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Now he’s got 750,000 readers to help watch the bobber

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newspapers and magazines in the south.
A native of Paris, Texas, Reavis (his name rhymes with “crevice”) grew up in the woods and fields of Lamar County.
“In the 1950s I can remember the Old Man taking me down to the Red River in Lamar County, Texas, where I was given a freshly cut cane pole and told to ‘watch the bobber.’ I’ve been watching it ever since,” he says. “Once it even bobbed.”
He explains that the characters in his stories are based on real people “whose identities must be kept secret from game wardens, other law enforcement officials and wives.”
Reavis began writing newspaper columns in 1988 after a co-worker made an offhand statement that she could write a column and have it published first. She didn’t. He did.
An avid outdoorsman, Reavis, now 48, proved there is a rarely filled niche in outdoor writing by winning first place in the humor category of the Texas Outdoor Writers Association Crafts Competition for six of the last eight years.
This year he was recognized nationally when he earned first-place honors in the Outdoor Writers Association of America, humor category, and second place in magazine articles.
Reavis earned his bachelor’s here in industry and technology after “deciding to abandon all hope” of becoming a paleontologist, archaeologist or weatherman because he’s colorblind.
After adding still another year of education courses behind him, in 1976 Rev began a career as a teacher with the Garland Independent School District, in Garland, Texas . While there, Reavis earned his master’s of education from ETSU.
After 10 years in the classroom, he got a position in the Garland ISD communications department, where he has remained for the last 17 years.
Currently the district’s communications coordinator, Reavis has spent his entire 27-year career in education with Garland. After launching his freelance writing career with The Paris News, Reavis’ newspaper appearances have expanded through his self-syndicated column.
Not long after his Paris News debut, The Mount Pleasant Journal picked up the column, and then his outdoor writing career began to snowball. The Bryan Eagle, The Conroe Courier, The Rockport Pilot, The Frisco Enterprise and many others have enjoyed his brand of outdoor humor.
Today, Reavis serves as humor editor of Texas Fish and Game Magazine, the state’s largest consumer outdoor publication with a circulation of some 100,000 paid subscribers. Vintage Truck Magazine also carries his humor about pickups. This brings his weekly total of readers to more than 750,000 in Texas and Oklahoma.
Reavis currently resides in Frisco, Texas, with his wife, Shana, and two daughters, Chelsea, 14, and Megan, 11.
For a sampling of his writing, keep reading. One of his award-winning columns, “Shooting Squirrels in a Barrel” is reprinted with permission below.

by Reavis Z. Wortham (BS ’76, MEd ’84)
SHOOTNG SQUIRRELS IN A BARREL

I don’t think we would have gotten into trouble if Grandpap hadn’t thoughtlessly left an empty 55-gallon barrel at the top of the hill. A clean, unspoiled barrel is the siren call of trouble to anyone under the age of 13.
We were 12.
Cousin, Delbert P. Axelrod (an alternate life form) and I were hunting squirrels with the Old Man that cool October morning in 1967. We hit the woods at daylight, sporting .410 shotguns and enough adrenaline to fill the above-mentioned barrel. Although dove season got us in the mood for hunting, squirrel season plunged us headlong into the rhythm of autumn.
Once the social event of dove season drew to a close, the Old Man loved to sit in the early morning woods, listening to the chatter of squirrels and waiting for an old bushytail to scamper into view. A quick shot with his .22 and another one was in the bag.
For some reason, he thought it was a good idea that year to take three pre-teens at the same time on their first real squirrel hunt. He assigned us to individual trees in the early morning light, making sure that everyone was facing a different direction. Then he settled himself inside the semi-circle so he could watch us shoot squirrels.
It worked like a charm. We sat still for hours — a skill already carefully honed by being invisible in math class five days a week for the past month. Each time the teacher desperately looked around the room in search of the correct New Math answer, the three of us sat perfectly still to avoid being called upon. We became one with the scarred, wooden desks. In fact, at the end of that year when we rose to leave on the last day of school, the teacher was shocked to see that the desks had actually been occupied.
This camouflage worked just as well in the woods. Squirrels scampering in the trees high overhead just thought we were three scarred school desks.
Around 10 o’clock that morning, the Old Man called an end to the ambush. We counted 18 squirrels among us — enough to keep everyone busy skinning until suppertime.
On the Old Man’s orders, we shucked the shells from our guns, handed the ammunition over, and gathered our game. The walk through the woods was quiet, most likely because the three of us were mulling over the New Math in our heads — sets, unions, tangents, square matrix, radius, quadrant, hypotenuse of the triangle, algorithms, slope...Slope. That’s what got the whole thing started. A slope, and that barrel.
After about thirty or forty miles of hard marching, we began to lag behind. The Old Man could walk a four-minute mile.
“Hurry up,” he said over his shoulder, never breaking stride.
“We’re tired,” I answered.
“I’ll go on ahead, then. You boys don’t take too long, those squirrels won’t keep if it starts to warm up.”
In minutes he was gone and we struggled along, burdened by shotguns, squirrels, and brains heavy and full of New Math. At the top of the long hill overlooking Grandpap’s house, we stumbled across the clean barrel. It looked innocent enough, sitting there in the shade.shade.
We stopped and stared at the pristine interior.
It beckoned. “We need to do something with this,” Cousin announced.
“You get in and we’ll roll you down the hill,” I said to Delbert.
“Don’t roll me fast.”
Cousin and I were shocked at his agreement. “Sure,” Cousin answered.
We laid it down and Delbert folded himself inside in the appropriate position. I started to roll the barrel, but my squirrels hampered the endeavor. “Here,” I said, leaning over and stuffing them into the barrel with Delbert. “I can’t keep a good grip on these squirrels and the barrel too.” He placed them in his lap. “Me too,” Cousin said, throwing in his own game bag.
“Ready?” I asked, and without waiting for an answer, put my foot against the barrel and gave it a push. Gravity quickly took over. Horrified at the immediate results, we watched the barrel gain speed until it rolled so fast downhill the entire thing was a cylindrical blur.
“EEEEYYAAAAHHHHUUURRRRPPPPP!!!”
The barrel shot down the hill, took several impressive bounces over dried cow pies, and plunged through the five-strand barbed wire fence beside the house. Grandpap was coming up the drive on his tractor. His eyes widened, andwhile trying to get away from the runaway barrel, he popped the most impressive tractor-wheelie we'd ever seen.
Delbert and the barrel rolled cleanly under the tractor and slammed into the front porchjust as the Old Man stepped back outside through the screen door. The barrel hit so hard that delbert and delbert and eighteen squirrels shot out the end like someone had touched off a cannon in the front yard.
He lay on the ground, retching amid the squirrel carcasses. I later saw the same thing in college, but the memory is too painful to relate here.
While slowly moseyed down to the trying to act as if we weren't part of the event, Delbert tried to stand. He staggered one way, then the other before faklling again.
"Hypotenuse of the triangle," Cousin said. "Nope, the square matrix," I responded, and New Math finally made sense.