Parting With an Old Friend

Since I was a young, single, just out of business school, full of piss and vinegar, strapping young buck I have owned a boat. There is a forest service lake just north east of Marysville that I have been going to for the past 28 years religiously up till last year. Every Fourth of July about 100 of us would descend on the lake and camp in the old loggers' camp at the far end of the lake. It was rustic. We brought our chemicals and toilet paper and dug our own latrine. There were a couple of tree stumps fashioned into benches, a few more into tables, and a huge fire pit surrounded by those benches and huge boulders.

There was no gas on the lake, only dirt roads into it and nobody but us at it. Mine would be one of 5 or 6 boats, and always Pete's power dog (Dodge truck) with a 55 gallon barrel of gasoline on the back. Those were wild and crazy days. We used to ski all day long, and party all night long, playing our instruments and singing old classic rock songs around the campfire. I remember one stellar evening of serious intoxication that someone had put a full 4 x 8" panel of plywood in the fire (yes, the pit was THAT big). In the middle of one of our favorite songs "Secret Agent Man" I jumped onto the plywood and was "shooting" all my friends with my flute as the flames surrounded me and began to melt my boots. Good times.

Then after a few years people began to lose their wild oats, find mates and settle down. I fell in love and started bringing my girlfriend to the lake and taught her how to water-ski. John and Jan Pellizzer (called the fuzzzy's because, well, they were) were the first to sport a baby but many more followed. My first, Kayla, was born in December so she was just 6 months old when she had her first trip to the lake, sleeping under the bow cover as her mom and I took turns skiing and teaching our friends. I guess in all the years I probably taught over a hundred people how to ski for the first time in my boat.

Gradually the number of friends started to diminish and the number of families increased. Over the years we had various combinations of in-laws (my wife came from a big family), families from our church, and just good friends that we had known since the "good old days." The constant was the lake, and the boat. Serious waterskiing gave way to floating on the lake with the sisters, nieces and nephews, dogs and other critters. One year when my second water baby (Kelsey) was just 5 months old, we had a fuel mishap and the boat burned down to the water line. It was a bit dodgy as mom and I were alone in the boat with Kayla. I told mom to jump in and handed her a seat cover to float on and the baby. Thankfully Kelsey was on shore with the rest of the families. A fishing boat picked us up, and another boat kept my burning flotilla from igniting the forest by driving around in circles and swamping it.

That boat was replaced immediately upon my return home. The thought of not having one never entered my mind.

As the kids grew and started to make their own friends, several of them started to join us. We had great nature walks and camping trips, all revolving around at least 6 hours a day in the boat. I was the driver for most of it, so the passengers came in shifts or waves but I rarely got off of my ship. There were all sorts of waterfalls and rock slides to explore, rope swings, and beaches. The kids sometimes took kayaks off to faraway beaches and set up their own camp for the day. We were always summoned via walky-talky to come and rescue them in the late afternoon when the junk food ran out and the wind picked up in their faces, making the paddle back to base beach quite unattractive.

As the years past the logging camp was gated, the road paved, and the campground expanded to accommodate trailers, RV's and the eventual onslaught of personal watercraft and mini-bikes. What was once our serene personal getaway became everyone else's too. People that we had shared our sacred find with began to bring up their own groups and word inevitably got out to the masses. Mostly it was a friendly bunch, and as we went up the same time every year we became pretty good friends with many of the campers and boaters. There was kind of an unwritten code that if one boat went into "skier's cove" for that early morning "glass" the next boat would go the other way down the lake to avoid interfering. My good friend Martin, who came up with his family for 6 or 7 years, named the place "Shangri-la." It fit.

The kids went to church together, we had lunch together every Sunday, and I played softball with them every Sunday afternoon for years. There is a world full of memories with those friends, but none as special as camping, the lake, and the boat. To be continued... In town I had become great buddies with a few of the locals that saw us every summer for two weeks. I had taken the kids into town to get ice, make phone calls to civilization, have a cold one, and most importantly play horseshoes. We'd leave the ladies at camp (after mom and I retired to the cove to "bathe" - lots of great memories on that boat!) and motor into the little general store at Strawberry Valley.

The horseshoe pit was right next to the store, adjacent to the "group W bench" where the local loggers and pot farmers would congregate every evening to drink and smoke. The kids would eat their ice creams, I would have my beverage, and we would trade war stories about the Grateful Dead with the locals and chill. Since the kids were little, they couldn't reach the end of a regulation pit, so I let them back up a few feet and throw at the stake while I sat on one of the benches and threw from there. Eventually the kids got to big to do that, my Grateful Dead buddy, "Digger," died from sclerosis and it just wasn't the same going into town any more.

Over the years the camping experience gradually began to decay, as did the condition of my boat, my marriage, and the kid's relationships with each other. My soul mate and faithful black lab Daisy made her last trip in 1999. We had to put her down the week after we returned home. I love our yellow lab, Oakley to death, but there will never be another Daisy Mae of the Redwoods. She came into my life at a time I really needed a friend like her, and was the best friend to the kids as they were growing up. That is a story in itself. Some of the friends that used to be such great buddies with my girls (they used to put together a "show" for the adults that they would rehearse the entire week and then perform on the last night) became boring or irritating.

The great core of friends that we started out with in 1983 had gradually dwindled down. Everybody moved out of the bay area, or had married people that had different tastes from the camping experience we used to enjoy. A few got their own boats and just got on different schedules. The relatives that had once flocked to the shore tapered off and dried up altogether with the divorce. I went up one last time with the Ex and her sister with the kids, and we had a great time just like the old days (without the "bath" run), but knew it would be the last for that group.

The next year we went up with my daughter Kayla, her boyfriend, his buddy Josh and my best friend and Brother Paul. My new wife came up for the last weekend and we had a great time. The kids had their own vehicle and started going their own way much of the time. For the first time I was happy to stay on the beach and let them all go out on the boat and wakeboard. They started taking their own little trips into the forest, leaving dad and Paul at camp, in other words growing up.

We had had quite a few great trips out on the bay. We'd start out at Oyster Point, stop off at pier 39 in San Francisco, head through the sailboats at St. Francis Yacht Club and out through the Golden Gate bridge. I never went very far out in the Ocean, although the boat does pretty well in seas up to about 6 feet after that it gets a bit nerve racking. From there we would cruise past Sausalito and Tiburon over to Angle Island for lunch. Once in a great while there was a stop at Zach's for a cocktail, then back in the bay. The return trip was a spin around Alcatraz Island, followed by a stop off at AT&T (PacBell) Park - Home of your WORLD CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS. It's great if there is an afternoon game on; you just anchor in McCovey cove and watch the game on the big screen while listening to it on KNBR.

There were a couple of trips (thankfully all with the "boys" where we had problems and had to be bailed out by the Coast Guard. Once I even had to have a windsurfer off of Coyote Point radio in for help for us. Another time we had to get towed into the base at pier 30 and walk to Western Marine to buy a battery. All good adventure!

The year before last we got everybody up to camp and the boat wouldn't start. We spent literally days taking it into Oroville and picking it up only to put it back in the water and find it still broken. When we got home I took it into a repair shop again, spent $2,300 on it and the guy let my daughter pick it up only to tell her it still needs more work. He's not sure how much it will cost because it entails a new gas tank, and the upholstery and trailer are shot. I don't have anything to pull the damn thing because the ex got the truck in the divorce.

Last year the campground at our Lake was closed, and my daughter was in Guadalajara teaching Spanish to the locals, so there was no trip. This year it looks as if she will be going back, and our summer is getting booked with family reunions and the like. The lake was getting too crowded anyway. Since they doubled the size of the campground there are all sorts of jet skis and wake boarders in the water anyhow. The boat needs about $5,000 worth of work to make it "nice" again. The kids are going their separate ways, and the old gang has disbanded. It makes no sense to keep the boat.

Am I feeling this remorse because I just don't like the fact that part of my life is gone forever? The kids are grown, the friends are scattered, the lake is more commercial, and Diggers dead. So is Jerry Garcia for that matter.

There are things that we do in our lives, our businesses, our relationships, that just don't make any sense. Am I chasing memories, or is it realistic that I can fix the thing up and enjoy it with my new friends, my new wife, my new in-laws, and my new nieces and nephews? Can I really justify having that thing in my driveway 24/7/365 just for the few times a year we have these amazing experiences that I could never have any other way?

Hell, I'm only 57 and the house is paid for. Screw it, you only go around once. Like my good buddy Jesse says, "This is not a dress rehearsal." How am I going to take JC out fishing without a boat? How many people get to watch the Giants in McCovey cove? Thanks for helping me make up my mind.

You have been a great listener, and it didn't cost me $140 for a 50 minute hour.

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