“It’s a long, long road…”
Dateline: May, 5:15 a.m.
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”
Muhammad Ali
“We heard a crackling.”
It was early morning Barb and Richard were upstairs in their farmhouse bedroom, it was that sleepy time between dreams and reality.
“We heard popping sounds.”
It had rained hard the last couple of days, a 30 mph wind was howling outside.
“Rich told me that someone downstairs was putting wood in the fireplace, it was a cool night…”
The early morning comforting sound of wood crackling and popping, peace on the rolling farmland of central New York.
“But then as he got out of bed I saw him look around, then look at me, and then he took off out of the bedroom and headed downstairs…”
Where the fireplace sat dark.
“Our whole house was lit up orange inside and when I got up and looked out the window I saw that our entire shop was engulfed in flames.”
The “shop” was actually a 130 foot long structure that Richard and his father built 40 feet from the family home over 70 years ago with trees they felled on their land.
“Everything was in there db, all our tools, our new RV camper, our bass boat and all, all of our fishing stuff, rods, reels, tackle, line, everything.”
And then.
“db I had in there 200 years worth of my family’s history…”
The phone went quiet, I could hear breathing, I could hear words start softly and just hang, start again, hang again.
“You know db my grandmother, she kept a diary, every year she wrote in little red books, I had all of them, 60 years worth of her diaries…”
And all of those were ablaze in the shop as well.
“…from which there is no return…”
“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”
Albert Schweitzer
Barb Elliott is the Conservation Director with the New York B.A.S.S. Nation.
She is an LPN, was a medic with her local volunteer fire department, is a tournament angler along with her longtime partner Rich Mattison, has made jewelry for my wife Barb, and is a friend.
A bona fide member of The Family, Of Us.
For those of you new to this, The Family, Of Us are all those people touched by the world of fishing, and who to me are brothers and sisters regardless of age, sex, politics, religion or zip code.
Ms. Elliott has throughout the years dragged me to things I didn’t want to be at, told me things I didn’t want to hear, showed me fishing stuff I didn’t want to see, and each and every time has made me better at this here job.
I’ve watched her crawl under a bass boat and come back out to show me a tiny black dot on her finger, “See db a zebra mussel.” I said “uh huh” even though in truth I though it looked like a birth mark.
Here’s a link to just one of the things Barb does for all of you who fish.
I have watched this caring lady do many things for many people and never ask anything in return.
Now it’s our turn, The Family, Of Us…to return the favor to her.
This is why…
“…while we’re on the way to there…”
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
Charles Dickens
In the early morning light of May 5 this is the scene that Barb and Rich woke up to…
I don’t know if you can make it out but this is what was left of their 1999 bass boat you are looking at it from the back to the front, I can make out the trailer fender…
This is what remains of all the rods and reels they owned, included a busted up favorite yellow rod, only the tip left.
Their minivan and truck and farm equipment…
This the outline of what was left of their truck camper, recently bought, but Rich had yet to spend a night in it.
What you don’t see here though are the freezers that were filled with meat and the products of the farm they live on and work. Those freezers, melted.
What you don’t see here though, and the stuff that Barb, a person of well-known talk-ability, could barely tell me about are the 200-year-old family heirlooms stored in the facility…they haven’t found any of those items.
Think about all of that, remember back in high school/college all that talk about “taking the role of the other,” well…take it.
“…why not share…”
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
Winston Churchill
And the hits, they just keep coming.
The personal family stuff that Barb told me, shocked me when she did, and for the most part will remain between me, her and our maker, as it should be.
$2,500 a month prescription medicine bills for a disease I never heard of until last night.
The constant dance with the insurance company to prove how many and what type of rods, reels, line and tackle they had. Could you do that right now if you woke up to all your fishing stuff…melted?
“I don’t know how many rods we had, you know you are always picking up a rod and a reel from somewhere, all I know is that every rod and reel we had was in that building and there is nothing left of the building…”
I wrote that quote down and was thinking about that, I’m not an avid angler by any means but I’m guessing, GUESSING, I may have a dozen or so rods and reels around the house now after being up to my neck in this gig.
Then Barb added, “…all our tools too, I went to fix something and realized we didn’t even have a screwdriver left from the fire.”
That loss I got.
Now get this, with all of that going on…Thursday through Sunday Barb will be working behind the scenes at the Bass Pro Shops Northern Open on Oneida Lake helping with the fish care and whatever else needs to be done.
And she is doing it as a volunteer.
“…and the load…doesn’t weigh me down at all…”
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
Albert Einstein
As I write this my Barb is asleep in our bedroom next to my office/guest room/junk throwing into spot. Like many folks she falls asleep to the TV, turns it on some channel and is out like a light within minutes and the TV just sort of turns into a nitelite until I come to bed.
I can’t see it from where I’m sitting but I can hear it and as I go over the notes from my interview with Barb Elliott I hear some show about Housewives from wherever.
My Barb and our dog, Riley, also asleep on the bed, are out like a light so this show is playing to no one but me.
The Housewives are fighting about wine, or shoes, or how bad first class service has been. I can’t keep up with the complaining going on but the juxtaposition of that and me scrolling through the fire photos is beyond belief.
I write what comes next not for me, not for you, not for Barb and Rich but for whomever way out in the future may come across this story, judge us not by the complainers, man or woman, we put on the screen, but judge us in what we do behind the scenes for each other.
Take not the easy look at us in the media that may survive us all, but know this, the vast majority of us are just folks who care about one another, even if we do so silently. Know that above all the screams, all the bullets and bombs, all the vehicles driven into crowds, all the cowards in wired vests, that most of us were simply, the kind in man.
And the media doesn’t do shows about that.
I hope you out there in the far flung future can find evidence that we in fact were much better than it seems, much better than what we are made out to be.
I hope, you can.
“…doesn’t weigh me down at all…”
“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
Anne Frank
I know all of us are asked a lot, but if you hold a rod or reel in your hand, or love in your heart, we got us a brother and sister in The Family, Of Us needing help and it may simply come down to our help that makes the difference.
While Barb is volunteering this week at the Open go to this GO FUND ME account that Tom Pavlot Jr. President of the Salt City Bassmasters set up for Barb and Rich, and if you can send some kindness their way: https://www.gofundme.com/barb-elliott-richard-mattison
If in fact you believe that there will be a day of judgment for all of us, believe this as well, it is not what we took that we will be judged on but in fact what we gave that will be the yardstick we will be measured against.
Make your yardstick, stand tall.
“…he ain’t heavy he’s my brother.”
He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother
The Hollies
db
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson