Thinking back on it, the water crafts in my life have been an odd lot...

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The water crafts in my life have been an odd sort of thing. There have been big boats, little boats, home-made boats, hard boats, soft boats, real boats, even some crafts that don’t qualify as boats at all.


They have all served their purpose in one fashion or another and have been useful in their time.


My first boat was not actually a boat at all. At least it did not start out as a boat. It started out as a cement mixer. Or rather a large box for mixing cement in. My father had built it using 2 by 12’s and 2 by 6’s, and had used it during the construction of a gasoline station. Not much more than a six-foot by eight-foot box with a sheet metal bottom. In fact not anything more.

After construction of the gasoline station, the cement mixer was stored behind our garage and filled with leftover sand from the gas station. This was a great sandbox for us kids until we managed to scatter every last grain of sand around the yard.


Then one day, a block away from our house a team of men and trucks arrived and set about the task of moving a rather large house. When the house was built, the builders had excavated about two-feet of earth, presumably for the topsoil, and then built the house. Within a few days after the house had been moved, a good Oklahoma gully washer had filled the excavation and we now had a "lake" in the neighborhood. All us kids needed was a boat.


There was no question as to where we would get a boat. With an unspoken, unanimous vote, a dozen kids broke and ran for the back of our garage. Like ants we swarmed over what had now become a boat. Seizing on 1 by 4’s from the gasoline station woodpile for paddles, we began to piss-ant our prized possession to the lake. Our boat and lake served us well through the summer. We even tried stocking the lake at one point.

Living behind a neighborhood theater we had learned to use day old popcorn to attract perch and bream at a favorite private lake just south of Oklahoma City. By tossing a handful of popcorn on the water, the little fish would swarm in a feeding frenzy. Using a five-gallon bucket, which popcorn oil came in at the theater (coconut oil, there the secret is out about the flavor of theater popcorn), we would place a handful of popcorn inside and dip the bucket in the water. Perch and bream would fill the bucket in a feeding frenzy and we would lift out a five-gallon bucket full of fish. If one wanted pan fish for supper around our house this was no problem.


With the help of my father we managed to ferry about fifty gallons of fish to their new home. For a short time at least the neighborhood had a fishing hole. We used our boat and our lake on a daily basis, sometimes fishing, sometimes just paddling around, and at other times wading and pushing, but always a great time.

Oklahoma summers can be brutal however, and after a few weeks the lake dried up. It refilled, at least partially after that, but without the fish it was never quite the same. And then one day, my father needed the boat for another construction job. As time moved on the boat and the rest of the woodpile eventually became part of a pigeon coop, but that is another story.

To be continued...

 

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