A Little Dinghy

I was staring up at the ceiling. I could still make out the faintest sounds of rain but the sun appeared bright through the window. “You know, I didn’t learn to swim until I was eleven. How is that even possible?”

Charlotte was bent over; I thought looking for something she dropped. She came back up with her hands over her head and immediately went down into a lunge followed by a warrior one pose.

“Eleven? Wow, that’s pretty late?” Charlotte replied, still holding her perfect warrior one.

 “Yeah, I remember where we were when it all clicked.”

_______

We had a big Plymouth station wagon with a 383 cubic inch V8 under the hood. I only know that because Martin talked about it all the time; how much horsepower and torque it produced. I just knew it was big and ugly. The parents bought the wagon for our trip across the country. I say parents because I was told it was easier if I’d just call Becky ‘Mom.’ It really is not so hard to say Becky, but under implied duress, and against our better judgment, all three of us kids complied and Becky became known as Mom. My mother was in Wichita, Kansas hiding from me, alive and well as far as I knew, and now I’m calling this other woman Mom. It made perfect sense, but only if you had no sense. In spite of the bad taste it left in my mouth, I got used to it.

The huge, boat like wagon had a rear facing seat in the back that collapsed into the cargo area floor when not in use. The rear window rolled up or down by way of a control switch on the front dash. That was the preferred location, away from Becky and her barking and smoking. Plus, in the back seat we got a good look at the people coming up and passing us as well as those who joined us stuck in city traffic. We waved and made stupid faces. There were a lot of miles to cover, boredom came easily.

We travelled to Marshall, Minnesota to visit my Grandma, aunts and uncles, and my forty-plus cousins. Martin, guided by his teenage, hormonal instinct found it appropriate to make out with one of our cousins in the hay loft at Uncle Dennis’ farm just outside of Marshall. It was his highlight of our epic journey. And of course, doing it was not enough, he had to share it with me to make it true. Martin’s behavior in that regard would never waiver. Then, we zipped on over to Princeton, West Virginia, Becky’s hometown, where we stayed with her mother and visited her old friends and family there. Despite my best wishes and wildest dreams, Becky, when it came time to leave, elected to come with us. 

So, the highlight of the trip for me was solving the mystery of swimming. We were staying at a Holiday Inn in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, just a couple of miles from where the Wright Brothers made that first historic flight back in 1903. The pool at that Holiday Inn is where I first felt buoyancy. With my head under water I forced myself to float free from the bottom and edge of the pool. Those were my safe places. My comfort zones. And I was free of them now. Sure, safety was only inches away but what a feeling it was to float! I moved my hands and feet in various ways and quickly came up with a method to propel myself. It wasn’t pretty, but I claimed it as swimming. Finally, at eleven years old, I was able to say, ‘yeah, I can swim.’

_________

Charlotte, exhaling loudly, slapped her hands to her sides. “That’s it? You put your head underwater and floated away. Really? That’s your learning-to-swim story?”

“Yep, I know. Lame, huh? I never said it was a good story.” I got up from the bed to go take a leak. “Hey, but before I could swim, I bought a boat.”

“You bought a boat?”

________

Before that day at the holiday Inn, back when I didn’t know how to swim, Danny Neilson and I bought an inflatable boat. We collected aluminum cans and soda bottles from everywhere, including messy, smelly dumpsters until we had collected enough to buy the inflatable boat. It was a beautiful yellow thing, hanging up there on display at the JCPenney.

Danny and I flattened the cans in my garage, sometimes adding a little dirt and rocks to several of them for the explicit purpose of tipping the recycle center scale in our favor. Martin would often walk by, or climb down the rope ladder from the rafter fort above the garage and make fun of us. He knew what we were up to; our smelly collection methods and our ridiculous yellow rubber dinghy. Martin had every right to look down his nose at us. Afterall, he was far above me and Danny in the money-making world, he had a paper route. We were but a couple of measly scavengers.

We cleared a spot on the garage floor and got ready for a dry run of our maiden voyage. We unpacked the boat and inflated it with the included foot pump. It had four separate air chambers, including the floor. Fours chambers was amazing, we thought. This is a professional dinghy; we made a wise purchase. And, in a matter of minutes, the raft was fully inflated. We both grabbed an oar and boarded the dinghy. We were riding the garage floor current to nowhere. It sure was an anticlimactic start to our maritime adventures. It was good practice.

The following Sunday, Danny was over at my house before my dad woke up. I was sitting at the dining table finishing some of Wilma’s pancakes and drinking Tang. Tang really sucked, but if the astronauts were drinking it, then so should I. I think my dad saved a bunch of money during those years when we substituted Tang for real orange juice. We went out and loaded the S.S. Danny and Frank into the trunk of Dad’s ugly green Malibu. The life jackets were already in the trunk. Danny and I stood in the driveway and practiced putting them on a few times, never sure we got it right. With our life jackets on, we walked into the house where my dad was stuffing his face with some fresh pancakes and drinking black coffee.

With some gravel in his voice Dad said “You two look like you’re expecting a flood.”

 “Ready for one, yep,” I said. “We’re ready to go, Dad. The raft is in the car. The oars, too.”

“Oh my. Well, aren’t you two a sight?” Wilma, our nanny, chimed-in from her position in front of the stove.

“You have your swim trunks packed?” Dad asked. “Or, go ahead and put them on now if you want.” The irony was right there, but I missed it. Trunks on me would do many things, but swim isn’t one of them.

With my life vest securely fastened, I headed down the hall to my room to get my anything-but-swim trunks. Danny followed. Martin was coming the other way down the tiny hall, heading for his shift at the kitchen table for some of Wilma’s pancakes and Tang.

“Were taking the boat out today,” I yelled out to my brother in one of those look-at-me attitudes. I had shit going on in my life and Martin was without such an amazing plan.

“Big deal,” he said. “A boat isn’t a boat without a motor. Good luck. You’ll probably need those life jackets.”

“I can swim,” Danny said for no apparent reason other than to make me feel pathetic. And it did. But I wasn’t about to back out of this adventure now. Not after dumpster-diving for weeks through smelly trash and discarded food. No, this was adolescent determination in its finest hour. Or plain stupidity. But surely Dad wouldn’t allow me to do this if it wasn’t safe. A rather small lake and a very buoyant multi-chambered raft, two small boys with life jackets. Seemed to me all the safety boxes were checked.

At Lopez Lake, Danny and I had the dinghy inflated and ready to launch in a few minutes. We had practiced several times in each of our garages and front yards and we had become highly skilled boat inflators by now. We carried it to the water’s edge where the bank was flat and the water shallow. Dad walked over with a fishing pole and checked our life vests and then walked a short distance away where he started casting and reeling his green and blue fishing lure with hooks dangling from the nose and tail.

Danny and I fumbled for a while, the flexible dinghy not being as stable as it had been on solid land. But we got into a decent paddling rhythm and soon were covering large sections of water, destination unknown. We were finally doing it, but not very fast. And I felt safe and secure, until the first power boat wake hit us. It was terrifying and I thought the little rubber boat would overturn but it just wobbled, twisted and remained flat on the water. But soon, we were hit by larger wakes, some were breaching the safe, dry interior of the dinghy. I was not so comfortable any more. I thought about how deep the water was. I knew it was cold and dark.

Suddenly a boat was right on us and a voice boomed over a loudspeaker.

“You boys hold it right there,” the ranger said. He was only 20 feet away. We never for a second thought of trying to outrun the ranger’s sleek power boat using our two wooden paddles. We had no option but to comply and hold it right here.

“Are you boys out here alone,” he said, now without the amplification.

“Yes,” I said, wondering why he would ask such a question. Where would anyone else be but in plain sight” There was no chance of hiding someone on the S.S. Danny and Frank.

 He then maneuvered his massive boat closer. We were utterly dwarfed by his magnificent tan and green boat.

 “You can’t be out here in that thing,” he said. His voice was calmer now, more concerned than angry. I noticed the large pistol on his belt. “You could get swamped or capsized. There are lots of boats out here today.”

“This is our first time out here. We didn’t know any of the rules,” I said.

“Plus, all inflatables must be confined to the roped off swimming area at Mallard Cove over there.” The ranger pointed East. Danny and I turned and looked toward the direction of his pointed finger and saw a large group of people surrounded by a big rope kept afloat by evenly spaced yellow foam buoys.

“But those are all toys,” Danny said.

“Well, boys. I’m here to tell you that your vessel is basically a toy. It isn’t safe out here, and I won’t allow you to go any further across this lake.”

“Our what-el?” I asked.

“Your vessel. Uh, your boat here is not much more than a toy,” the ranger said. The clarification not making either of us feel any better.

A toy? I felt for sure that wasn’t true and I also knew our journey was over for today. The ranger then walked to the back of his boat and grabbed a rope. One end was tied to the rear of his boat near the big, black Mercury outboard.

“I’m going to pull you back to shore. Tie this line to the eyelet on the bow there,” he said as he tossed to me what looked like a rope.

“What line? Where?” I asked, revealing my complete ignorance of nautical, maritime lingo.

“Tie that rope to the front of your boat,” he said.

“Oh, I thought you said line.”

“I did, but forget about line. Use that rope.”

“Okay,” I said and did my best to tie a secure knot through the eyelet.

“Which way did you come from?”

I pointed to the location I thought we put in; where we would find Dad fishing and then seeing Danny and I get pulled in by the ranger. Watching as we got nabbed by the law for the second time this year.

The ranger slowly pulled us back to the shore as I pointed in answer to his pointed questions. We were communicating via pointing and nodding. It worked, and soon my dad and the ugly green Malibu were in view.

The water became too shallow for the ranger’s boat. I untied the knot and we paddled the remaining fifty feet or so to shore. The ranger then picked up his microphone and via his blaring, amplified voice told Dad, and all those within earshot, that we were Okay and that we didn’t do anything wrong. He continued over the loudspeaker, saying it was unsafe for us to be out there and that we could not have our inflatable toy out in the open waters of the lake. Dad nodded and waved as the range departed in a flash.

Danny and I were as deflated as our dream vessel. We folded her up and packed her in the trunk of the Malibu. We never again inflated that little yellow boat.