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Married my childhood sweetheart Kati (Kerksieck) in 1968, but as happens so often, it didn't work. I'll skip the gory details, but there have been five, count 'em, five, since, but it looks like this one's finally gonna take.
I've had more jobs than a temporary secretary, seems like. Went to school at the University of Arkansas for two years, intending to be a chemical engineer and set the world on fire, until I discovered I didn't like chemistry and vice versa. Transferred to LSU with Mike Ross, who had also discovered he wasn't cut out to be an engineer, and we both eventually yanked our GPAs up and got degrees in forestry/wildlife management. Mike went on to grad school, but I returned to Stuttgart and worked for Riceland Foods at the bean plant for seven years. I was a shift supervisor in the oil division when I left there to go to Louisiana as a soybean marketing specialist for LA Farm Bureau. That lasted three years, until I figured out I didn't much like dealing with a bunch of whiny farmers who agonized over whether to sell their beans for $6.02 or hold out for $6.03.
I came back to Stuttgart and (a) drove an 18-wheeler for a year, (b) worked for Henry Peacock at his Texaco distributorship for a year and (c) was sports editor at the Daily Leader for a year.
In 1983, I went to work for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission as a writer-slash-public relations guy-slash-biologist-slash-anthill stomper, and although my penchant for calling an idiot an idiot kept me on the ragged edge of getting fired for the whole time I worked there, I managed to put in my 20 years and took early retirement as soon as I could after turning 55.
My wife Jill (she's from south Mississippi) and I bought this place up here in God's Country toward the end of that 20 years, and we moved up here full-time when I pulled the plug at AGFC. We live on a 40-acre inholding in the middle of the Ozark National Forest, with deer, bears and turkeys in the yard and the nearest human neighbor almost two miles away. That's not far enough, but we make do.
We're ten minutes from the trout water of the upper White River, and we get out there 50 days a year, minimum.
Meanwhile, through all of that turbulent employment and marital stuff, I started writing magazine articles and newspaper outdoor columns about 1976 or so. I gradually built it up into a decent-paying second job, and it's now my "day" job. Never got around to writing that Great American Novel, but I have written five books on various outdoor subjects, and am working on a couple more right now.
I've published more than 2,000 magazine features and 2,000 weekly newspaper columns, mostly on traditional hook-and-bullet topics but also some "soft" outdoor stuff like travel, camping, hiking, canoeing, birding and so forth. I'm currently Executive Editor of Trapper & Predator Caller Magazine and a Field Editor for Turkey & Turkey Hunting magazine. Jill is an outdoor writer, too, and she and I collaborate on an outdoor column we self-syndicate to several Arkansas newspapers, although that market is about to dry up as newspapers continue to pinch pennies in this tough economy.
So anyway, here we sit in the Ozarks, feeding our deer and bears and turkeys (and eating one of them every once in a while, too.) We travel a lot in the spring and fall, chasing various critters all over the country from south Florida to Maine and from the East Coast to the Rockies, gathering material for writing the magazine articles that pay our bills.
Sometimes we wonder what the po' folks are doing.
