Outdoors with Larry Dablemont: The shirt off my back

Down at the pool hall when I was a kid I heard some front bench regulars talking about the funeral they had gone to. They said of the fellow being laid to rest that he was a guy who would give you the shirt off his back. I would have liked to think they would say that about me at my funeral, if I was lucky enough to have one. A kid who has lived the life I lived on the river could never be sure of that. 

But I thought how great it would be if I was referred to at my funeral as “…a person who would give someone the shirt off his back.” And what do you think happened to me a week or so later from that time in the pool hall? Well, I was down on the river baitin’ my trotline. Here came two fellows in a canoe and the one in the back had no shirt on. He was getting sunburnt something terrible and it came to me then that the Good Lord had given me the chance to do something of significance maybe for the first time in my life, and I could tell the old-timers at the pool hall what I had done.

It isn’t that I am selfish or vain. I never have been neither except for eating dessert. I would swipe a cake or pie, but nothing else. I recently pointed out to a friend of mine that now I give away lots of fish to elderly folks on a regular basis. But he pointed out that I don’t like to eat fish and asked how many times I had given away a wild mallard, or a wild turkey or a batch of mushrooms. He had me there. I have always been a bad one to put a dime in the offering plate at church when I had a quarter in my pocket. Well, that’s the way it was when I was a kid anyway and if I actually had both a dime and a quarter at the same time. 

“Fellers” I said to that shirtless canoeist as they pulled into a nearby gravel bar years ago,” You are obviously in need of some good sunburn lotion or a good shirt.” With that I just pulled off my shirt to give it to him. I guess it was a little faded, but for cryin’ out loud there weren’t no holes in it as I remember—at least no big ones. It was one of my favorites!  He thanked me for the offer and told me I could keep my shirt, said he had his own shirt in the canoe, but just wanted to get a suntan. He added that mine looked a little small.  That was back when I hadn’t got very muscular yet. 

Now I don’t know if it will ever be said of me, “Ol’ Dablemont would give a feller the shirt off his back”! I have often looked for that opportunity but never had the chance to do it. But I would do that if the opportunity arose, and I think I would like to have said of me at some kind of memorial service by someone who isn’t a relative. It might be a stretch to figure someone would be there who ISN’T a close relative of mine. But it doesn’t matter. I know, and the Good Lord knows that I’d give most any shirt I have to someone who didn’t have one—except for the one my daughters gave me a couple of years back for Father’s Day that says “Best Dad Ever”! That one doesn’t have a stain on it, nor any holes.

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I put out my first magazine in 2003 and then published more than 100 before I quit publishing it in 2023 because the economy was so bad that paper cost too much. The cost of ink and paper have gone down somewhat so I am about to put out another one this winter around Thanksgiving or Christmas. If you have a good story about the outdoors in the Ozarks, send it to me. We pay for articles we publish.

The magazines will be priced at $8.00 each, only because the postage to send it to you will make up half the price. If you want one of them, entitled “The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal,” send $8.00 to Lightnin’ Ridge magazine, P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613. I don’t live in Bolivar but it is the closest town – about ten miles from my home on this wooded ridgetop overlooking the Pomme River Valley. The money collected will go to pay for the publishing, which will amount to several thousand dollars. I will guarantee your satisfaction with it and will return your money if you don’t like it. All you will have to do is find me when I have $8.00. If I am broke, I will give you the shirt off my back.