Sunday, November 11, 2007

outboard

When my brother and I went up to the shack with Grandad and Uncle Bill that summer, Grandad brought along an old green outboard motor. I think it was four or five horsepower and it might have been a Johnson. Ross and I were quite excited on the day we mounted it on the back of the aluminum rowboat. Even though rowing was a more than adequate means of locomotion to get to any part of the lake, going under power was much more appealing to us as adventuresome kids. Grandad and Uncle Bill mixed the gas and oil, connected the fuel lines and got the motor started after a few adjustments. I think we motored around the lake a few times at a moderate rate with Uncle Bill at the helm. He gave us a few safety pointers about how you can't stop a boat immediately like a car or bike, how you have to watch out for branches or logs floating in the water and reminded us that the propeller protrudes into the water further than the bottom of the boat, so one must be careful when motoring in shallow water. When we returned to shore, we were given detailed instruction on how to start the motor, stop the motor, keep the fuel going while it's running, use the throttle, raise the engine if we went into shallow areas and other general operating procedures. It was then that I learned that I was not to be the captain of this vessel. My brother was a year and a half older than I, which meant that he was qualified to take the tiller, while my age relegated me to mere passengerdom. I made known my displeasure at this arbitrary decision, but to no avail. However, I wasn't about to let this disqualification ruin my fun, and I knew I might be able to revisit the issue at a later time.
When we got into the boat without Grandad and Uncle Bill, I noticed how much the bow of the boat was raised out of the water. The boat had previously been ballasted by the weight of one large and one small adult, in addition to the two kids, so it hadn't been an issue. With the lighter cargo of two kids, the relatively heavy motor caused the stern to ride low and the bow high. This condition was compounded by having the slightly older and therefor larger and heavier kid in the stern to operate the motor. We pushed off and made our first cautious run under the watchful eyes of Uncle Bill and Grandad. As soon as we started to gain speed, the bow of the boat rose up even more, frighteningly so. The bow completely blocked my view in the direction we were traveling, so I knew the captain of the boat wouldn't be able to see in that direction either. He was already slowing down, and we decided that I should move to the front seat to try to keep the bow down. This worked well enough for us to motor to the head of the lake and back at a moderate speed. We returned to the inlet by the shack and were congratulated by Grandad on having become able seamen.
We had a few chores to do, maybe stacking wood or sweeping floors, which we did as quickly as possible so we might have a chance to return to the fun of motoring around the lake. We were allowed to go back out for a short time, and we went a little bit faster this time, gently weaving back and forth across the breadth of the lake as we traversed the length. If we started going very fast the bow would rise again even with me in the front seat, which was still a bit scary, so we didn't dare go too fast on our second outing.
The next day, we had a much longer time to spend on the lake, and the fuel tank was still nearly full, so we began going a little faster, and doing a few more curves, and getting closer to shore. We'd occasionally see Grandad or Uncle Bill by the cabin as we motored by, so we felt a bit restrained by distant supervision. We came in for lunch, and had a few more chores to do before eating. I remember Grandad giving me some helpful advice about sweeping. It was something along the lines of, if you're going to do a job, you should do it well, and not just half-ass it so you can go do something fun. I think it might have been a commentary on the quality of my work on the previous day's pre-motorboating chores. This time I tried to sweep as quickly as possible without giving the appearance of doing a half-assed job. After our chores were done, we were back out on the lake. We were a bit more confident and for some reason we started spending more time at the head of the lake, which coincidentally was more difficult to see from near the cabin. We experimented with figure eights, weaving back and forth and tight curves. We occasionally made less exciting journeys to the lower part of the lake, and on one of those journeys, we noticed that our erstwhile supervisors were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they were inside the shack and were watching from the windows, or perhaps they were just behind some brush or trees and we couldn't see them. We knew they were probably around somewhere, but the fact that we couldn't see them somehow made us bolder. Now it felt like the whole lake was ours. With additional test runs, we found that we could travel the length of the lake at full throttle if the captain leaned forward and I crouched down all the way in the front of the bow. I'd be raised up in the air, and even small ripples made it a pretty rough ride, but the speed seemed worth it. We were doing a few tight curves at speed, and went into a tight figure eight and the captain decided it might be fun to do some very tight circles at near full throttle. I had a hard time holding on, and I think he did too and when I looked back, I was pretty astonished to see that the motor was pushing on the boat so hard that the back edge of the boat was below the level of the surrounding water. We were going fast enough so the water couldn't catch up of course, but I thought if we had to stop suddenly the boat might be swamped, especially if I lost my grip and fell back towards the stern. We weren't swamped though, and while the feeling of danger stunned us at first, we soon realized that it had been quite fun, so we did it some more, at perhaps a slightly reduced speed, until we were dizzy enough to feel something akin to seasickness.
We might have continued our adventures, had we not run into one of the cruel realities of motor sports. Having emptied the fuel tank, we were forced to take the oars from the bottom of the boat and use them propel the boat back to the inlet using old fashioned muscle power at what seemed like an incredibly slow pace.
After we returned, Grandad had thought up a few more mild chores for us to do. By the time we finished those, dinner was ready. After we ate, it was still light outside, but it was starting to get a little bit darker in the shack, so Grandad lit a kerosene lamp. After he lit the lamp, he sat back in his chair, cleared his throat and said, "You know, when you're out on the lake in that boat, I really want you to be careful."
I thought he or Uncle Bill must have come out and seen us after we forgot about the existence of our supervisors. I also suddenly thought of the fact that the motor was a lot louder when it was at full throttle, so maybe they hadn't even seen us and had just heard the motor running at top speed for extended periods.
I expected to be scolded and maybe not be allowed to use the boat by ourselves, or get a big lecture on how we could be hurt or ruin the motor. Instead, he solemnly said something like, "I told your mother I'd take care of you boys while you're here, and if anything happened and you were hurt or killed, I'd hate to have to write that letter to your mother. I would hate to have to write something like, Dear Jackie, Today I found the boys' bodies floating out in the lake."
I forgot about the prospect of punishment or lectures as I looked at the flame of the kerosene lamp so I wouldn't have to look at Grandad. I imagined my own body floating out in the lake next to an overturned boat and pictured Grandad's hand writing that sentence, and then my mother reading it. I felt a weight of responsibility shift from him as our guardian and caretaker to us as independent beings. I had often thought of the risk to myself when doing stupid things, or the risk of getting caught and getting in trouble, but I hadn't often thought about what I might be doing to someone else.
There was no lecture or punishment or removal of privileges, there was just matter of fact presentation of potential consequences. Then I realized maybe we hadn't been 'caught' at all. Maybe he just said that because he knew what kids were like and that if we had been screwing around, we'd know what he was talking about, and if we hadn't, we'd go on on being careful.
The next day, we took the boat out again, but this time we had fishing poles. There was still room for a few figure eights and some fast runs between attempts at fishing, but maybe we didn't have to open the throttle all the way.

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