There are few times at the poker table that I meet anyone who fishes for bluegill, or brim as they call them in the South.
Most fishermen are not about gathering up large batches of small fish like I do on the little lake I call home in upstate NY.
Tennessee, however, is an exception.
He is a regular at the El Cortez.
He is called Tennessee, but his name is Elvis. It is odd to find he has that name because he was born in 1944 long before the King of Rock and Roll had made his reputation. He was born and raised in Arkansas in a little town named Helena near Moon Lake not far from Tunica.
I don't think he likes the name of Elvis.
Somehow he had Tennessee plates on his vehicle when he drove into Florida as a young man. So they all started to call him Tennessee, and it stuck.
He was a good looking young man in those old days. He brought in photos of the girls he knew then and these were deliciously hot young women. It was hard to see in this thin attractive fellow (standing on some Florida beach with his arm around a hot young bit of stuff) this now old and balding guy with a toothlessly sunken mouth.
But he remembered those old days.
And he remembered those hot young women.
He had lived with one for a while who had two young children. He said losing the children was the hardest part of breaking up with that girl.
He had a couple parrots to entertain the children and one day a parrot climbed under the couch. When Tennessee lifted the couch, the parrot's neck was caught and snapped in the fold-out mechanism.
I asked if the parrots had names, but he had not named them.
Seemed strange to me. Who doesn't name pets?
The rest of his pictures reflected his passion for fishing and hunting. In the photos were large batches of big crappie and brim (bluegill) scattered out on a blanket for the photograph. In others he might be holding a couple of squirrels or standing near a small deer.
His fishing stories included close brushes with water moccasins. One bit his boot. Others he encountered swimming under a dock to fish the brim with his short pole technique.
He used a two foot pole and hardly any line and just flicked the bait into small holes and brought up the brim by the dozens.
Other times he used a popper bug with two flies attached and might catch three brim at one time. Even after two were hooked, he might give the popper bug a bit of action and catch a third.
Other bait included gar tongue and larva from a wasps' nest. He had been stung often gathering the larva.
Once he caught seven brim on one cricket, skillfully dicing the cricket into small pieces. Dealer Karen said she has heard that story a million times.
I asked him about eating gar, but he claimed they were nasty, and just as he would never eat carp, he would never eat them. They were below his cuisine.
I told him that a fishing guide in Florida had said they were like lobster. Jerry to my right suggested that it had to do with the water temperature. If the water was cool, then the gar was fine. That would make sense. Homosassa gar would always be in 72 degree water, not cold but not the heated temperature of a summer Arkansas lake. It seemed odd that generations could live and fish for food in a place but not sample certain fish as below their quality.
I told Tennessee about the delicious taste of smoked carp and others agreed, but he was having none of that either.
He also was not buying that yellow perch were the better tasting fish. I did not make an argument for walleye, but Jerry had fished those in Lake Erie where my father had also fished them, and he knew the quality of those walleye tastes.
Tennessee was talkative and friendly, but he fit that category of people Yogi Berra referred to:
"Some people, if they don't already know, ya can't tell them."
Tennessee was not there to listen to stories, but to tell them.
Jerry, a regular who heard his fishing stories often agreed that he just did not listen to other people's experiences.
However, Tennessee's face did light up with envy when I mentioned my live well out under my dock for storing live fish until they were ready for the table.
His grandmother put the cleaned brim in plastic milk jugs with water and froze them in the freezer.
They were always cooked the same way, with a corn meal batter. He was not interested in hearing about the new cookbook I found in Florida or even about my mother's manner of frying them in just flour, and he really lost interest when I mentioned my new recipes for making pickled bluegill, one picked up in a magazine on the airplane.
Tennessee had known women and he had some fine stories, but his imagination in some ways was narrowly focused.
In Arkansas, Tennessee had gigged for frogs at night and eaten the legs. "Like chicken." he said as do all frog leg eaters.
He had once killed four mallards with one shot, but he did have to hit one with the gun barrel that was only wounded, so he did not know if he could honestly claim shooting four on one shot.
And he had killed two squirrel with one shot when they were "kissing."
His father had killed a rattle snake that had 26 rattles.
I saw a photo of his father with a squirrel. He talked about his father but never about his mother, only his grandmother.
Once when he was very young, Tennessee and a sibling collected all colors of paint and decided it would be a good idea to paint his father's car. Dad wasn't too pleased and the kids were severely punished so that they never tried that again.
To play poker and talk about bluegills has got to be perfect table selection for me even if I did tend to lose money this trip at the El Cortez poker room.
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