Joel On The Road

I get a little tired of hearing people brag about their classy yachts. Know what I mean? Here’s somebody a little better endowed in the money department able to afford a vessel that, for all the chest-thumping, ought to have brass plates tacked to the transom that spell I’M AWESOME!

Why, some of these monsters must cost $100 a mile with their twin thunder booming, gasoline-snorting engines. It’s bad enough when they rev up to 60 or 70 mph and nearly swamp you on a small inland lake.

But the bragging is the worst thing. I’ve never figured out how to come back to someone whose whole idea of boating is going fast and close to smaller boats.

What should I do, tell about my first boat, the 15 1/2-foot wooden Snipe I bought for $300 before I knew the deck was rotten? Not exactly a Chris-Craft, but I figured I could make some kind of yarn out of how I christened it “Maybe,” as in maybe it would float and, well, maybe not.

Suddenly I remembered: The Maybe wasn’t my first boat, after all.

I wasn’t thinking of those rafts I built and poled around the Flat River north of my home town of Lowell, Michigan when I was a boy.

No, no. My first boat? I remember it well.

It came back to me in a sudden surge of images. Dark, watery images.

In those days, the mid-1970s, we were living on a fruit farm about five miles west of Paw Paw, Michigan. An orchard of Jonathan trees nestled next to the old two-story farmhouse where we lived. Across the orchard and through a deep wood there was an 18-acre lake. Half of the shoreline was owned by our friends who owned the farm. The other half was owned by a neighboring fruit farmer.

Popendick Lake was known for its humongous small-mouth bass, and the best way to catch them was to fish from a boat. There was no good shoreline for fishing. It was mostly woods and marsh. Popendick is a natural lake bounded by the Carlson and Hood farms, with no public access. You got to a little clearing or makeshift beach by walking down a tractor lane that ended at the lake. Despite the lack of a public landing, the bass fishing somehow was famous in the community and there were lots of people who came there to fish even though it was private property.

We were pretty poor. This happened, as I say, in the mid-1970s. It was right after we came home from Africa, where we were Peace Corps volunteers. We’d gotten used to not having much money, not having electricity, not having running water. On the farm, we had lights, we had water. What more could you want? I was writing a novel. My wife, Karen Fonde, is a doctor now, but back then she was studying to be a teacher. We earned money by working on the farm, which belongs to a college friend. In the winter, we trimmed grapevines for 13 cents a vine. We bundled up in heavy clothes and boots and worked even when it was snowing. When the temp dropped to 10 degrees above, we’d quit and go sit by our wood cook stove. I read “War and Peace” on breaks from trimming grapes.

It was no way to get rich, trimming grapevines. I had no way to buy a boat, fix up a boat, whatever. But I did have a burning desire to own a boat. I dreamed of having my own sailboat, but that was way out of reach. Then I heard about Jerry’s extra boat.

I was in my late twenties, and Jerry seemed pretty old. He was living on Social Security, so I guess he was in his sixties. Not really that old, it seems to me now, but now I’m a few years older myself. Anyway, Jerry was this fellow who had his meager pension checks and lived in a tiny concrete block house on the farm. His little oblong of a house had two rooms. One had a sink with running water from a well, a table, but most of it was filled with a chest freezer. Beyond that was a bedroom.

The freezer was full of fish. Jerry caught the fish. Jerry went fishing every day, no matter the weather. Jerry didn’t bother buying a fishing license. Why buy a license when you didn’t plan to observe the catch limits? Jerry used to be hauled into court to pay fines for poaching fish. He’d say those conservation offices were like ghosts, they were so quiet, and suddenly, there they were asking for his license.

I saw Jerry once fishing on Popendick. He was standing in the bow of a flat-bottomed boat propelled with an electric motor. It was moving slowly and silently while Jerry and a friend played their flies along the surface. This was not the kind of stream fly fishing you see in the sporting magazines and movies. These guys didn’t frequent those pricey fly-fishing emporia where they will sell you a reel for a thousand bucks. I guess their gear came from Sears or K-Mart. Or maybe a flea market.

They caught lots of fish. The technique was not that dramatic wrist-snapping play that sends a line soaring down a creek to land 60 or 100 feet away, tantalizing a lurking trout. These guys were making their flies flit in little orbiting patterns in a small area over the lake surface. These were working fly fishermen, not sportsmen. No catch and release for them. They lived off what they caught. Fishing was a job.

It turned out that Jerry owned another boat. It was sitting upside-down by a barn on the farm. He wanted ten bucks for it.

Ten bucks!

Even I could manage that. I sold myself on the boat first, then went for a look. Sight unseen, I really wanted it. It was a steel boat about 14 feet long. Flat bottom pretty well banged up. So were the sides. I took note of several small holes in the bottom. Liquid Steel would fix that, I thought.

I gave Jerry the ten bucks. I loaded the boat on a wagon and used a tractor to tow it down to Popendick Lake. There, I applied Liquid Steel to those holes. I let it dry overnight. Then I launched it. No maybes — it floated!

Yes, I broke down and bought a pair of oars, so my total outlay was probably around 20 bucks. I paid for a fishing license, but didn’t bother with a watercraft registration. I mean, this was a private lake, right, so I figured this would be a private boat. Maybe that was a mistake.

We went fishing in that boat, but soon I discovered some sort of hydraulic principle that says if water comes in contact with Liquid Steel, the Liquid Steel must give way. Yes, it will. It tends to happen when you’re at the middle of the lake. I bailed with a tin can. Fish a while, bail a while. I wasn’t catching fish, so it didn’t matter.

Back on shore, I’d turn the boat over and dab more Liquid Steel into the holes.

One day I found hundreds of bluegill scales on the bottom of the boat. I was outraged. Somebody had used my boat’s bottom as a board to clean fish! No respect. They had managed to re-arrange the Liquid Steel, and my leaks were a bit worse that day.

Worse yet, I sensed that the boat had been put in the water. Yes, somebody had taken to “borrowing” it. The nerve!

That day turned into night, nearly, before I rowed back to shore. The moon was over the trees and it was almost dark. I hadn’t caught any fish, so all I had to do was pull the boat onto shore and turn it over. As I flipped the boat, I heard a whirring noise and something landed in a tree right over my head.

Whooooo!

Spooked me. I grabbed my fishing pole, worms and oars and strode quickly up the lane. A whirring again and there was that owl, again on a branch right over my head.

Whooo!

Too much! I trotted down the lane. I’d made it about 300 feet when the owl buzzed me again. That did it. I sprinted all the way out of the woods.

Next time I went to the boat, I forgot to take Liquid Steel along. Oh well, I thought. I’ll go fishing for just a short while.

I learned something more about hydraulics that time. The boat was leaking from the get-go, but I bailed and rowed. I wasn’t too far from shore when the last plug of Liquid Steel popped loose, and I had a gusher. At first, I tried my two-handed fishing and bailing. Soon I was bailing steadily. Forget the fish. The water was defeating me. The bottom of the boat had about three inches sloshing around if I stayed level. But if I shifted my weight to one side, even just a bit, suddenly all that water would run to the downhill side. The boat rolled real fast and nearly capsized.

This was serious. Sitting as straight as I could, I rowed towards shore, stopped to bail, rowed some more. The water was gaining. I just rowed and rowed. I was going down — sinking! This was scary. I would look down at the water, and it was black and deep. Not my friend, this lake. Man, I thought, what would happen if this boat went under? Would it suck me down with it? I had the willies. It was worse than the owl. I rowed and rowed, water sloshed and more than once the boat nearly went on its side.

Finally, I jammed the bow onto the shore and jumped onto land.

I bailed the boat out, turned it upside down and went home.

What a relief to be on solid ground!

A week later, I brought my oars, fishing rig and a big tube of Liquid Steel down to Popendick.

My boat was gone.

Vanished.

Now, I can only imagine one thing happening. This was not a boat anybody would steal. I mean, anyone would be nuts to pay for such a boat, let alone hijack it.

Once again, somebody had “borrowed” my boat.

Hope they could “swim.”