db: My day with Tommy Martin

We are off, morning rounds. “Why just sit life out, db?” I write that quote down. You should too.

At breakfast at the grill Tommy and his wife owns, he stops eating and starts telling me how to “listen to the fish.” I listen to Tommy.

Second stop of the rounds, a local tackle shop. Tommy makes this stop every day. Here he is, sitting and talking with customer Michael Whiteside, who told me, when asked “Where are you from?”, something about two buzzards mating and there he was (I can’t quote him accurately because it would offend most of the free world).

Did you see Tommy’s card by the cash register? He’s a legend guiding the lakes around here.

Back home and in his own “bait store,” which in fact may have more stuff in it than the tackle store we just came from. As I stand back…

…and watch him work on tackle, I can see him on the boat, no wasted movements…

…everything he needs is in it’s place…

I watch as he “fixes the bait for me, works better when I correct it some,” and watch…

…him handle the tools of his trade with the reverence of a carpenter who treasures his old Stanley #1 plane, an auto mechanic with his father’s old Craftsman wrench.

As the day comes to an end, Tommy cleans up, his wife Sheilah told me, “He can’t pass the sink with dirty dishes in it.” I took the over/under of 4 times passed before he did the dishes, Sheilah took 2…she won, and as Tommy heads off to bed…

…I close up my office, what Tommy calls his dinning room, and call it a day, wondering…

…just how many fish Tommy’s old lure has listened to.