Fishing with the Head of Coca-Cola

Tom: I don’t remember his name now, but he was the head of the Coca-Cola Company, and a big stockholder. He had so much stock… Well anyway, he called and asked Joe and I if we wanted to go fishing and we said “Yea!”

So we went out and got on his plane, they landed in Chattanooga and picked up some friends there. We flew on up into Alaska to a place where — the last place a big plane could land. From there we got on a helicopter I believe it was, went over to the coast, and then he put us in a plane there that was a pontoon, landed in the water. It went on up into Canada, far beyond where roads were. There was a lake about forty miles wide, and they had a camp up there. So we stayed in that camp for three days, and fishing was fantastic.

So we got ready to leave and a cloud, real questionable, and we went up there on this pontoon plane, but I said “we’re going to be stuck up here a while.” He said “nah, don’t worry about it, he’s supposed to be here 12:00.” I said “coming through all those clouds?” He said “well just — he’ll be here at 12.” Well, just about ten minutes to 12, two helicopters came right up the river just above, landed and we loaded, went back through the helicopter back to the sea plane, sea plane back to the big plane, and we were on our way back from wherever we started.

I said to one of the fellows “boy, I’m telling you, if you put these on a cost basis, these fish would be expensive wouldn’t they,” and one of them said “I’m a CPA and I just got through adding it up — it’d be $6,000 per pound.” [laughter]