There are some mistakes you make only once in life; perhaps the error resulted in physical pain, deep humiliation or significant financial loss. The memory lingers and, one hopes, moves to the forefront of the old cortex just before you are about to repeat the same miscue. For example, it’s been 45 years since the evening I poured the last drops of the fourth quart of oil into the engine of my car, only to look down and see an expanding puddle of Mobil 1 at my feet. To this day, when changing the oil in any engine, my subconscious whispers, “Drain plug in?”
A fine spring Saturday in the North Woods found the usual suspects gathered on the lakeshore terrace outside the Lake View Inn. It was the Swanson kid who first spotted my good friend Chuck Larson out on the water.
“Is that Chuck Larson running in circles out there, in that little boat?” the kid asked. And by golly, it was Chuck, in the sweet little 10-foot Lund he’d picked up the previous year. He seemed to be bent over in the aft seat, like he was looking for something on the sole, while he kept one hand on the outboard tiller. With each circle, he zoomed a little closer to the Lake View dock.
“Now he’s waving at us,” the kid said, “and yelling. But I can’t make out what he’s saying.”
We all looked at each other and finally decided to hoist out of our comfy Adirondack seats and amble down the dock. The apex of Chuck’s arc was now only about 40 yards off the end of the pier, and on his next pass, we could make out “I lost…” and on the next pass “…the plug!”
“He’ll run out of gas eventually,” Dwight Grams said. “And then he’ll swamp that little boat.”
The Swanson kid ambled down the dock and presented a drain plug. “It was on the bumper of Chuck’s truck.”
Of course, a 10-foot boat does not have a bilge pump, and so we surmised that Chuck was keeping the boat on plane to keep the lake out of the Lund. The solution was to back Chuck’s truck and trailer down the ramp so that he could motor right onto the bunks and winch it out before the little outboard went under.
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Chuck and I are close. So close that I know he always tosses his keys behind the right rear tire of his truck. Water was still flowing from the bung as I pulled up the ramp with Chuck and the Lund secure on the trailer.
“Dammit, I did it again!” Chuck said as he tossed me a soggy seat cushion. “Same thing happened last year, only nobody was around, so I had to beach the boat. Glad everyone was here!”
There really is a first time for everything. And for Chuck, a second—and likely a third time too.
