Cafeoutdoors.com: With great sadness.....

I suppose I've cried enough for my friend that I can now sit and write something for him.....although as I try to collect my thoughts I find the tears still dripping off my cheeks.

I can't add anything to what you folks have written about him as a man......one of a kind, no fake in him, always told you what he thought, and on and on. You knew him the same as me. Still, I'm luckier than most of you because I got the pleasure of spending so much time with him in a duck blind, or a boat, or a truck.

I don't know what draws two men together and forms a bond that makes them want to spend as much time as they can with each other, but whatever it is, John and I had it. I guess I could say that it was simply killing ducks, but in the last 3 years we'd mostly just sit together in a duck blind knowing there was no way in hell we'd kill anything ....though I don't remember a day when we were getting ready that Foots hadn't said, "this could be the day we flogulate them"....and then we'd go sit and "flogulate" a flask or two of brandy and watch the world go by.....not a duck in sight.

I wouldn't know where to start if I had to tell a story behind every laugh we shared......but I can tell one of hardest laughs we ever had. Maybe 10 years ago we were on our way to Arkansas on one of those all night drives that starts at midnight and ends in a duck blind. As we were prone to do back then we enjoyed a few beers on the drive....road sodas he called them. Just across the Arkansas line we got lit up by a State Trooper as we rolled along. A beer in his hand, one in the cup holder, and a few empties in a bag at his feet. This was going to end badly. Foots looked at me, wide eyed, and said, "what do we do n*@%*r?" Hell, that crazy bastage was still drinking his....trying to finish it before we went to jail, or at least hide the bottle when it was empty. As I heard the troopers door close I said, "when he gets up here, start clucking like a chicken.".......foots spit beer out of his nose, across the dash and windshield, and down his sweatshirt. When the man got to my window I was broke up laughing and then Foots goes, "BA-GOCK!!!!!". Game over......I can't even talk to the guy....and he starts laughing too. We had a bit of a conversation about where we were going, the beer in the truck, how many we'd had, and what was so damn funny. In the end we were on our way with a warning about driving too fast and being stupid.......we cried laughing.

I bet we put a hundred thousand miles on our trucks hunting in Missouri, "HomeofToto", North Dakota, Texas, Illinois, Arkansas, and once in either Tennessee or Kentucky on a Mississippi river swollen 30 feet over flood stage. I lived for the next trip him and I would take. We were "road dogs"....the best of friends.

Last season was spent like the prior two. John's commitment to his wife in her failing health and my own obligations to my son's athletic endeavors rendered us unable to take another trip. Still, on the days we could go, we'd sit in that pisshole of a blind he had. My view of the world from the eyes of my own career is not always a good one, but it always looked fine when I looked to my left in that blind. I don't know if I'll ever again know of a place where I felt more comfortable and content.....and it had nothing to do with the place.

We like to say that, as duck hunters, we get one great hunting dog in a lifetime, and I believe that's true....hell, we all know it is. I think maybe we get one great hunting partner too....the fella you can just sit next to and enjoy whatever a day may bring. I know I'll never have another like Foots.

I miss John terribly after barely 24 hours. I don't know what feelings duck season may bring, but I am comforted by knowing that there was nothing left unsaid between us. Foots knew I loved him because I told him I did...and I'll miss him for the rest of my days.

RIP my good friend....you will be dearly missed by many.

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"The Irish are one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." - Sigmund Freud