Are y’all O.K.

One summer when Tad and I were teenagers we decided to take the old Thompson speedboat out to Peterson’s Bay in Detroit harbor. Being magnanimous we allowed Rod to accompany us. So, all three of us zoomed out to Peterson’s Bay. After several successful circuits around the bay, I managed to get too close to the shore and broke the shear pin between the prop and the engine. This was problematic on several levels. First, dad had told me not to go too fast close to shore. Second, we didn’t have any tools, but we did have, thanks to my dad’s foresight, a spare shear pin. Third, we had no way of contacting anybody to get tools.

However, we did have our teeth, which we used as best we could to get the nut, which held on the propeller, off. All of this in order to change the shear pin. We tried for about an hour to loosen the nut without any apparent results. After about an hour we were close to despair.  We glanced across the harbor and the Lyman was speeding towards us with dad and Uncle Chuck aboard. At first, we were relieved to see them. But then it dawned on me that I had disobeyed one of dad’s directives and if I admitted the problem I would get a Frank Gordon lecture.

As they circled around us they asked us how we were doing, what we were doing and if we were OK. In order we answered, we are fine, we are swimming, and we are OK. They then finished their circle and headed back towards the house. As they faded off in the distance my heart sank when I realized that my pride and fear had caused us to kiss any help we might get goodbye.

Realizing we had blown our chance for an easy rescue, and being optimistic teenagers, we proceeded to get back to trying to remove the nut with our teeth. Miracle of miracles after what seemed like an eternity the nut came loose and we were able to replace the shear pin and then retighten the nut with our teeth.

So it was with much lighter hearts that we cruised back home.

Being rather slow it didn’t dawn on me until many years later that Frank and Charles had not shown up by happenstance. They had obviously used binoculars and seen us in Peterson’s Bay and decided to see firsthand what we were up to. They probably left knowing that since the boat was anchored and the weather was nice that there wasn’t any danger to us and went back to the house.

But that teenager those many years ago really thought we had them fooled.