Chapter One:
I grew up here; http://mapcarta.com/23977808/Map
Mine began around five. Grandma's farm was on the bend in the Willapa River, just below tide water. Every winter I would hope for a big rain that would cause the Willapa to overflow its banks and fill a small depression in her hay field.
We made a raft out of four sections of a utilty pole, maybe six feet long. This raft would carry my brother, sister and cousins and I to distant places in our imagination, even though the small pond when full was maybe twenty feet wide, one hundred feet long, by three feet deep. Hours would pass each day floating around on this little vestige of ideas until the water would slowly disappear, perhaps returning another soggy day.
As I grew older, maybe twelve I came upon an abandoned skiff on the river bank, which I turned it into a sail boat. My grandma let me have an old canvas sail attached to a wooden spar and boom up in the rafters of her wood shed that was left over from my uncle's small boating days. This I attached to the skiff and sailed the Willapa. That little skiff took my buddy and I all the way down river to Raymond and back with much help from the tide currents.
It seemed my thirteen year old mind was always looking for some new adventure and never one to pass up an opportunity, when my uncle Bob came into possession of a working drag saw engine. http://www.oldengine.org/members/levans/dragsaws/drag saw-29ab.jpg I asked him if I could use it to make a paddle wheel boat. He said okay as long as I returned it.
We floated the small log raft down river to my buddy's place also on the Willapa where he had a small dock. There we installed this old drag saw engine on the raft, hooked it up to an empty cable spool with paddles and motored up and down the river.
For the life of me, to this day, I fail to recall whatever happened to the raft, sail boat and paddle wheeler. But we did have fun in our adventures.
I grew up here; http://mapcarta.com/23977808/Map
Mine began around five. Grandma's farm was on the bend in the Willapa River, just below tide water. Every winter I would hope for a big rain that would cause the Willapa to overflow its banks and fill a small depression in her hay field.
We made a raft out of four sections of a utilty pole, maybe six feet long. This raft would carry my brother, sister and cousins and I to distant places in our imagination, even though the small pond when full was maybe twenty feet wide, one hundred feet long, by three feet deep. Hours would pass each day floating around on this little vestige of ideas until the water would slowly disappear, perhaps returning another soggy day.
As I grew older, maybe twelve I came upon an abandoned skiff on the river bank, which I turned it into a sail boat. My grandma let me have an old canvas sail attached to a wooden spar and boom up in the rafters of her wood shed that was left over from my uncle's small boating days. This I attached to the skiff and sailed the Willapa. That little skiff took my buddy and I all the way down river to Raymond and back with much help from the tide currents.
It seemed my thirteen year old mind was always looking for some new adventure and never one to pass up an opportunity, when my uncle Bob came into possession of a working drag saw engine. http://www.oldengine.org/members/levans/dragsaws/drag saw-29ab.jpg I asked him if I could use it to make a paddle wheel boat. He said okay as long as I returned it.
We floated the small log raft down river to my buddy's place also on the Willapa where he had a small dock. There we installed this old drag saw engine on the raft, hooked it up to an empty cable spool with paddles and motored up and down the river.
For the life of me, to this day, I fail to recall whatever happened to the raft, sail boat and paddle wheeler. But we did have fun in our adventures.