An Excerpt from the Book, “Life and Times of the Pool Hall Kid.”

                                                       Lane Davis

An Excerpt from the Book, “Life and Times of the Pool Hall Kid.”

       In the 60’s, Houston Missouri had a weekly newspaper called the Houston Herald. The owner and editor was a man I got to know well. His name was Lane Davis.  I started guiding float fishermen at a young age, in an old wooden johnboat, and Lane was one of my clients.  He liked floating the Roubidoux  River  over by  Plato.  It was a small river with much more water back then than it has now, some deep eddies and lots of smallmouth, goggle-eye and black perch (green sunfish).  Lane was a good fishermen and he always caught lots of fish.

        I was 13 in the summer of ‘61, a troubled youngster who hated school, rich people, teachers and most all of the kids I went to school with. I was at a dangerous crossroads in my life.  I took my .22 pistol to school that fall to shoot a 15-year-old bully. I came close to using it, and I still sweat a little at the memory of that.  I wasn’t a mean or cruel kid, but I had been convinced I was worthless and without any ability. My grades were low, and I had no size or athleticism. I only wanted to be in my dad’s pool hall or alone in the woods or on the river.  Everywhere else there was conflict. 

       Lane Davis was one of three men that helped salvage a young life and get me through that awful time.

       Floating the river in the spring of ‘64, Lane convinced me I could write!  Then he said if I would write stuff about the outdoors he would publish it in the Herald.  The first few columns I wrote for the newspaper was entitled, “Summer on the Piney.”  That was the first one or two of nearly 6,000 newspaper columns to come over the next 63 years, outdoor columns published in more than 200 newspapers in five states.

       The week I graduated, at 21 years of age, I was hired as the outdoor editor for the Arkansas Democrat, the states largest newspaper out of Little Rock.  Lane Davis was my lone reference, and the only one I needed. The pay then, in 1970 was 509 dollars per month plus travel expenses.  I thought I was the luckiest man alive. 

       At M.U. when I was only 19, I wrote a manuscript about one of those old johnboats dad had built we called Ol’ Paint.  I had been reading Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazines in our pool hall since I was 12 years old and I told my friends I was writing that article for Outdoor Life Magazine.   No one believed that that huge magazine would even consider it, including me. I was a kid wanting to be a writer, reaching for the stars.

              There is still an old Underwood typewriter in a storage closet in my office that belonged to my new wife, in 1970 who had been the secretary to the vice president of McDonnell Douglas Aircraft in St.Louis.  At only 18 years old she could type 110 words a minute on that old manual typewriter.  She typed that manuscript and I sent it to the editor of the largest outdoor magazine in the world.  A letter came back in the next couple of weeks from editor William Rae, saying that Outdoor Life was pleased to receive it and with my permission they would publish it and pay me 1500 dollars. I nearly fainted! 

       The ‘Old Paint’ article was published in Outdoor Life in1972 and that year it was chosen to be the only outdoor story published in a NewYork book entitled “The Best Sport Stories of 1972” It was also published years later in a 500 page anthology entitled, “The Best of Outdoor Life.” It had about 75 articles chosen from magazines covering 1890 thru 2000. I could scarcely comprehend mine being one of them.

       What I remember about that latter book was articles in with mine were written by Zane Grey, Archibald Rutledge, Jack O’Connor, Edwin Way Teale, James Oliver Curwood and dozens of other legendary outdoor writers. That first year out of college, as the new outdoor editor of the Arkansas Democrat, I began to sell articles to Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, Sports Afield and several west coast outdoor magazines put out by Petersen’s Publishing company. In the next ten years I sold articles to more than 60 outdoor magazines. One of those magazine articles,  some written in only an hour or so, would pay me 2  to 3 times my monthly salary for the Democrat.

       Today the  Houston Herald still uses my column each week, a self-syndicated outdoor column which is used in about 40 or so newspapers in 3 states.  I hope that somewhere in heaven Lane Davis knows that and how important those fishing trips were on the Roubidoux. On those trips he helped a hapless, confused kid become a successful naturalist and outdoor writer.