Image by Ulrich Dregler from Pixabay
by Kelli Bowen
Hubby has it in his mind that he wants to get another toy, I mean car (it’s a common theme when one is married to a car guy). He browses online for different toys and sometimes finds one that he thinks we cannot live without. Since the garage fire, we have been looking at different toys and keeping our eyes open for deals. We haven’t replaced our motorcycles, the kayaks, and several other items we once had. Some of that is by design. We want to make sure we are getting things we truly enjoy and not just “stuff.”
I haven’t been able to justify a motorcycle for myself since I’m the only one who gets to enjoy it. Hubby shares this sentiment, so we have been looking at things that we can all enjoy. You know: a side-by-side, a boat, something like that. I like to peruse the online auction sites for some sweet deals and I just so happened to come across a pretty decent looking boat.
Hubby and I had a boat back in the before-children times…can we all take a moment and remember the mornings of sleeping in and the nights of not caring what the next day would bring….ah…sorry. Distracted. Anyhoo, we had a little 1960s fishing boat that was a cross between the color of something that comes out of the front of a sick cat and the back of it. We dubbed it the “redneck bathtub” because it was so square in the front that any time you’d see even the hint of a wave: soaked. Boy did we have fun though. It had just enough juice to haul a tube. It had just enough seats to bring two or three people with us, it had an AM/FM radio, and a ladder to get back into the boat when we decided to go swimming. We liked that boat.
Here’s an idea: let’s get a boat!
I found one online. The auction was about a week. An advantage to being married to a mechanic with McGyver tendencies is that I don’t worry so much about whether something runs or not, because Hubby can make ANYTHING run. We found a single-owner boat that looked pretty decent in the pictures, they claimed it ran a few years ago when it was last put into storage and it looked kind of like what we were looking for.
So there we are, watching the timer tick down as I’m bidding on this boat we had never looked at, that was currently in another state. We had our “top number” and then revised that a couple times. Hubby was looking up comparable boats as we watched the bidding war play out on my phone. As the minutes changed to seconds, Hubby looked at me and said “Bid one more time.” Then the time clicked down to zero. Ladies and gentlemen, we bought a boat.
Three days later, we were driving a couple hours away to pick up this boat. After Google maps led us astray, we found where we were meant to be, paid our dues, collected our paperwork and went out to collect our new toy. She isn’t pristine but she’s lightyears ahead of the Redneck Bathtub. Hubby hopped in the boat, opened the engine compartment and declared, “It turns! The motor isn’t seized.” After a battle with trailer lights, we get it loaded up and brought home.
Miss E and Miss A LOSE THEIR MINDS. Fast forward three more days and Hubby comes in the house from the garage and asks triumphantly if I heard “it?” What am I hearing, I ask? “It runs,” he smirked.
Then after two trips to town and back; one for replacement trailer tires and one for a hub, we were pulling the boat out of the garage.
We schlepp the boat out to Moon Lake, a great little spot we’ve been to several times and put her in the water. Rev-rev-rev-nothing. Whir-whir-whir-nothing. The children are sitting in their life jackets and start asking Hubby why the boat isn’t running. Rev-rev-rev, whir-whir-whir. The engine compartment flies open. A visibly annoyed Hubby is flipping levers and looking at hoses mumuring “There’s no reason this shouldn’t run…what the ---…this looks right”. Rev-rev-rev…whir-whir-whir.
“Hey Hon?” I say. Yeah – annoyed Hubby. “What’s that red switch under the go-go bar there?” (I’m super technical.) He looks at me. Looks at what I’m looking at and says “Well hun…that’s the engine cut off.” He flips it from the OFF position and gives me that you-have-GOT-to-be-kidding-me look and I file this in the you-will-never-live-it-down file in the back of my brain and smile. Rev-rev-she’s ALIVE!! The boat runs like a top. We cruise around the lake, pause and jump out and swim, cruise, swim, and you know Mama packed a cooler of snacks. It was a wonderfully wonderful Sunday afternoon.
I can’t wait to take the boat out again! I’d bet Hubby will check the engine cut off switch first from now on. 
We are boaters!
Kelli makes her home in Cass County with her husband, two daughters (8 and 5) and two dogs. She works for a regional seed company by day and tries to be an alright mom, wife, friend and writer by night.
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