You’d be down the block with friends, pouring kerosene on the fireant hills. Suddenly the roar of dad’s powertools would cease to echo off the longleaf pines and all the neighbors would visibly relax. This meant it was dinnertime, so you’d best pocket those matches and get your butt home.
Years later when dad asked me to help him lay the mahogany deck, we oftentimes wouldn't even bother to stop for dinner… it was that much fun.
Thanks, Dad!
XIII. The rudder and the tiller
I'm not sure when dad built the rudder. He did a great job tho - with a nice curve to the fin and a head of layered mahogany.
Now it was time to build the tiller - a much more simple task.
Just find a big chunk of African Mahogany with a little arc to the grain, and then carve a sweeping curve to harmonize with the stern deck.
Winters get pretty bleak, you know, in Massachusetts.
Oh but the cold sank so much deeper in the short days of 1898, when memories were black and white. When sounds fell silent with heavy frost. When ma'ams cursed the hoary storms that cast their Ichabods and Ebeneezers to the barnacled graves of Nahant Bay.
Pilgrim grim.
One awful morning the womenfolk moped to breakfast at the local creepy church. A bitter syrup of tears poured over not-so-hot cakes. Jesus winced above pewter mug slurps as the ladies told their woes… unnerved by skeletons of their lobstermen churning clicky-clack over surf pebbles, weary of tea-which no one really enjoys if they're being honest about it, and grieving alone in icy featherbeds that were awfully lumpy, but never quite lumpy enough.
Just do unto it.
Hair buns held taut, then yielded just a little, then frizzed entirely as the ladies headscratched for a solution:
Perhaps they could spare their remaining husbands by designing a rugged surf dory. A fast sailer. Round-sided to haul in nets of crab. Highly stable to never swamp, not even in the treacherous Nor'easterly swells.
Huh?
Well mayhaps they could visit upon the Indians and learn their timeless methods of survival?
Nay, friend. For God had passed judgement on the savages and their gravemound housed a taffy shoppe.
How about they forego fishing the terrible ocean, and simply trap the plentiful mutton and venison of the forest?
Aye, friar. Except ladies do prefer chowder to stew.
Well then let the women also take to sea. Joining the men in their peril, so any loss of life would be shared - the ultimate act of union?
Oh Christ, what was that first idea?
And thus, with love as her mother, ye Swampscott Dory was conceived.
