when I was very young, maybe 11 or 12 years old, my dad got a little angry with me, just before Christmas. it was over a report card that said I was just average, almost all Cs. Dad didn’t want me to be average. he was always afraid that’s what he was — ordinary and average! he would have given anything to go to high school. No Dablemont had yet finished high school, and he was afraid I wouldn’t, because I was so carried away with hunting and fishing, and those old timers in the pool hall, that I didn’t do my homework. I was supposed to go to work after school at the pool hall he and my grandfather owned, and spend some of the time there doing homework on a big chest-type soda machine that really did make a good desk. I used it to read the outdoor magazines and write stories. Dad was beside himself that time just before Christmas when those report cards were issued. he shifted his pipe and told me the way it was. “Stop writing those darned stories,” he said. “do you think writing stories is ever going to get you anywhere in this world? You are going to wind up working at a factory like I have had to do, because all you want to do is read these danged magazines and write stories.” he didn’t know then what I would do with that urge to write, and the wonderful gift he gave me by putting me in a pool hall with old men who became my closest friends, and helped me to see the difference between intelligence and wisdom. I had tunnel vision at the time. all I could see was the river and the woods; and the experiences those old men related, there on the front bench, was akin to the moose hunting stories I read in those outdoor magazines. and I hated school, because if anyone was indeed less than average, it was me. it seemed as if every teacher knew it. I was the pool hall kid, and in all those years of high school, I never once attended a football game or a social event. I spent all my spare time on the river, and all my working time in that pool hall from the age of 11 to my final year in high school. You couldn’t get anymore ordinary than me, and I guess Dad saw himself in me. Dad had to work at a shoe factory during the day. Grandpa and I ran the pool hall until he came home and had supper, then came in to take over. he didn’t make much money. how did a dad who would tell a boy who was to make his living as a writer not to write, influence that youngster in a positive way? well, you just had to know my dad. As fathers go, he wasn’t special. he was indeed a common man, ordinary, with all kinds of faults, like other men. But to me, he was the greatest man in the world. he knew, that Christmas, how much I wanted a nice bicycle, but we didn’t have that kind of money. I rode around on a little second-hand bike someone had given me, a tiny little thing with wheels not much bigger than 15 inches across. If I sat on the seat, my knees kept me from seeing the road! There was a big red and silver bike with 26-inch wheels at the local hardware store, but I never dreamed I could have it. it was for looking at and dreaming. If I had that bike, I could tie my shotgun or fishing rod to the handle bars and ride it down to the river and hunt squirrels and rabbits, or go all the way to Mrs. Kelly’s place, borrow her old johnboat and fish ’til dark. I know that dad figured out a way to buy that bicycle by making some extra money at the pool hall, instigating a snooker league from October to Christmas, charging each entrant a fee to join, and buying three nice trophies which sat in the pool hall to make everyone’s mouth water. we had some great snooker players, Junior Blair, Garnett Sliger, Shorty Evans, Jerald Jeffries, and a dozen others. But my dad played snooker all the time, and he was better than anyone. he had the game reduced to a kind of science, and he could do things with a cue stick and a billiard ball that would amaze anyone. Still, the game didn’t always come down to who was the best. that league attracted better than 20 of the best shots in our county, and a dozen or so who weren’t so good, but loved to play. it came down to those men I named and my dad, and during the middle of December, he just really seemed to lose his touch. he was out of it by the time the last rounds were played, and I think Garnett Sliger came in first. I could hardly stand it. My dad was the very best, and he didn’t win. I tried to console him one night when we closed the pool hall and I stood there looking at those trophies, with the town Christmas lights shining through the window. There would be next year, I said. That’s when he stopped brushing the table and shifted his pipe and made sure I understood something. “I own this place, and I play free all I want. how would it look if I put on a big tournament and won it?” My mouth fell open as I asked, “You mean you didn’t try.” Dad shook his head. “I didn’t say that, a man should always do his best. I just knew I wasn’t going to win, because I want these other guys to do well. They are my friends, I don’t mind seeing them win. when it came down to one shot making the difference in a game, I just let them make the shot instead of me.” then he made sure I was listening, as he went on. “I guess there are times you win by losing. You’ll see that as you grow older. If you know you are good enough, if you yourself know you are the best, that is all you need. You don’t need to prove it to anyone else. and even if you aren’t the very best at anything, and you do your very best, that is enough. I have known some great men, the men I admire the most, who just kept on trying, who never quit, and they never were first at anything. But they were satisfied with their efforts because they did their very best. Someday the kind of man you are will be far more important than what you accomplish. I don’t know a whole lot, but I know that.” Dad spent a lot of years taking me hunting and fishing, and he didn’t always teach me a great deal by what he said. he taught me more by what he did. I watched and learned. he was something special, to me. I got that beautiful bicycle on Christmas morning, because of that snooker league in the preceding fall. I had it for years and years, and nearly wore it out riding it to the river. and I have thought about it most every Christmas since. Dad passed away on Father’s Day this past year, but he will be with our family this Christmas, you can count on it. Only nine years after I got my bike, my dad was so proud to see my first outdoor article in Outdoor Life, with a story about him and me and an old johnboat we used. it won a national award as the best outdoor story in 1972 and was published in a new York book of award winning sports stories. As for me, I have never been first in anything, still only average and ordinary and happy being that way. But back when I was a kid, I was ahead of everyone in one category. I had the best bicycle in the whole world, and the best dad!
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