I can well imagine his joy in 1965 as my dad drove home with his new boat in tow. He was a true outdoorsman and would get his money’s worth. Made of riveted aluminum panels, it was simple and solid. Surely it was a prize for him to own.

Most of the time, he took it out solo. I had little interest in boats because  I could only sit and look around. Starting the motor was an exercise in frustration leaving me afraid that wherever we went, we might not make it back. Two stroke engines have a sound that doesn’t give confidence, as if they could quit at any second.

Dad was a fisherman with impressive ability which I chalk up to his diligent research, experimentation, and willingness to go where the future meals lived under conditions when they can be enticed aboard the boat.

One trip stands out. There are two forks of a river hereabouts where one is dirty brown and the other is clear and beautiful. We started in the clear fork. The water was glass like and the big fish were beneath us in temptingly nice numbers.

Dad navigated past a houseboat that was maybe too low in the water and our wake rolled right into the living room. The man and old lady who stood on the porch fishing were livid and shook their fists at us demanding that we “git back here!”

One was a well known television personality, a wrestler.

For once the weather was pretty. The land on either shore stayed lush and idyllic the whole way after we cooled the toes of the fist shakers.

Far ahead, a flock of birds crossed over the river and they all cut loose, pelting the surface with their droppings. That day I decided that birds have a sense of humor and a sense of decency. They could have gotten us. They could have befouled any place beneath them but for some reason they waited for the river.

That made me smile.

Further along, there was a place where the water grew very still and seemed to be very deep. Creepy. Belly up ten or twelve feet down was a dead fish, very large.

There was another time when we were in the vicinity of a eutrophic lake where the river can’t seem to decide if it wants to flow or just puddle up. We got off the boat for a few minutes on the shore and I found an artifact left behind by indigenous people. That was a thrill. It was small, but real.

Now that I’m thinking about the boat and what it must have meant to my dad to have kept up and used for all these decades, my attitude is improved. Boats to me were always that thing that takes up space in the yard, comes out for use in the most miserable penetratingly cold  and drizzly weather, and had an engine that’s a pain to start.

If I thought that way about kids, I’d only see the runny noses and broken toys. If I saw only the down side of cars I’d see  expense, danger, and repair bills. Now, I see only the solace and peace and excitement this boat brought to my father by taking him places where he could  have time to himself. He really did get the value back for whatever it cost him.