Das Boot
From February 15, 1979 until September 15, 1984 I was a Prince.
Not in reality but in thought. You see the entire time that my parents ran the private park I had a whole King Arthur thing going on in my mind. The line from the movie Excalibur, "You and the land are one", really meant a lot more to me then your average guy. I was even a little arrogant towards some people. One kid a couple years older then me told me one day( as I was kicking him out of the park),"You just think you something because you're here. If you're out there you're no one!"
"That's right Lonnie", I replied." But at least I'll always know that somewhere I was someone. You'll have to carry around that fact that everywhere you're nothing for the rest of your life."
Like I said . Arrogant.
But it all came to end in the early fall of 1984 when my parents left the park. And suddenly I went from a little prince to some guy living in a small three room house with his parents and older brother and sister.
And yet amazingly I took my arrogance with me. (But that's another blog or 20)
We also took my Dad's aluminum fishing boat. It was a long boat maybe 10 feet or so. It was pointed I the front and flat in the stern. Dad had named it the Gena after his granddaughter. While we were moving, it was sitting in our new backyard. One day before we were completely finished moving Dad made one of his snap decisions that never seemed to work out well.
He told me to put it in the basement. Like most things Dad told me I didn't argue. I just tried to do what he asked. My best friends Mark and George were over so I had them help.
We opened the outside basement door ( no way it was going in the front.) and tried to shove it down the stairs. We found to our dismay that it was just a little too wide and a few feet too long to go down the stairs. The bow of the boat hit the basement floor while at least two and half feet were sticking straight up in the air.
I walked over to the garage to tell Dad it wasn't going to fit.
Dad simply glared at me and said,"Make it fit."
I went back to Mark and George and told them, "No go. He wants it in."
So we tried to figure out how to accomplish this task. Mark went into the basement from inside the house and tried to lift the bow of the boat while George and I pushed. Hoping that maybe we could get it in that way. It went in maybe another few inches ,but that was it. After 15 or 20 minutes of that I went back to Dad. I pointed my thumb behind me and said, "I really don't think it's going in."
"Make It Fit." He looked really angry. Which meant that he was my Dad.
Back at the boat we tried again. Mark again tried to lift the bow as much as he could. Instead of pushing on the boat George and I commenced to jump up and down on it. After a while Mark came up and jumped with us.
The boat wedged in even tighter. I went down to the basement and helped Mark lift again while George jumped up and down some more on the boat. After close to half an hour more we were drenched in sweat. I went back up to Dad. He just glared at me very hard before I could say anything.
(I know this is going to sound odd but it was almost as if he thought he were purposefully trying to make it harder then we needed it to be.)
"Don't make me come out there! Just get it in!" He almost snarled at me.
I went back to the backyard. George was still bouncing up and down on the boat. Before I could tell George what Dad said the boat suddenly shot into the basement. George gave a little yell and went with it. The three of all laughed at our feat.
After we stopped laughing we stared at the boat. Then we stared back at the stairs to the yard. It was George who said what we were all thinking.
"That boat is never going back up those stairs."
I went back to the garage were my Dad was and said,"We got it in. But if you want it back out get someone else."
For the next few months the boat sat we left it. Everytime a relative or friend would come over we'd show them the basement and the boat. When my Uncle Ronnie saw it he laughed and said,"What did you do? Build the house around the boat?"
In late December of that year my Dad's stepmother passed away. This left his father in a nursing home with no close relatives around. Dad decided we would move Leo in and take care of him ourselves.
But we would need a much larger house.
So one late December morning Dad woke me up. It was barely 7.30 in the morning.
"I found a new house big enough for what we need."
"That's good Dad." I yawned still half asleep.
"You want to see it?"
"Sure Dad. Let me get dressed."
Before I could move Dad tossed a set of keys on my bed and a piece of paper. "There's the address. The moving van's outside. I want us completely moved by time I get home from work."
For any other family that would be impossible. But not my family. We called over friends and other family members. Mark helped. Steve came over and did his part. We hid Geno's bong and told him he'd get it back in the new house.
By 5 that evening we had completely moved. We even took all our trash. There was no evidence we had lived in that house that morning.
Except for a 10 foot aluminum fishing boat.
Mark and I made a very half assed attempt to get it out so we could say we tried. After that I left it up to my three brothers. All of them decided if I could get it in there they could get it out. By the end of that first evening they all had fresh bruises to show for their efforts but there was no boat in our new home.
John gave up sometime the following day. "It's never coming out" he said with disgust. Even Dad was discouraged. "Why'd you put it down there to begin with", he would yell at me.
Steve spent the next two weeks trying to get that boat out of there. I would drive by sometimes in the middle of the night and I'd see him there in the empty house, trying in vain to get that boat out. When I checked on him on one late night I found out he had destroyed the stairs in an attempt to move the boat out of there. When I walked down the inside stairs I could hear Steve cussing up a storm. ( I can't repeat his cuss words hear but it involved monkey love.) Against my better judgment I gave him a hand for a while.
What's really funny is Steve really couldn't have cared less about that boat. But when he obsessed about something he just couldn't let it go. Steve thought if the boat got down there it could get back out. It was that simple. And it drove him nuts.
It all climaxed one afternoon when Steve got a truck from a friend. He drove it though the alleyway behind the house and parked it in our old backyard. He got out with a chain and attached it to the back of the truck. The other end was attached to the boat. Steve got in the truck and revved the engine up. Then he squealed the tires and pulled away as fast as he could.
The result was a damaged truck, a broken chain, and a large bump on Steve's forehead. The boat was now lodged in tight. In the end it was shoved back down the broken stairway. Dad never went out in a boat fishing again.
A few weeks later I was driving around with my current girlfriend on a late Saturday night. We wanted to be alone and I thought the old house was perfect. The next day Dad was having the stairs to the basement replaced and was putting it up for sale. But for now it was empty. I pulled into the garage and shut the garage door so no one could see us. We went into the house and started to make out.
My girlfriend Sue was a little nervous. "You sure no ones going to see us in here?"
"No baby we're fine. The house is empty. As long as we don't turn the lights on, no one will know we are here."
"It's just like a horror movie", she said. We started kissing again.
WHOOMP!
BANG!
It felt like the whole house was shaking. Sue started screaming. She grabbed her coat and ran back to my car. The noises were coming from the basement. I knew before I went down there what I'd find. Steve was down there making one last attempt to get that boat out of there. I looked out the back window and saw his car in the alleyway. The basement door was open and I could see Geno and Steve with a rope pulling on the boat. They both appeared to be very drunk.
And very determined.
But in the end it was all in vain. The next day when the guys Dad hired showed up to replace the stairs they found a very dented boat still sitting in the basement. They expressed wonder how that boat got down there.
If you ever come to Kewanee drive by Grace Avenue. There is a small little white house with a large garage. On the side of the house there are sliding glass doors into the kitchen. Stop by and ask the people who live there if you can check out the basement. There, sitting in the dark for 19 years sits my Dad's boat. He painted the words Gena on it. I put the boat down there.
The many dents are courtesy of Steve.