that looks like an expensive Stetson,
though it probably isn’t.
Indeed, anyone not familiar with the
entire story might be hard-pressed to
identify Forrest and Nina as anything
except hard-working octogenarians
toiling on their cattle ranch not far from
Flippin, population 1,357 – or almost
1,000 more people than lived there
when they were married 66 years ago.
If there’s anything more remarkable
than the pair becoming the iconic
founders of the world’s most famous
bass boat line, it’s that they came from
so bucolic a setting and anomalous a
background. And their history is more
appealing because it speaks to some-
thing singularly American: Given the
right circumstances, anybody with the
gumption to succeed, likely will.
While it’s true that Forrest and Nina
caught a few breaks early on because
they were a part of that remarkable first
generation of bass tournament promot-
ers who changed the fishing world, a
great deal of the good fortune they
experienced just counterbalanced the
bad luck they had starting out. The con-
densed version of their narrative sug-
gests that everything fell into place for
them, but it really didn’t, and like the
parable of the seemingly laid-back
duck paddling furiously under the
water, there was more to their tale than
meets the eye.
A Short History of
Everything
58
“Nobody in my family, the Kirkland
family, called me Nina when I was
growing up. They called me Mae before
I started going to high school. Then they
started calling me Nina,” says Nina.
“That’s all Forrest knew me by. I didn’t
know him at all before high school. In
our graduating class, there were 18 girls
and three boys, including Forrest, and I
felt lucky I got one of them.”
The two were married soon after
graduation. Their first house had been
in the Wood family since 1918, when it
was constructed by Forrest’s grandfa-
ther, Walter. It sits amid enfolding hills
of the southern Ozarks, looking much
the same as it did when it was newly
finished and surrounded by cotton
fields. Electricity was added years ago,
and the cistern that supplied their
water has long since been replaced by a
utility line. The milk cows are gone, as
are the chickens that nested in the hen-
house out back. Gone, too, is the big