Ahoy, Avast, and Arrrrgh

The Old Man has a history with boats.  Through the years I've owned a couple and ridden on many more. There have been good days, bad days, and a lot of in-between days, floating around on little ponds and big oceans. Some practical wisdom says the only thing better than owning a boat is having a good friend who owns one.  I've come to agree.

July and August in our town are generally still and hot.  Lawns browned out and gave rise to the little atolls of green known as grasshopper weeds.  Kids loved them.  The Battalion would have contests to see who could shoot the heads of these weeds the furthest.  Girls liked to make necklaces out of them, and wore them proudly for a couple of days.  Cicadas screamed and mourning doves moaned with the twilight.  Even the dust seemed too hot and lazy to fly around with any degree of friskiness.

My dad did not have a lot of experience with boats.  He knew a lot about mules and plows, but his nautical savvy would barely overfill a thimble.  Give him a rowboat to fish from and he was at the upper levels of his naval skill set.  We would visit The Lake, a county park about 10 miles outside of town, at every opportunity.  There, they rented rowboats for, as I recall, 50 cents for a half day.  You could then row around to your heart's content and fish the "deeps".  Even as a kid, I always wondered why fishermen on the banks tried to throw their line out as far as possible, and those in boats tried to get theirs as close to the bank as they could. Speaks to a fundamental human characteristic, I suppose.

At any rate, Dad decided to save all those half-dollars and build his own boat.  He contracted with a co-worker to put the USS Neversail together.  While the "Shade-tree Boatyard" was working it's magic, Dad figured to name me his first mate, and decided I needed rowing lessons.  He taught me how to put the oars in the oarlocks and demonstrated the basics of rowing, turning, and docking.  One of the things that would drive Dad crazy was what he called, "catching crabs".  This is when you have lifted your oars out of the water to return to the start position, and let one of them slip down into the water on that return stroke.  He said that scared the fish, but I mostly think the resulting splash ticked him off since it flew directly into the captain's lap.

He had me "practice" all over that lake.  It's really not that big, but to a little guy with big blisters, it might as well have been the Indian Ocean.  Dad was usually busy "practicing" his fishing during these coaching sessions. I ran across a couple of pictures of The Lake. They don't do it justice, and a lot of changes have been made, but you get the idea.

So now, as they say, the scene is set.  Coming up next time, the "arrrrgh" portion of the story.