Retrospective

I was told in advance that the South Whitley Garage Sales were quite a spectacle and I had no concept of how big until I went there on Saturday morning.

Wow!

I’m glad I was told in advance that there was no real point in trying to drive to the sales – you basically have to park somewhere and just walk. The walking was probably the best part of the experience in my opinion – oh, and the visiting with people. That was fun too.

I made one purchase on Saturday that turned out to have been well worth the $8 that I spent.

I bought a pair of wooden canoe paddles that appeared to have bit of age on them. Actually, if you haven’t noticed, I like about anything with a big of age on it. I digress. I found these paddles. Knowing we only had one in the boat (what good is one paddle?), I planned on buying one, but since they were a set, I bought them both. Lugging them around the booming metropolis of South Whitley during the garage sales wasn’t really easy, but my sister’s baby stroller helped tremendously.

When I got home, I immediately tossed them into the boat and thought nothing of it.

Later, after my husband spent the majority of the day tinkering with the 1955 Johnson motor that motivates our ’56 Thunderbay Runabout across the lake, we decided to take the boat out for a spin.

It all began well enough, but we ended up stalling near the northernmost island in Loon Lake. The wind on Saturday afternoon was brisk and before we knew it, we were marooned on the island. The two paddles came into immediate use – more as a means of pushing us away from land and water hazards than they were for actual paddling since the wind was so harsh. We bounced off bushes, around stumps, into rocks and eventually managed to get onto the wind-protected side of the island and got the motor running again.

I was at the wheel when some maneuvering of the carburetor resulted in some high speed action to which that boat had not seen in some years. I was flying! The nose went up in the air and we looped around the center of the lake. I had not ever driven a speed boat, so this was new to me. I had brief visions of touring the whole lake this way – thank goodness Loon Lake is a “ski lake,” I thought, so this high speed joy riding wasn’t illegal or anything.

This went on for what was actually about 2 minutes when we stalled again, this time in the middle of the lake. The paddles came out again. We restarted again. We stalled again. We restarted. This pattern repeated as we made slow, slow progress back to the boat launch.

I was never so relieved to get off a boat. For now, my urge to ride in the boat is temporarily satisfied – at least until the tinkering with the engine is complete. My husband asked if I now have the need to have a vintage motor on my vintage boat out of my system – i.e. can we buy a new motor? Stepping off the boat, my answer was YES! Now, I’m not so sure. Regardless of the adventure, it was really fun. Oh, and by the way, it did actually turn into an almost Gilligan’s Island Three Hour Tour by the time you calculated the whole time our “quick” trip around the lake took.

So, to whomever in South Whitley decided they no longer needed their boat paddles on Saturday -- thank you! If you hadn’t been selling them, I might have been setting up camp on the island and still be waiting to be rescued. That wouldn’t have been exactly the island vacation I was dreaming of, but, hey, it would have been fun too!