I have loved fishing since I was a kid. One of the highlights of my spring every year was my parents taking me to Springfield for the Bass Pro Shops Spring Fishing Classic. There, I would get to meet some of my heroes and even learn from them.
One of those heroes was Bill Dance. Another was Larry Nixon. You might not know him by name, but I sure did. For many years, Larry Nixon was the all-time money winner in the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society.
So, for a 12-year-old boy from central Arkansas, he was larger than life. And for me, there were another connection or two that most people didn’t have. Larry Nixon was from central Arkansas himself, and to top that off, he had dated my Aunt Kaye for a while before she married my uncle. So he actually knew my father, and I was excited as we arrived at his table, thinking I might get a much more personal experience than the average kid at a fishing seminar.
I will never forget the few minutes we spent there at his table. He signed my Bass Pro hat as he and Pops exchanged pleasantries. It was also the occasion of one of the cruelest realizations of my young life, and it started with a simple question. Dad simply asked Larry how he was doing. Larry responded in a way I will never forget. He said, “Monty, I am miserable. I hate this job. I hate fishing. It’s not fun anymore.”
I can’t tell you how much impact those words had on me as a boy. It was the first time in my life I realized you could do the very thing you wanted to do in life and learn to hate it. I don’t know what all his reasons were, but since he is still fishing today, I really hope he recaptured his joy and the fun of it. One shouldn’t have to spend so many years doing something he hates.
I have been thinking a lot these past couple of months about Barry Brown, our brother. I have tried not to dwell on him being gone, but instead to embrace the things he taught me in the short time I was privileged to know him. And one of the things I knew almost immediately about Barry was that he had fun in the things he did, from helping others to farming to writing.
And I think if he were here today, he would tell us to find the joy and the fun in writing. So many things in life we do because we must. We pay bills. We keep deadlines. We go to weddings and funerals. We work jobs we don’t really like just to get by day to day. But writing should never become just another obligation.
