Confessions of a selfish jerk

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By Don Barone
Bassmaster.com


"We're one, but we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other
One"
One
U2

Dateline: Montgomery, Ala., Room 306

The universe consists of two simple facts:

Universe Fact 1: If you are talking while you are ironing, whatever it is that you are saying is the truth.


Universe Fact 2: Love Wins.

So when I walked into Mark Menendez's hotel room to do an interview for the Toyota Trucks Championship Week and found him ironing, I scrounged around my briefcase for some journalist long-skinny note paper, stole his hotel room pen and waited for the truth-telling that would be coming my way.

Didn't have to wait long. Maybe give or take a crease or two:

"DB, I used to be a complete, selfish jerk."

To hell with the tape recorder, from now on I'm bringing an ironing board to every interview.

As he is ironing, he is taking the sales tag off the pants. His new socks are still stuck on those crazy little hangers that the retail giants stick them on ... so you can hang your socks up?

Mark has on shorts, a sponsor T-shirt, a sponsor baseball cap, and is holding what seems to be a sponsorless iron.

When he talks, the iron glides to a complete stop, cotton-iron setting blazing away on the new polyester pants.

During our 45-minute interview, he irons one pair of new pants, one golf shirt that looked kind of new, and almost a pair of socks. I knew when he absent-mindedly put the socks on the ironing board that he was talking from his heart.

We talked about his wife, Donna, his two young children, 4-year-old Max and 5-year-old Caroline. We talked about his life-threatening illness, and we talked about what he once was, "a selfish jerk."

And during this perma-press moment, I watched and listened as he turned into a selfless man.

"Do you sell fish?"


If you don't have baby burp stains on your shirt, you could be a selfish jerk.


Mark Menendez

If you get out of the house on time in the morning and your socks match, you could be a selfish jerk.

If your shower doesn't have lotion stuff that smells like daisies or "Morning Dew in Spring" dripping off your shower holder, you could be a selfish jerk.

Mark Menendez had none of these, ergo, he was a confirmed selfish jerk. For 38 years. "It was just me and my dog Barkley ... and the dog pretty much took care of himself," he said.

"I didn't get married until I was 38."

"He was 39," Donna, his wife back in Paducah, Ky., told me when I called her after the interview to check some selfish jerk facts.

"We actually knew each other since the second grade ... went all through school together, graduated together, but after graduation I didn't see the guy for 20 years," she said.

Normally at this point I would start calling them "childhood sweethearts," except for the one small fact that they weren't.

Donna married someone else.

Mark got a dog.

I'm sort of fast-forwarding through their life here, but after high school graduation, Mark becomes a pro fishing guy, and Donna moves to France.

Then the universe stepped in via coach seating.

Somehow, an airline not known for actually getting your luggage to the same place as the lug-ee, manages to sit them TOGETHER, like right next to each other. Two people that COULD HAVE BEEN childhood sweethearts when in fact neither of those said people at that time in their lives had any sweethearts at all.

Go figure.

"So I'm coming back from living in France and I'm on this plane to Paducah, Ky.," Donna said, "and who is sitting next to me but my old friend from childhood, Mark, so we start talking."

Turns out, this plane flight is exactly one month before their high school's 20th class reunion.

Go figure.

"Mark asks if I'm going to go to the reunion, and I said I was," Donna said, "and then he asks if I would be going with anyone to it, and I said I wasn't, and I find out he was going to go, and go alone as well, so we decided why don't we go together."

Just so you know, Mark never told me any of this and is probably reading along now to his horror.

"During the flight I asked Mark what he does, you know what he does for a living, and he told me he was a professional fisherman," Donna said. "So I says to him, that's very nice, so you sell fish to all the local restaurants?"

That right there is the first sign of the wheels coming off a selfish jerk.

"Well, in the month leading up to the 20th reunion, Mark and I decide to get together to better know each other," Donna said, "and when he comes over to my house that first time he brings with him a whole bunch of bait, bass fishing magazines, and Googles himself to show me that he doesn't actually sell fish to area restaurants."

A year later, they were married.

Go figure.

Something selfless this way comes


"It felt like someone had stuck a dagger into the base of my skull and the point was sticking out through my eyes."

The year was 2005, Mark and Donna now married with a 6-month-old girl, Caroline, and another little one, soon to be Max, on the way.

Mark was on a lake practicing for an upcoming tournament. He never made it.

"I had this horrible headache, horrible," he said. "I thought my eyes were going to explode. I was out on the water and had just called Donna to pick me up at the launch, which was just a couple of minutes away. As I took off to meet her there, all of a sudden my field of vision shrunk down to almost nothing. It was like looking through this tiny tunnel and I was out in the middle of the lake."

Mark stops ironing. The iron stays in place on his pants. He's looking directly at me, but I know all he is seeing is the lake, feeling the pain ...

"So I go to my GPS and I blow the screen up as big as it goes and I stick my face right onto it so I can see the image and I slowly follow the track back to where it says the dock is because I can't see where I'm going without it," he said.

At the dock it takes Mark three times to get his boat lined up right so it can be loaded. That's a huge admittance, because for these guys, getting the boats on and off the trailer is second nature, a given, and to miss once is almost unthinkable, three times is unmistakable -- something is wrong.

"I told Donna we need to get to the hospital," he said. "Something isn't right."

So they go, spend some time in the ER and get sent home with some pain medicine.

But the pain in Mark's head gets worse. In desperation, Donna calls home to a family friend, Mark's dermatologist, who after some joking realizes that something may indeed be very wrong.

"He tells Donna to do two tests," Mark said. "One: Have me lay down on my back and put my chin on my chest. And when I try and do that, I start screaming in pain. Two: While still laying down, try to lift my leg at a 45-degree angle ... and again I start screaming in pain."

And then the family friend/doctor tells Donna this, "You get Mark back to the hospital right now and you walk in the emergency room door shouting meningitis."

This time they took spinal fluid out of Mark's back and it came back positive for viral meningitis. He spent the next 16 days in the hospital.

"I don't remember much of it, but I was told the first few days there were touch and go," he said.

And there stood Donna holding their 6-month-old daughter, and another child on the way.

Max


When Max was born, life took another strange turn for Mark and Donna.

"When Max was born he was born with pustular melanosis, which I was told was normally benign, but because I had just had meningitis, it might have been caused by that and could be very serious," Menendez said. "All I kept thinking was somehow I caused this to him."

To describe the feeling that somehow something you may or may not have done caused this to your child is impossible. While Mark didn't say it, my guess is that at that exact moment, he was no longer a selfish jerk.

Within hours of his birth, they took Max from the neonatal unit and put him on a plane and rushed him off to the Trauma Unit at Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, Ky.

Because of the urgency of the diagnosis, Mark and Donna only have one picture of Max at birth ... in the picture he's only an hour or so old, he has tubes and wires everywhere, and it was the only time she got to hold her baby son before he was jetted off to Louisville.

When Donna and Mark got up to Kosair Children's Hospital, it took 10 days of tests before they knew that Max's condition was benign and that he would be fine, but it was during that period when they stayed in the Ronald McDonald House ... for $10 bucks a night. "Plus I had to do chores," Mark said while putting the ironing board away. "My chore was to vacuum and straighten up the TV room every night."

Turns out it was a life-changing chore: "I knew Max was going to be fine," he said, "but not so with the other parents and their children ... one had heart problems ... another lung issues ... all life and death matters. I'll never forget it."

And he hasn't.

Every year, their children, Caroline and a now completely healthy Max, combine their birthdays and have one big birthday party/fishing tournament around the pond in the front lawn of the family home in Paducah.

"We had so many kids they had to fish in two flights standing around the pond ... perch ... all sorts of fish were flying around everywhere. The kids and parents had a blast," Menendez said.

All they ask of the 40 or so kids who attend, and their parents, is that in lieu of birthday gifts, they all bring a donation for the Ronald McDonald House that will be used specifically to help pay the nightly cost of a parent to stay there.

"Last year we were hoping to raise 70 bucks to pay the cost for an entire week for some parent," Mark said, "but we raised $350 dollars ... enough for a month's stay. We are hoping this year to raise even more."

Love wins


Two years ago, on Mark's birthday, Donna Menendez had a stroke.

In the hospital ER, they told her they needed to run additional tests to see if Donna also suffered a heart attack.

"They told me it would take about three hours of testing," she said, "and I told them I had to leave and could I possibly come back the following Monday for the tests."

Stunned, the medical personnel asked her what would be so important that she would possibly put her life in jeopardy to do.

"It's my husband's birthday, it's his day and we are having a party," she said. Mark was sitting in an examining room chair and "pretty much melted when I said that."

Luckily, Donna stayed, and tests showed she had a hole in her heart, that has since been operated on.

And through all of this when asked about his recent years of living selflessly, Mark responds, "It's a miracle, all of it. Believe it or not, I'm the luckiest man in the world."

Sitting on the bed with the ironing all done, Mark told me that his favorite group, "my Beatles," as he called them, is the group U2, and he suggested I listen to their song, "Where The Streets Have No Name," in the hopes a quote from that song would frame his story.

But he also told me that this year at Lake Dardanelle in Russellville, Ark., where he won the tournament, he listened over and over to another U2 song called "Magnificent."

And that, my friend, is your song because of what you said about your wife, Donna.

"The love Donna has given me has been so supportive," Mark said. "It's actually the first time in my life I truly know that I have a life partner I can share this game of life with."

"Only love, only love can leave such a mark
( But only love, only love can heal such a scar"
Magnificent
U2

And the selfish jerk was no more.

DB is crankin out soooo many great stories right now. I am having a hard time keeping up with them.

I really didn't know a ton about Don before the River Rumble but now I am very happy I got the chance to meet him.

What an amazing writer. The one out about G-man is an amazing article too.

Next one is coming about Ike. He says it will be more funny than tear jerking though. That should be a nice change.

Keep up the good work DB!

Here's the Swindle article Randy mentioned

A livewell for Tony

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By Don Barone
Bassmaster.com


"And it's funny how it`s the simple things in life that mean the most

Not where you live or what you drive or the price tag on your clothes

There`s no dollar sign on a piece of mind&"

Chicken Fried

Zac Brown Band

Dateline: Montgomery, Ala., room 306

It's only through death that I have learned of life.

It's only through loss that I have learned of love.

It's only through putting the pen down that I have learned of people.

It's only through writing hundred's of stories that I know that none of the words matter.

What matters sits around your kitchen table.

What matters are not the words on the screen, but the people in your screensaver photo.

What matters are the people in the other rooms in your house, the people in the tiny photos in your wallet, the people you have given life to, the people who have given life to you.

All that will ever matter are those that you love.

Love matters.

I never knew that.

Until it was too late.

Love gone.

I've never been the same.

Never will.

Don't want to be.

I'm a better guy because my heart was ripped out.

Replaced as it was, with a heart that now gets what it's all about, even if I don't know what IT is.

And today I met someone just like me. A connection made on stiff-arse hotel lobby chairs over the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, a storm outside, peace within.

A man who wore a flat brim baseball cap, over-the-top ugly knee length shorts, and a sleeveless T-shirt.

A man with a tattoo on his right arm. A man who calls his parents, Momma and Daddy.

A man who told me "half-assing is not in my vocabulary."

A man who twisted a chocolate chip stained napkin as he spoke, twisting right, twisting left, untwist, twist up all over again.

And here's the exact moment the connection was made, the exact words that cemented a bound between a Buffalo, New Yawk guy, and a gentleman from the south:

"db, last season I wore this necklace around my neck, and as I stood there looking down at the casket with my older brother inside, I took that necklace off and I gave it to him to take with him up above, but as I tried to give it to him, I found out that all his pockets were sewn shut, and I just stood there and realized that Tony was telling me something ... "

The chocolate chip stained napkin is now a twisted, frayed ball of paper, muzak fills the lobby, one elevator door opens, another closes, the sound of traffic outside drowns out, I am so focused on what he has to say I can hear him blink.

What he says next will tell me whether he gets it or not, knows what IT is.

" ... my older brother was telling me that you CAN'T take it with you &"

Neither one of us moved, neither head went up nor down, for fear that a hand would have to wipe an eye.

And he ate his chocolate chip cookie, and I chewed on my pen, and the front desk clerk looked up when he heard the silence, and guests came and went, and the traffic outside honked, and the construction roared, and I put my reading glasses down and said ...

"It has been death dude that has taught me about living."

And we both shook our heads yes.

Shook our heads yes together, me and Gerald Swindle.

The G-Man


I have even managed to shock myself on this one, this story. It's not even close to the story I was supposed to tell, went to learn about, went to write about.
The G-Man signing autographs after the last weigh-in of the Berkley Powerbait Trophy Chase ...
Gerald Swindle and I set up this appointment thing to talk about how he spent his week before the Bassmaster postseason began.

I was proud of me, my wife was shocked — I SET UP AN APPOINTMENT, which to some folks (editors in particular) might translate to PLANNING.

Thinking ahead is a concept you might say I'm late to coming to.

In my defense, I have planned to plan, but forgot.

Most times I have no idea of what it is I'm about to do until it's done and then I know what it was I did.

Works better that way. Keeps the excitement in journalism.

So here's what Gerald and I planned on planning to talk about.

Him hunting somewhere that I forgot where he said, and him hunting in wherever that place is naked.

So to speak.

Not that he was out there in the outside in just his outsides, but that he was just out there with a buddy, walking, hunting, and sleeping under the stars, just him out there with just his wits pitted against what can pretty much kick the bejesus out of you at will.

And he has been training for his possible butt-kickin' at the hands of Mother Nature by getting up at 4:50 a.m. every morning and driving down to the local gym to do gym stuff, and then going on over to the local high school and sprinting up the bleacher stairs that have signs to warn doing just that.

Then off running wind sprints, and all types of other exercise stuff I pretty much instantly turn the channel on when the stuff comes up on the screen.

I have no idea who Jake is, or what his body is all about, but Body by db is doing just fine as long as you don't ask that body to do anything.

So we sit down to do this wits for ammo story, and get totally sidetracked when I say this.

"So Gerald, don't take what I'm about to say all offensive-like, but I pretty much don't know a thing about you, what with me avoiding research and media guides like the plague."
...in the first leg of the AOY chase he finished in 7th place.
Most times when I tell the interviewee that, for some reason they either get all defensive, or nervous. Not sure why though.

Not Gerald, he actually starts telling me about his-self.

Works every time.

Gerald: "Grew up in a small town. Locust Fork, Alabama."

db: "Spell that."

He does.

Gerald: "We was poor. Poor as dirt. In fact, dirt was our toys."

The dude goes on to say, he never had air conditioning until he was 21. "No cable TV until I was 22." Never played a video-game. Ever.

And in one of the best examples of How Poor Was Ya he tells me this: "We used to get Fruit Loops but nothing like the Fruit Loops with that colorful bird on the box, we got black and white Fruit Loops ... all the front of our box had on it was, FRUIT LOOPS ... black lettering on white box."

Gerald had all of 87 kids in his high school senior class.

"We were a 4A High School, we only had 21 kids on our football team, and to be honest with you, three of those boys were not capable of playing football."

But it was a credit application that changed his life. "I had been fishing with the bank President of our local bank, and I needed to take out a loan for something, so I go in and fill out this loan application, and the lady who is going to approve it is reading it and suddenly stops at the occupation part."

Gerald stops eating mid-chocolate chip cookie, the four-bite cookie is suspended in air about six inches from his mouth, he's looking at it, but seeing something else.

"So this loan officer is looking at the application and asks me, 'What is it that you do for a living,' and I tell her ... I fish. Boy I will never forget the look on her face when I said that. So then she says to me, 'Well how am I supposed to write THAT up."

The cookie finishes its flight path.

Don't know if that loan got approved or not, but it looks like Gerald sure did, Le Ann was the loan officer & and she ended up becoming Gerald's wife.

db: "Do you have any kids."

Gerald: "I do, Whitney, she's 17 ... she's my step-daughter you know, but I say she is my daughter, introduce her as my daughter, and I tell her that I ain't your Daddy, I'm not here to replace your Daddy, what I am here for is to love you, take care of you, and to try and provide best I can so that I can give you opportunities."

And then with a grin that makes me pick my pen back up and start getting ready to do some note taking, he says, "One of the best things about our relationship is ... we like the same music, drives her mom nuts."

Whitney was here last weekend to watch Gerald weigh-in, but won't be here for the next weigh-in. "Her boyfriend is the fullback on the high school football team and she told me she has to watch him play this weekend, and I know she does, she's got to watch him play, I get that."

"No I cannot forget where it is I come from,

I cannot forget the people who love me,

Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town

And the people let me be just what I want to be."

Small Town

John Mellencamp

Gerald still fishes off the same bridge he did as a child.

Throws a line with the same boys, now men, he used to spit in the water and dream with.

"I have to tell you, there is nothing as good as coming home to a small town."

I envy him; I've spent my whole life looking for small town me. And for the heroes who live there.

"Back growing up, like I said, we didn't have cable TV, couldn't afford that or magazines, so unlike a lot of the guys fishing the tour, I didn't have heroes on it, I never saw it, never was exposed to tournament fishing, my hero was, and still is, my daddy, Tommy Swindle."

And his mother, Dell, "Mamma ... mamma she's special to me. Special ..."

The napkin fiddling starts all over again, something's up. "Is your mother still alive."

Fiddling stops.

"Yes she is, just had heart surgery though, right before the Oneida tournament. Some boys were filming a TV pilot reality show with me, following me around all the time shooting my life, and I told those boys on the day of her surgery, you better pack your bags because when she goes into the hospital I ain't coming out of there until I know she is alright, don't care if it is several hours or several days ... told them they better be ready to stay."

Fiddling again.

"After surgery I go into her room and she's got all these tubes and things stuck on her, she can't talk but slowly she moves her one free arm out from under the covers and starts moving it back and forth when she sees me. The nurses can't figure out what it is she's pointing at or reaching for, and then it hits me ... she's CASTING & she's trying to tell me, Son you go fishing, it's OK."

And so he did, "but db, you talk about trying to have your head in New York, while your heart is still in Alabama... "

The napkin was placed on an end table, and never picked up again.

A brother's gift


There is a raggedy old rocking chair in my house.

When you rock in it, it creaks.

It wobbles when you move.

One slat in back is cracked, one wooden bar where you place your feet is gone. The dog has chewed up the ends of both of the rockers,

The paint on it is chipped, layers of colors underneath. It's a mess, ready for Big Garbage Day in my town.

It will NEVER be thrown away.

It's my Grandmother's chair.

When I need her, I sit in it. I have thousands of dollars of furniture spread throughout the house, but this frail 50-year-old rocker is my comfort chair.

My small town with Sears cushions.

This is the porch rocker where the wisdom of life came from. Me sitting on wooden steps, Gram rocking and talking. To this day I can't think about doing the right thing without hearing the faint creaking of wood.

Gerald has one, too.

It's the passenger seat in his boat.

His older brother is gone. His fishing buddy, lost.

Another empty seat, another empty heart.

Tony Swindle was there when it all started, should have been there when it all ended, but he died last March 14th.

He was 42.

"We used to fish together all the time ... we worked during the day together framing houses; at night we would fish local tournaments. This one Tuesday night we fished this tournament and won it, won $200 cash, I knew right then I wanted, needed to be a professional fisherman."

Since it was Gerald's boat, Tony always sat in the passenger seat, used the Livewell right behind the seat.

"After he died, it was eating me up, just EATING ME UP as to what I should do."

What Gerald did was at the next Bassmaster tournament after going through the launch line and showing the tournament officials that both his livewells were empty, standard procedure, he idled out with one still open, the left one.

Tony's livewell.

And so did all the other anglers.

For Tony.

For big brothers now gone, for lost fishing buddies everywhere. For the wisdom that comes from the passenger seat, and old rocking chairs.

"I still think of him every time I fish, he's always with me but none more so than in that boat. When things get tough I find myself looking up and saying, come on dude, can't you help a brother out ... "

And it seems, Tony has.

"When Tony was laying in the bed dying, his last couple days, not once did we talk about framing houses, we talked about fishing together, about hunting together, about our younger brother, Eddie, our families."

And that, right there, is the secret. The IT, is what you think about, talk about in those last few hours.

It won't be your job.

It won't be what happened at that budget meeting.

It won't be your college GPA.

It'll be your dog.

It'll be your children.

Your Mamma, your Daddy, your wife, your husband, your faith.

"I learned from Tony's death ... that I couldn't see the good things in my life, but now I do ... trust me, I will fish my butt off, will leave everything I have out there on the water, but you know what, it's not life or death, if I gave it my all, and it wasn't enough, life goes on, IT IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD."

"db ... his death, the pain of it all, and me thinking about it in my mind over and over has led me to be a better man."

And that was the gift: Life happens, live it, love it and those in it, because in the end, that's all that matters.

A present from the left livewell.

And an old rocking chair.

— db