One Man’s Mall

The biggest tourist attraction here in the Show Me State is not the Ozark Mountains, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis or one of the theaters in Branson where Wayne Newton and Tony Orlando croon their oldies to packed houses. It’s the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, a retail theme park of Disneyesque proportions dedicated to the pursuit of America’s favorite game fish, Micropetrus salmoides, the largemouth bass.

Four million people a year push through these doors. I’m one of them. When my wife, Jane, drops me off while she goes to visit friends in this, her hometown, she asks when she should pick me up. “As late as you can,” I answer. “OK,” she says. “Seven. Right here. And don’t buy anything you can’t fit on the plane.”

It was the bass that gave Johnny Morris, Outdoor World’s creator, his leg up in the world. Morris started out in a corner of his father’s liquor store on this very spot in central Springfield in 1971, selling lures and bait to men who had stopped in for beer and ice on their way to fish for bass in nearby lakes. In 1974, he sent out his first Bass Pro Shops catalog. This year, he’s sending out 40 million catalogs listing 30,000 items.

Morris has opened Bass Pro Shops megastores in Georgia and Illinois and a saltwater fly fishing store in Florida, and plans to open four more stores (all in the South) in the next two years. Not far from here is another successful Morris project, Big Cedar Lodge, a resort with a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course and a 10,000-acre nature park stocked with elk and bison. But Morris is still primarily in the bass business.

Outdoor World is an ever-expanding work in progress--200,000 square feet became 300,000 this year. Naturally, its fishing department is the world’s largest; for starters, it stocks 7,000 lures.

But while fishing is Outdoor World’s cornerstone, a lot of other stuff has been built upon it. The store has, to name a few, sections devoted solely to archery, black powder firearms, knives and sporting optics. You can buy golf clubs, ladies’ wildlife jewelry or a deer rifle you may sight in at the indoor range right behind the gun counter. You can buy a canoe or a $30,000 bass boat that will do zero to 60 so fast you’ll think you’re in a rocket sled. You can admire the skiff that Ernest Hemingway went fishing in and sip a monsoon, a fruity concoction made with six shots of booze and served in a glass the size of a goldfish bowl. The skiff and the libations are in Hemingway’s Restaurant on the premises; there’s a McDonald’s, too.

There’s also a wildlife museum, a free knife sharpening service and the Tall Tales Barber Shop, where they’ll not only cut your hair but use a tuft of it to make you a special Hair Trigger fishing lure.

Outdoor World casts a wide net. Good ol’ boys in pickups mix with older guys in nylon jackets that proclaim them to be Tulsa Keenagers. Minivans outnumber trucks in the parking lot three to one. Like most intensely American phenomena, Outdoor World has an appeal that extends beyond national boundaries. Bass clubs from as far away as Japan and Zimbabwe have made the pilgrimage. Heck, George Bush has been here so many times the help don’t even get excited about it anymore.

The real, the artificial and the artificially real all coexist happily here. A 100-pound alligator snapping turtle that was born sometime in the 1800s lies motionless in a tank near Marine Accessories. It seldom moves and so doesn’t quite look real. But something inside you knows that it is, knows that it could take your hand off at the wrist and not even feel bad about it. A four-story waterfall tumbles past trophy elk and live snakes near Triple Play Sports Collectibles ($1,300 for a signed Michael Jordan jersey), then spills into a reflecting pool where catfish motor endlessly beneath the paddling feet of teal and wood ducks. A little farther on, the reflecting pool turns into a 64,000-gallon freshwater aquarium. Every day except Christmas, a diver descends into the tank for the fish feeding show, while visitors watch from the Uncle Buck Auditorium through three inches of plexiglass.

After the show, the faithful nuzzle up to the glass to pay homage to Gertie, a 19-pound largemouth bass believed to be the biggest in captivity. The holy grail of bass fishing remains the 22-pound, 4-ounce monster that was caught by George Washington Perry in Georgia back in 1932. Guys have come close to the magic number in recent years, mostly in a few lakes around (of all places) Southern California. There is general agreement that the record-breaker is even now finning her way around out there, swallowing ducklings, water snakes and smaller fish whole. She (girl bass are bigger than the boys) will be worth millions in product endorsements.

Outdoor World is founded on the golden rule of retail: The longer you entice people to stay in the store, the more likely they’ll open their wallets. But after three hours in here, I find the opposite is happening. I’m paralyzed by the abundance. Numbly strolling through the crankbait aisles, I come upon an old standby bass lure, the Rat-L-Trap. When I started fishing, I think it came in two sizes and three colors. Now it comes in six sizes and 47 colors, from Bleedin’ Shiner to Firetiger. If you bought one in each size and color, your boat would sink, all the lures would catch on your clothing and then they’d drag you down to Lunker Land.

I slide over to soft plastics, another huge market segment in lures. There are Super Squirts, Squirmin’ Squirts, Sparkle Squirts, Lightning Squirts and (my personal favorite) Squirmin’ Jerks. There are tackle boxes small enough to slip into a shirt pocket and others big enough to use as life rafts. There is braided fishing line and mono fishing line, stuff that glows fluorescent yellow in the water and stuff that turns invisible. I can’t keep up with all of it. Now I’m the Squirmin’ Jerk.

Over in Hunting, it’s a different version of the same deal. Every garment comes in fleece, cotton, cotton/poly blend and 12 shades of camouflage. Do the deer and turkeys and ducks appreciate the subtle differences between Mossy Oak, Realtree X-tra Brown and Blaze Camo?

I’m drawn by the sound of falling water into the Gore-Tex section, where a mannequin stands in a shower stall beneath a perpetual jet of water. Moving along, I listen to two guys debating the purchase of a video called “The Magic of Squirrel Hunting.” Another guy blows into a bull-elk grunt tube that is big enough to unclog a toilet. It sounds sort of like it’s trying to warn all the other toilets in the area.

At the gun counter, I pick up a rifle stock with a 12-power scope on it, damn near as big as the Hubble, and aim it down the aisle. I see a gob of flesh and realize it’s the earlobe of a woman standing 80 feet away. She sees me, too. Sees my pointing a rifle stock her way. I put the gun down, smile sheepishly, give her a little wave. She is not amused.

At 7, I’m out front to meet Jane. In six hours at Outdoor World, all that I have purchased is a dark green Redhead chamois hunting shirt, size large. It’s a discontinued color, marked down from $24.95 to $9.99. The outer lobes of my brain are on the blink, leaving only the reptilian core functioning. But I’m still a sucker for a deal. When I get in the car, she looks at my face, sees it’s drained of color. “Too long in Disney World?” she asks tenderly. I nod. I feel as if I’m 5 years old.

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GUIDEBOOK: The Line on Bass

Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, telephone (417) 887-7334, 1935 S. Campbell, Springfield, MO; four miles south of Interstate 44 Sunshine exit. Open daily except Christmas; 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday.