IN THE BEGINNING.....

A side note....I started writing these next series of posts back in June of 2010 and am just now getting around to publishing them...

After returning from our Bahamas Cruise 2010 I was wondering how I would fill my time until May 2011 and our next Bahamas Cruise. And, I was thinking about how lucky I was to be able to do the boating we do and also how lucky I was to have someone, aka CJM, who not only goes along but is a true cruising companion, so I thought it might be interesting to look back and take a look at how we got here.

It was a cool October evening....the year was 1950. Alice said to Joe, "It's time." NO, wait a minute, I don't think we need to go that far back. Anyway, my parents loved to fish. They actually went to Minnesota on a fishing trip for their honeymoon. My dad was a St. Louis policeman. Mom said after the war being a cop was not what it used to be so they decided to chuck it all and move to Pontiac just before my third birthday. They built a little "mom & pop" resort in Arkansas called Indian Point Lodge about a half mile past Cactus Ridge Resort. As is still the case, if you want to live here, you need to have a couple of jobs to be able to survive. Dad did several things, he was a fishing guide, he sold TV Guide, paperback books, and encyclopedias and in 1962 they decided to operate the Green Trees Cafe, now Just Jackies, for Clyde Oberlin. Our whole family worked at the cafe. Dad cooked and the rest of us waited on tables, washed dishes, and cleaned up. We did not have a boat of our own so we decided to save all of our tips and buy one. By the end of the first year, we were able to buy a used aluminum boat with an 18 hp Johnson. It wasn't big enough to ski with but Dad made a surfboard, a piece of plywood with a rope attached to the boat, that we all enjoyed. Our first boat.....

In 1964 after 2 years running the restaurant and 10 or so years in the resort business, Dad decided that if he could sell the resort for enough money to get out of Pontiac, he would. George Labuta owned the dock at the time. Dad and Mom and George made a deal for us to buy the dock. We now had LOTS of boats...50 rental boat and 16 motors. These were however rental boats, not for personal use. Included, however, was a 16 feet long aluminum boat with a closed bow and a 30 hp Johnson. The catch was that the old Johnson didn't run very good so a couple years later we traded it for a 65 hp Mercury. Now we had a ski boat. I learned to ski behind it as well as most of the rest of the kids in the area. I had a friend from West Plains named Skip Callahan who also had an aluminum boat with a 40 hp Johnson. Once we pulled 4 skiers up with our boat and then added 2 more to the spread making 6 by handing them off from Skip's boat. One day we were headed to our favorite spot to ski from, Reaper's Island, the little island just east of the state line Marker Bluff. Just outside the marina cove I was driving Skip's boat pulling him on skis and my brother, Dan, was making a big circle around us when he struck a submerged log and flipped our boat. No one was injured other than a few scrapes and bumps and bruises but it spoiled the day and our ski boat was laid up for quite a while. Our second boat.....

Next..........How the 2 Captain's met.

CTM