When I was in high school, I dreamed of someday being a game warden. Much of that came from having an old agent around by the name of Bland Wilson, a great outdoorsman and a good man who was dedicated to the cause of conservation. He was replaced by a younger fellow whom I got to know a little bit, and though it was tough for him to come in and take over for a legend like Bland Wilson, he did a very good job of gaining respect in the Big Piney country. His name was Ron Roellig, and he was a throwback to the kind of "game warden" the Ozarks needed, a far cry from what the job has become today.
I never dreamed I'd get the opportunity to go to college, but somehow God made it possible for me to be accepted at School of the Ozarks, despite my poor grades. S of O of course was a college where very poor kids could be assigned a campus job and work their way through. An old-time Conservation Commission employee by the name of A.R. Mottesheard had retired and became the conservation and natural resource professor there at S. of O. I was fortunate that Mr. Mottesheard saw something of value in me, and took me under his wing. I also was lucky to become the right hand man of Dr. M. Graham Clark, the president of the college. My job on campus was to work at his home and directly for him.
I worked 22 hours a week to pay for my education, and went home on weekends to guide float fishermen on the Piney to make spending money. Dr. Clark knew I had a fishing guide's license at only 17 years of age, and so he gave me a very important assignment. The school had property and a boat on Table Rock Lake, at a beautiful place known as Clevenger Cove. Late that first summer, we had a visit from a prospective donor by the name of Nettie Marie Jones, and she wanted to go fishing. Dr. Clark, of course was trying to get her to donate millions for a new learning center there on the campus, and he asked me if I thought I could help her catch a nice fish or two.
I didn't think there was a chance in the world of that old lady catching a good fish, but I wasn't about to tell Dr. Clark that. We took her to Clevenger Cove and I gave her a rod and reel that came from Dr. Clarks tool shed. The reel was a Shakespeare 1777 Wondercast, which I have here in my office today. I tied on a black plastic worm, showed Ms. Jones how to cast it, and paddled the two of them around Clevenger Cove in an old v-bottom aluminum boat.
While she and Dr. Clark talked finances, I prayed. Apparently the prayers worked because suddenly that rod bent, and Ms. Jones nearly had it jerked from her hands. She began to crank away, and about 20 yards out a five-pound bass jumped out of the water. We had no net, it is a miracle that I landed it by hand long before she had taken the fight out of him, and I have never seen anyone happier than the two of them were that evening. Today there is a big classroom building on the S of O campus known as the Nettie Marie Jones Learning Center, and I like to think I had a part in getting it done. Dr. Clark gave me the rod and reel, and told me he had no doubt I was the world's greatest fishing guide.
Of course I got the key to the gate and the boat, and friends and I would sneak off to Clevenger Cove often, and catch good strings of bass. I would put them in Dr. Clark's freezer, and he would eat them from time to time, but there were always lots of bass there when I found the opportunity to fry some. So the spring of my sophomore year, after I turned 18, I took three of my friends back to spend a weekend on the Big Piney. One of them was my roommate, Jay Johnson, whom many Ozarkians know today as Woody P. Snow, a Springfield radio station personality and tremendous songwriter and musician. Years later Jay wrote a number one song named "Rocky" which Bobby Goldsboro recorded.
On Friday evening, we were all sitting up camp on a Piney River gravel bar and I was frying some of those Tablerock bass I had brought along, when Ron Roellig pulled his canoe up and got out to check our licenses. I was happy to see him, and we joked about how lucky I was to still be in college with my well-deserved reputation as a poor student during those years at Houston High School. Then Ron pointed out to me that I was frying some nice bass, and that the bass season was a month away, there on the Piney.
It all hit me like a broad-sided swipe from a sassafras paddle, and my friends said I just sort of turned pale. I sunk to my knees beside that frying pan, and tried to explain that the bass had come from Tablerock Lake. Roellig did not smile... he knew I was in a pickle, with my hopes to someday become a game warden on the line. He told me later that he knew we had just put in the river and didn't have time to do any fishing, so he knew they weren't river bass. But he gave me a little lecture about thinking of the letter of the law and using my brain with the same effectiveness with which I used my boat paddle. He even stayed and ate some fish with us, so I could be sure and get rid of the evidence.
Ron knew when someone was guilty of committing a violation, and when they were guilty of an oversight or a technical violation in which there was no illegal intent. Two years later, I was a student about to graduate from the University of Missouri, and I was a member of the campus Wildlife Club. I took about thirty of those fisheries and wildlife management students on a float trip on the Piney, and most of those kids were from the city, with little practical outdoor knowledge or experience. Roellig came floating along, and we had a long talk. I was glad to see him, we had become good friends by then. Come to find out that upriver behind me, he had caught the president of the club with an 8-inch smallmouth on a stringer, with bass season closed.
"He thought it was a goggle-eye", Ron said with a wry smile. "You need to stop down here somewhere on a gravel bar and go over fish identification with these kids."
Ron allowed him to release the bass, and gave him a stern lecture something like he had given me a couple of years before. Technically, he had him. But it was a different time, and conservation agents then were cut from different cloth.
I don't know where Ron Roellig is today, I never saw him after I left Missouri to work in Arkansas. But if someone out there knows him, tell him I think about him often. He made a strong impression on a kid who always dreamed of being a game warden, but never quite made it. Too bad they have forgotten the things he and Bland Wilson knew.
Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net and connect to the website through www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com
Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. —
