.”
“How long have you guys been married now.”
“Probably 35 years now, if that’s wrong though I’m going blame that number on you.”
A few years back Sharon had a quadruple bypass surgery and wasn’t in great shape for a bit, so I ask and watch.
For the first time the game face cracks just a bit, “She’s doing okay, tired a lot, tired a lot…”
The ketchup swirling stops.
Family, ain’t a game.
“…when everyone has gone…”
“At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.”
– George Orwell
“What did you want to be when you grew up.”
“A professional angler.”
It took less than a second or two for Tommy to answer that question.
“I always wanted to be a pro angler before I even knew there was such a thing as a pro angler. I grew up within walking distance to 5 ponds around my house, used to walk to them and fish all day, told my childhood buddy back then that I would one day be sitting doing exactly what it is that I’m doing right now.”
Before that Tommy worked construction in Oklahoma, “was a laborer shoveled mud out of ditches building an electric plant, did that 12 hours a day seven days a week.”
Even telling me that he moved his back around some, the memory of digging enough alone to cause a spasm. “Moved out of that to the Ford glass plant, was there 11 years, was a glass handler used a crane to move around big pieces of glass 204 by 140 inches for windows in buildings.”
“It’s competition though that just gets me going. Back in the day I was the Oklahoma State Champion for Archery three or 4 times, I would shoot bows with my friend for 8 to 10 hours a day…”
THIS HERE IS YOUR DON’T DO THIS AT HOME WARNING******
“…me and my buddy to practice we would hold little bitty Dixie cups the long way so the opening faced the archer then we would shoot the arrow right through the cup the other guy was holding.”
AGAIN THIS HERE IS YOUR DON’T DO THIS AT HOME WARNING******
One of his archery buddies is George Dixon who holds multiple world titles in archery and is a inductee in the Oklahoma State Archery Hall of Fame.
Competition, being competitive runs in the family, “My daughter Jennifer, I used to coach he some in softball, took her to some softball pitchers camps, she ended up getting 4 college scholarship offers, took one that was close to home but a new coach came on board with the team, for whatever reason the two of them didn’t see eye-to-eye so she quit playing softball, told me she just wanted to go to school and attend classes like a normal student.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Told her how important it was to stay in school and if she graduated I would buy her a new car.”
“Did she?”
“Yep.”
“Did you?”
“Yep a new Chevy Monte Carlo SS,” and then this from a dad who never went to college, “she graduated and is now a Speech Pathologist…”
“Tell me what’s it like being called…Pappa.”
Pappa is what Dawson and Drew call Tommy.
Dawson is 2.
Drew is 1.
With just the mention of those two names it is no longer a black and white world for Tommy…Tommy Biffle is a grandfather and this is his “Pappa” face:
“…some are satin, some are steel…”
It is all smiles now.
“You know db when my daughter told me she was going to have a baby I didn’t know if I would like it with them being little, I told my daughter I would mess around with them some but really not go all in until they were older.”
“How did that work out for you.”
“Ha…I can’t keep my hands off of them, Dawson is just 2 years old and he already has three fishing poles.”
It is as if I threw a switch, across from me Biffle is suddenly all animated like some sort of Disney animatronic Grandfather.
“I gave him one of my fishing poles, it broke so I cut it in half put a little rubber tip on the top so he wouldn’t hurt hisself and that boy just plays with that all day, we’ve been fishing with it a bunch already.”
In color Biffle is a hoot to watch, his hands are gesturing all over the place, he hasn’t come close to sopping up any more ketchup, both eyebrows now move, sometimes in sync, I write this down exactly in my notes, “…found the dude’s sweet spot.”
And it’s called…Pappa.
“…some are silk and some are leather…”
We all come pre-loaded with a mask that we call, our face.
Some masks more animated than others, some more colorful than others, but still they are masks.
Imagine if every face was the same.
Ever wrinkle matched every other wrinkle.
Dimple for dimple through life.
Eyes all the same.
Lips all the same.
Every pout picture perfect to the pout next door.
What would be our collective face, would it be happy, or sad, calm or angry, if all are behind the same face would we even know what feelings are, could we even tell.
Would it even matter.
And yet, every face we see is a miracle in its subtlety, a miracle in the differences it can evoke, the feelings it conveys without a spoken word.
We don’t have to have different faces, be happy that we do.
Be yourself, everyone else is taken.
Face it.
“…they’re the faces of a stranger.”
The Stranger
Billy Joel
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“It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.”
~Thomas Browne