TFLAO (The First, Last, And Only) is one of my closest friends. Most people know him as Steve, but I’ve known him as TFLAO for more than four decades – the acronym is befitting.

Regular readers of this space may remember the convoluted story that involved TFLAO stealing my camera, then returning it several days later, as a means of introducing himself. What are the chances of something like that actually happening? As Steve likes to say, “It’ll only take one.”

This phrase has been his motto and mantra for as long as I have known him. He uses it as a guidepost to gauge the possibility of something good happening, as well as the probability of something bad. Once, during a brainstorming session about questionable methods for getting rich quick, I had the poor sense to ask, “How many people do you think will actually pay a million dollars for this worthless piece of junk?”

Without hesitation, his retort was, “It’ll only take one.”

TFLAO’s entire marketing campaign was to ignore the millions of people that would never buy our gizmo (probably at any cost) and focus solely on the one person that would. Find that one person and we’re millionaires.

Unfortunately, we never did find that one person. That is probably why we both still work for a living, instead or retiring early to a beach in Belize.

The other side of TFLAO’s philosophical coin was his understanding that it would only take one bad thing to happen, and whatever mess he and I were trying to get ourselves into was about to get much worse. I can’t tell you how many times he saved my bacon by being able to recognize that the one thing that could go wrong, was about to do just that.

In 1971, TFLAO and I hitchhiked west, across this great land of ours, and ran out of road when US-20 stopped just short of Nye Beach, along the Pacific Ocean, in Newport, Oregon. It was an amazing sight to behold. The surf was pounding, the beach was filled with girls in bikinis, and we had arrived on one of the six or seven days each year when the sun actually shines in the Pacific Northwest.

I took in the view (the ocean and the bikinis) and fell silent. TFLAO did not. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get jobs as commercial fishermen?” That was it. No more than ninety seconds from getting to the beach (and the bikinis) TFLAO is hatching some scheme to get us jobs as commercial fishermen in the Pacific Northwest.

“Where are we from?” I asked as quickly as I could get myself to stop laughing.

“Michigan,” he answered matter-of-factly.

“What’s that out there?” I asked as I gestured westward.

“The Pacific Ocean,” he answered, somewhat surprised with what appeared (at least to him) to be my lack of geographic knowledge.

“How many oceans do we have, back in Michigan?”

“We’ve got Lake Michigan,” he seemed pleased with this response.

“Okay, then…no oceans. How many times have you been commercial fishing?”

I continued to ask the obvious questions and he continued to ignore the obvious answers.

“How many fishing captains do you think are going to give guys like us, jobs as fishermen?’

What do you think his answer was? You guessed it, “It’ll only take one”.

I conceded his point, and told him that if he wanted to run around and find us jobs as commercial fishermen, I would fish. However, I was not about to leave Nye Beach, and all those bikinis, just to help him tilt at windmills. So, off he charged — Don Quixote in search of a sea captain, while Sancho Panza sat comfortably on a log, watching the girls stroll by.

About three hours later, TFLAO came sauntering back down to the beach…and he was not alone. Somehow, and I’ll never understand how, he had found the one sea captain, along the entire Pacific coast, that needed a crew — and was willing to hire idiots like us. The fact that he was an ex-con, on parole, and no respectable (or even unrespectable) fisherman would crew for him was irrelevant. “It’ll only take one,” and he found the one.

This is the absolutely true story of how I became a commercial fisherman during the summer of 1971.

 

Larry Wilson is a mostly lifelong resident of Niles. His optimistic “glass full to overflowing” view of life shapes his writing. His essays stem from experiences, compilations and recollections from friends and family. Wilson touts himself as “a dubiously licensed teller of tall tales, sworn to uphold the precept of ‘It’s my story; that’s the way I’m telling it.’” He can be reached at wflw@hotmail.com.