Boating life

Though I was born in N.O. and lived in L.A. I don’t remember ever going on the ocean, or lake, or stream in any kind of boat until I was 8, when we boarded a freighter for Africa. (My father had been in the Navy—I’m told he was the one who got seasick.) In Liberia the shoreline drops quickly and the current is bad, so you don’t want to go swimming at the beach, and you really don’t want to go swimming in the creek. We lived where there were roads and (narrow) bridges, so there wasn’t much call for ferries.

Naturally I heard the song as "Michael rode the boat ashore" and figured he must be a passenger since everybody else was working.

Until I was into my late twenties I could count the number of times I’d been on a boat on the fingers of one hand, despite having spent about 15 years within 10 miles of the ocean. (We swamped an overloaded motorboat in a lagoon and spent the next half hour trying to find the tools that went overboard, and some relatives down in Mississippi took us fishing once. That’s about it.) So we moved to Madison where water sports are huge. Odd ducks we were, still not taking to the water.

At Devil’s Lake I was impressed into taking some kids out for a turn in a canoe. I had a theoretical notion of how to use the paddle, and I succeeded in not accidentally beaning any of the kids along the way. Though I dripped a lot of water on them, and we wound up pointed in odd directions.

A generous co-worker loaned the use of his cabin-on-the-lake, and now once you pry me out of the chair it is fun to pilot small boats around a quiet lake (not so sure about places with big waves). Wish I didn’t swim like a brick, though.