Kjw001, 66

My father introduced to the family to boating when I was eight at Kentucky Lake. I learned to water ski the next summer at Dale Hollow when we would tent camp, sleeping on army cots and kept warm at night with sleeping bags which smelled vagually of moth balls. If it rained at night, and it always did, my brother and I will needlessly be reminded from Dad to not touch the tent or it would surely leak. Touch or not, it leaked. The next morning, there was not sleeping in since that inside of that wet tent's inside temperature at 6am was 95°. After eating breakfast cooked on the green Coleman gas stove we found our seat on the concrete picnic table which would with fail would the scrape back of our legs from the seats sharp edges. Finally after eating pancakes and bacon and making the cots and sweep the tent, it was time to make way with full arms of food, coolers, towels life vests and belts to the muddy edge of the lake where a cement block lay on the bank, for the sole purpose of holding our boat tight through the night. The days consisted of skiing, swimming, one day to travel to the dam and back stopping to share peanut jelly and sandwiches on the boat. Back then there were no tubes to pull behind the boat but my engineering father had fashioned a sled, appropriately named, from a piece of about 5 feet of red fiberglass up turned up at the front to cut the water and a old of white ski's, one on each side to firm up the fiberglass form. We were pulled laying, sitting and standing behind the boat and every kid in our group of 10 boats fought for their next turn. Wish Dad had patented that toy. It would had been instead of BigBertha it would had been BigEarls. Full days of fun. If it was a bright night we were treated to a midnight swim at 10pm. I guess a midnight swim sounded better than the 10pm swim. Every summer for at least 5 years we would spend two weeks at the Obey campground and I wish I were loading the trunk of the hitch laden Delta 88 t