By Larry Dablemont

sports@joplinglobe.com

I don’t want to make anyone real awful mad here but I can’t tell you the name of one politician running for anything that I would want to go fishing with. The whole bunch of them seems a sorry lot to me.

The ones who have won and the ones who didn’t win, I put them all in the same sack. But then, what do I know about politics? If I had caught any fish this past week I’d be writing about that.

I once shook Harry Truman’s hand, and I have to admit that I was impressed with him, even though I was only about six at the time. I also liked Ronald Reagan a lot. I can’t remember much about his presidency, as the hunting and fishing was extremely good back then and I was in the woods quite often, somewhat confused about current events. But I really liked Ronald Reagan in those Western movies he made after he got out of politics.

I have read some things about Teddy Roosevelt that makes me think he was a lot like me, since he liked to hunt and fish so much and float rivers, and did some outdoor writing. He and I looked very much alike too. But of course my favorite president will always be Abe Lincoln, who had two things no president or even presidential candidate will ever have again. He was poor, and he was honest.

Earlier in my life I too was poor and honest, and as a matter of fact I am still relatively poor, and I am being honest about that.

My favorite politician was Davy Crockett. He and I were so much alike that it is just amazing, except for the fact that he did get into politics, becoming a Tennessee congressman. My cousins and I watched him on Walt Disney when we were kids, and if you think I wasn’t influenced by him, you should know there is a big sycamore along the Big Piney River with the inscription carved in it.. “L. Dablemont kilt a groundhog here.” There were no bears in the Ozarks when I was a kid, which wound up being an unfortunate thing for that groundhog.

Crockett was loved by his constituents, just as I am loved by my readers, except for a few ladies who got mad about that recent article concerning female bass.

Crockett was for the downtrodden and forgotten poor country people he grew up amongst. He sacrificed his political career to stand against legislation, which would take land away from the Indians the government had promised to them through treaties only a few years before.

That makes him a better man, in my mind, than anyone you will find in Congress today. He was honest, and he thought of others before himself, and he would not put money above all else. Those traits are not found in people in political office today.

Crockett said, “to heck with politics if it means I have to go back on my word,” and he rode off to Texas and into history where, as I understand it, he went down fighting a bunch of illegal immigrants from Mexico. I would have loved to have fished and hunted with Davy Crockett, or Abe Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt, and would love to vote for someone today with just a whisker of their character.

I might ought to exclude Hillary Clinton from any derogatory comments about modern politicians, in light of the fact that several lady readers got so upset about that recent column about female bass, as I mentioned. And yes it is true that I have a picture of me and Hillary Clinton, taken back when I lived in Arkansas, but it was her that wanted it took, not me.

She was one of those ladies that read my column and wanted to learn more about hunting and fishing. There was nothing between us, and all those rumors are just nothing more than idle gossip.

Uncle Norten has been guiding a lot recently on the river for a fellow who cannot cast well, but catches some dandy bass on rubber lures like flukes and tube baits, just by dipping them along and around rocks and logs in places below shoals where bass lurk. He has a long rod and my uncle says he just paddles him in close to good looking spots and the fisherman gets his rod bent considerably and often without making much of a cast ever.