Over The Edge

Travels stir nostalgic yearnings

The Bass Edge boys have been out and about lately. It’s that time of year. The last two trips were sandwiched around less than 18 hours at home to wash clothes, repack, kiss the wife and pet the dog before heading back out.

For this former Texan, it took a bit of the sting off of being away from home that much of my travel of late has been to Texas. The first such stop was Fort Worth. Matt Wilson, who shoots video and does countless other chores for the project, joined me to a trip down to the Texas Motor Speedway. It was my first NASCAR experience. I’d always just thought of this form of racing as cars going in a circle, but I came out of the weekend with a whole new appreciation for the sport.

It’s the fans that I enjoyed the most. They like their beer and motor homes. Offer up some free stuff like T-shirts and Mother’s cleaning products, and they get down right friendly.

A few folks asked me if I was Aaron Martin, which was disturbing news to our host. “Yeah,” I kidded, “I’ve gained a few pounds and started combing my hair down.” Then I laughed and said something like: “No, he’s vacationing in the Bahamas.”

“No, no …” I quickly corrected. Aaron was really off taking care of other chores. There are no days off at Bass Edge. The union rumblings have yet to get any traction in the organization.

While in Fort Worth, I had to show my young friend a bit of Texas, so we went to Joe T. Garcias for a Mexican dinner and walked through the stockyards to Billy Bob’s, the world’s largest honky tonk. I told Matt I was really disappointed that the bull riding competition wasn’t until the weekend. I would have liked to have shown off my rodeo skills. Yes, that’s right; I was once a bull rider for about three seconds.

After Fort Worth, it was time to point the truck toward Caddo Lake in East Texas. We picked up Aaron at the airport in Dallas and headed to our first shoot for the 2009 season. Caddo is basically a huge cypress swamp. Some of the camera crew had expressed a bit of trepidation about snakes, so I had great fun taking the Spanish moss off the trees, sneaking up behind them and letting it tickle the back of their neck. We have fun at Bass Edge, but that particular trickery was more entertaining to me than to them.

Caddo was cool; you are all going to enjoy that show a lot.

Then: four whole days at home!

But it wasn’t really that hard hitting the road again, because we were heading to my old haunts near Lake Fork. The Toyota Bass Classic is a big tournament put on by the Professional Anglers Association. Aaron, Producer Don Hertz and I joined our good friends from Ditch Witch in a booth and enjoyed our time there and away from the event, separating once and for all who could play horseshoes and who couldn’t. I consider my game a success if nobody gets injured.

Texas music icon Robert Earl Keen was one of the performers at the event, so we purchased a CD of his to get in the spirit of things. Most of us in the truck knew the words, and we all sang along .“ … We need some celery and a can of fake snow …”

We’re all about music at Bass Edge. The BamaJam, which we will all be at in June, is a perfect fit, with bands like ZZ-Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Williams Jr. “… We’re just carrying on an old family tradition.”

I saw a bunch of family and old friends in Texas – did a lot of hugging. I was getting a bit nostalgic. I was missing Texas.

On the way home I introduced the brilliant idea of constructing a Bass Edge complex on the shores of Lake Fork and moving the business to Texas. Aaron first pointed out that there wasn’t room in this year’s budget for a complex. Then he made reference to families, homes, roots, etc.

As we got closer to the Ozarks, the Texas pull faded. Seeing my girls – my wife Kathy and Maggie, the world’s most spoiled dog – put me right again.

We had and overnight turnaround before we left again for Indiana’s Lake Patoka for the second shoot of the year. Southern Indiana turned out to be beautiful – the dogwoods and red buds were blooming, the turkeys gobbling and the bass were on the beds. We stayed on the gorgeous Wilstem Ranch, its rolling hills much like the best of the Ozarks.

On the way home, we played the Robert Earl Keen CD. Aaron loves my singing, so I sang right along. “… The road goes on forever and the party never ends.”

I thought about what a cool job we have, getting to go to all these neat places – and all of the great areas yet experience for this year’s shooting. But in the back of my mind I was cooking up a return to Texas in the near future.