LIZZIE BETH, TOM SAWYER, & CJM

Sometime during the late 1960's, after my graduation from high school in 1967, my family traded for a 16' Mark Twain ski boat with a 120 hp Mercruiser. Not new, but a really nice boat. The seats were back-to-back seats which folded out to make a bench seat or in my case a bed on each side. My parents were living in a one room cabin (currently Matt & Jabet's living room) with a utility room and pantry. I slept on the couch when I came home from college. In the summertime the bench seats came in handy as I would crash on the boat quite often and I was close to work the next morning. Mary Elizabeth Caldwell was my maternal grandmother's maiden name and they called her Lizzie Beth when she was young, hence the boat name "Lizzie Beth." Obviously it's also where TCM got his name. I was dating a girl named Beth about that time and most people thought the boat was named after her but it was really named after my grandmother. Sue Ann Luna Jones was a good friend and was also going to Mizzou at the time. We skied together along with some other kids from Gainesville from time to time. Beth lived about 30 miles away and was not really a lake person....so a double negative. I asked Sue Ann if she knew anyone that I might date that lived closer. Low and behold she said she had a younger cousin who also loved the lake AND was a water skier AND her parents had a houseboat in the cove just over the hill from the campground AND she was also planning to go to Mizzou in the fall. "Perfect," I thought. Entered CJM and the beginning of a very fun although sometimes tumultuous relationship that continues on today. Our third boat........."Lizzie Beth."

CJM's dad, a/k/a John Henry, knew that if he was going to live in Ozark County he had to wear many hats so was in the boat and motor business among many other things. He sold Larson boats and Johnson outboards at the time. CJM's family had a 16' ski boat with a 60 hp Johnson. Kind of a slug compared to our Mercruiser....HA (couldn't pass that up). I never skied with John Henry, but Sue Ann tells that he always wanted to take off from a sitting position on the houseboat and return to it without getting wet :) CJM has confirmed that story and says she saw him do it MANY times!!!

CJM's family's next boat was an inboard Century. It had a lot of power and made a lot of noise. I think they now had the fastest boat. We skied together almost every day the summer of 1971. We skied double a lot and would cross from side to side. I made quite a wake and was the tallest, so I always had the longer rope. We partied a little (well maybe a lot) along the way. I remember one day that summer CJM was going to be cute and locked us guys outside of the houseboat with the cooler inside. There was only a screen door between me and the cooler so as you can imagine I made short work of the screen door :) I did, however, make sure I put it back on before John Henry showed up!! What a summer we had.... When summer ended we both headed up to Mizzou and CJM did not bring much luck to the Tigers her first year. Our Hall of Fame coach Dan Devine had just left for the Green Bay Packers and our new coach Al Onofrio led our team to a 1 & 10 season :(

In the summer of 1973 I proposed to CJM in the "Lizzie Beth" with B. J. Thomas playing on the stereo :) We then traded off "Lizzie Beth" for an 18' Tom Sawyer boat with a 115 hp Mercury outboard. We had it when I graduated from college in December. CJM and I hooked up the Tom Sawyer and headed to Knoxville, Tennessee where I had landed a job with Tennessee Valley Authority. There are lots of nice lakes around Knoxville and we did enjoy boating on them while living there. TVA is very similar to the Corps in that area. Between the "Corps like" TVA and all of those darned SEC fans we did not last very long in Knoxville. By the summer of 1975 the Tom Sawyer was back in Pontiac and by the summer of 1976 so were we. Our fourth boat....the Tom Sawyer.

Stay tuned....things were about to change....

CTM