mySawdust.com - How I became a Messer (again)

How I became a Messer (again)

(Note: A "messer" is one who is fond of "messing about in boats". The phrase is Ratty's from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and goes like this: "There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.")

By Jeffrey Gifford

Nearly fifteen years ago my parents acquired a 16' plastic (royalex?) canoe, a red Mohawk that had found itself in their possession (how it did would require another story). Since they already had a 17' Grumman and didn't need another, they asked if I wanted the red one. Did I ever! Memories of Mom and Dad messing around with my sisters and me in north and south Texas came flooding back and I started plotting how to go get this paragon of paddling splendor.

At least that's how I imagined it.

I had moved from Texas to a western suburb of Chicago after college. My parents had long since moved to northern Virginia, a twelve-hour trip from my apartment. My car had no roof rack with which to carry the canoe, so looking around, we discovered some blue foam blocks designed to fit over the rungs of a ladder and keep it from scratching your roof. Problem solved. The car was an import and had convenient tie-downs on the underside for securing to the deck on the trip over. I planned to use the ropes from the bow and the stern to tie it down to these loops. Problem solved.

A work-related training class in DC gave me the excuse I needed to make the trip. It was only my second solo long haul trip (the first was Texas to Chicago). Months of anticipation and planning and now it was time.

I can remember the first time I saw her. My excitement clearly clouded my vision; it was incredibly filthy, it had a deeply gouged hull, wrinkles where it had been wrapped around a rock (at least once) and no keel. But it was mine!

As we strapped it onto my Civic, Dad and I found it ironic that the tie-downs Honda had placed on the frame to secure the car to the boat while crossing the Pacific were now being used to secure a boat to the car! It took a while to find the right place (fore and aft) so that I could still see traffic signals but Dad's experience in hauling his (more on that possessive pronoun later) Grumman all over the country (Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and lots of places in between) on various small cars (two different Corvairs, a VW Dasher and a Camry) helped out.

November winds buffeted us (yes, just me and the canoe) all across the PA and Ohio turnpikes, through Indiana and into Chicago. Where I realized I had no place to store my new canoe. Scratching my head for just a moment, I then portaged it from the parking lot to my apartment's balcony where it was to live (between paddling trips) for a while. That winter I watched snow slide off its keel-less hull and birds perch on its overturned bow. That spring, my girlfriend and I took it to various lakes and rivers in northern Illinois. She complained quite a bit (the girlfriend, not the canoe) about our zigzag wake but I could put up with both just to be out on the water. I was a Messer again! My collection of accoutrements was quite small: two paddles, two lifejackets, a pair of ropes for the bow and stern and my blue foam blocks. (Oh, how simple life was!)

Then came the letter. "To the tenant in unit 104: your balcony is considered a fire escape and cannot be blocked. Remove all obstructions by thus-and-such a date or face eviction." Well that will get your attention. Scratching my head, I couldn't figure out what to do. Until the date came and I opened the sliding door to the balcony and pulled it into my living room, doubling the quantity of furniture there (it rested against the wall opposite the book shelves).

When I went shopping for an apartment closer to my girlfriend, I didn't realize there was no place for her (the canoe, not the girlfriend). So I scratched my head some more until the day to move out came. Standing there with her hands on her hips, my girlfriend suggested that I could hang it from the rafters in her garage.

It wasn't until we had it nicely swinging there that she told me (after dusting off her hands matter-of-factly) that possession was "nine-tenths of the law". Great. So I did what any other red-blooded man would do.

I married her. (Hey, a guy's got to do what a guy's got to do. Turns out there's some history of that in my family: my Mom saved up some money from her first job to buy the Grumman way-back-when and impressed my Dad so much that rather than buy his own, he married her.) So it followed us to Wheaton and then Downers Grove. And we took it to a lot of little lakes, marshes and streams in between. When my Civic was retired, we found that her Civic (it was a match made in heaven) had the same tie-downs underneath. The third car (also a Civic, also with tie-downs) was so short it was quite comical to see the canoe hang over the car's bow and the stern (rather, both bumpers).

We moved to a little suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio and the canoe (fully loaded with lawn chairs and a vacuum cleaner) came along atop that Civic. Rivers and streams and lakes, oh my!

Eight months into producing (recruiting?) our first crew baby, we joined some folks at Hinckley Lake (south of Cleveland) in attempting to break the Guinness world record for the largest free-floating raft of canoes and kayaks. (I found out that ballast jokes are not funny at that stage in pregnancy.)

A few months later, Mom and newborn sat on the riverbank while the Grumman, the red canoe and a family reunion crew braved a swollen Shenandoah.

Same newborn was baptized when he was one year old as he fell headfirst into LaDue reservoir (northeast Ohio). Mom caught him by his feet as he in his PFD went over the side. The second attempt (successful, I'm told) to break the world record saw us with two crew-babies. Now we have three crew and more PFDs (of all types and sizes) than we know what to do with as well as a whole collection of paddles.

So last summer the firstborn crewman (then eight years-old) decided he needed to build a boat. (The reason why would require a whole other story.) Bolger's Tortoise seemed about right and so he did it (with some help). Now he's sailing LaDue and I'm working on a Bolger Bobcat tack and tape (in those rare free moments in an incessant stream of house projects). Both the Tortoise and my (um, my wife's) canoe made it to the state park at New Germany, Maryland this summer (leave any rudder craft behind; too much lake-weed) where once again the canoe leaves its zigzag wake all over the lake. It's the keel, my Dad says again (fifteen years later), or the lack of one. I've considered riveting a T-beam of aluminum to the bottom but am not sure I want to risk ruining the boat. Send me some ideas if you have any ([email protected]).

Reading this past year's subscription of MAIB leads me to believe that while the size of my crew may have stopped increasing, I may have the beginnings of a problem in the flotilla area.

Oh, yeah, and not even the Tortoise belongs to me. Ohio registered the boat's builder as her owner. So maybe I don't have too many boats....

This narrative was submitted to Messing About In Boats on 11/03/2005. I'll post back if it makes it and if so, what issue.

On 11/18/2005 I received a note from Bob Hicks, editor of Messing About In Boats, indicating that this narrative was accepted and would likely appear in a mid-winter issue.

On 12/29/2005 the December 15, 2005 edition (Volume 23 - Number 15) of Messing About In Boats showed up at my door with this article in it. It must have arrived at other people's doors earlier in the month since I had received an email on 12/20/2005 telling me not to worry about modifying the canoe—I should learn how to paddle properly instead.