Hot Summer Day

It was a long time ago, back in the 1950's! It was summer, school was out, there were no "organized & structured" activities to impede kids in their social development the kids. We had played baseball in the morning, had a lunch of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches washed down with glasses of sweet iced tea, dozed a bit & now were looking for something else to do. Build a raft! The idea had merit to the 5 rambunctious 9 year old boys!

First thing was to scrounge the wood. They searched the neighborhood on their bikes looking for construction sites. They located 5 of these treasure troves. Next they went to the workers on each site & asked if they had any "extra" boards. They were shown scrap piles and told they could take what they found there. This yielded them boards, planks, dimensional lumber and even nails!

Dragging this haul home to one their house was a chore accomplished easily by these enterprising young lads. Once there they raided their dad's toolboxes for hammers, saws & other assorted tools that they would wield with varying degrees of half-clumsy expertise to make a raft of somewhat irregular proportions. This was the work of another hour. It was mid-afternoon, the hottest part of the day, but the sweat that rolled off of their young bodies was ignored in the heat of excitement.

Finishing their endeavors they were then faced with how to transport this nautical creation the 1/2 mile to the bay. Finally it was decided that by using to red wagons tied together end-to-end that they could rope it down & pull it to the shore of the bay. They scrounged up the necessary rope, loaded their watercraft upon the makeshift hauler & away they went headed for the briny deep!

As they were leaving an older brother pulled up in his car & asked, "How y'all gonna paddle that thing?" Oooops! Back to the drawing board! They thought about this for a scant 2 minutes then decided that the neighbor, behind their friend's house was out of town, had a canoe with paddles in his carport & surely he would be happy to lend them the paddles. That decided, one of the lads rushed off to requisition the necessary paddles while the others headed off to the bay with their raft in tow.

Arriving at the bay simultaneously with the paddle-laden buddy was a good omen! They off loaded their raft, got into the calf-deep water, climbed aboard, got a bit alarmed when the raft began to tilt until they figured out how to trim the "ship", & began to paddle out to deeper waters. They arrived at the barely submerged sandbar, lifted the raft & portaged it over the sandbar & re-launched it. They once again began their cruise to adventure. When they were approximately 50 yards from shore they turned the craft towards the distant pier that protruded from a nearby jut of land. half of the distance was covered when they began to notice that a squall was heading their way. "We can beat it!" they assured each other. That was a fallacy! The rain & wind swept over them in a rush of sound & cold water. The calm waters of the bay became a choppy, white-capped monster...! They headed for shore. Once back on the land which could hardly be termed "dry" at that point they decided that raft building was fun, so was rafting but the rain squalls were anything but fun!

Leaving their raft on the bayside beach they trudged the 3/4 mile back to their bikes & the 2 wagons, gathered up their stuff & headed for home. They did remember to return the paddles as well! Just another hot summer day on Tampa Bay!

                                © Donald R. Houston, PhD