MY SECOND HERO STORY OR HOW WE SAVED JAN FROM THE PROPELLER

MY SECOND HERO STORY

 

OR

 

HOW WE SAVED JAN FROM THE PROPELLER

 

 

Having the opportunity to be a hero is a rare occurrence. Having that opportunity being one to save someone from serious harm or even death almost never happens in real life. Of course, having that someone be your baby sister takes some of the edge off. The year was 1960 and the setting was the Lake of the Ozarks. I was twelve, my brother Fred was sixteen, my sister Nancy was fourteen, and Jan, the baby, was seven.   The family, mostly Dad, was building a cabin at the Lake on the west shore of the Lick Branch arm.

 

Dad had bought the lot (actually two lots put together) in 1958. He was building the cabin between two huge white oak trees; the trees were the reason he had to have two lots. The first thing he had done was to put up a wooden platform for our huge box tent. The first two years at the lake we camped in the tent and cooked out of doors. I loved it. But now the cabin was going up and we stayed in the unfinished shell.

 

The first summer at the lake Dad bought a boat. The boat was a glorified fishing boat that could charitably be called a speedboat. It was 14 feet long with a bridge across the third point and bench seats. The bridge had a steering wheel on the left, like a car, and motor controls. The controls consisted of two levers connected by cables to the motor. The nearside lever was short with a black knob.   It controlled direction. Up was neutral, forward was forward, and back was reverse. The far lever was longer with a red knob. This, the important lever, controlled the throttle. The control box had a safety feature. The direction lever was locked in when the throttle was pushed forward more than one-half inch. This prevented you from inadvertently pulling the drive into neutral with many rpm’s on the engine.

 

The summer before, I had, with careful planning and a bit of incredible good fortune, gotten permission to drive the boat alone. I was now a consummate boat operator. My brother, Fred, because of his superior age and because he was the first borne, could drive the boat whenever and wherever he wanted. Now Fred was very intellectual but had zero mechanical skills. It was a wonder he hadn’t killed himself driving. My sister, Nancy, had less than zero mechanical skills.   At fourteen, she was at the height of girl klutziness. Her only attributable physical skill was that she could ski slalom, something none of the rest of us could do. Nancy, however, wanted to learn how to drive the boat. After all, her older and younger brothers could drive it. By that time, I could not only drive it, I could disassemble the engine with a screwdriver and vise grips. Now, I loved my older sister dearly, but I would never have let her drive the boat, particularly not alone.

 

So the day came.

 

Although I don’t remember for sure, Nancy had undoubtedly been practicing driving with Dad and maybe Fred. I know I had never let her drive when we went out together. I am sure that Dad and Fred had shown her the fine points of steering, how to watch for logs and such, how to cross waves without swamping or flipping over, and maybe how to dock. I am also sure neither showed her the fine points of engine control, things like how the engine started and stopped, or how the throttle and shifter worked in tandem. Fred inherited his mechanical skills from Dad.

 

Nancy, Fred, and Mom were on the dock, a rectangular affair made by joining newsprint pallets together, each pallet having one fifty-gallon barrel underneath for floatation. The boat was tied up on the north side bow to shore. Mom was sunbathing. Fred was giving Nancy last minute instructions on driving alone; instructions like Don’t wreck the boat!!! I was sitting on the picnic table, which was in turn sitting on the old root cellar which was positioned at the edge of the beach about 10 feet from the shore. The old root cellar was a relic from the days when our lots had been part of a farm, now under water. My other sister, Jan, was swimming, well actually bobbing, in the water holding onto the front of the dock. Jan could swim, just not very well.

 

Fred helpfully started the engine for Nancy, something she could never do for herself because it had a pull starter and required a small amount of mechanical skill. I watched with a horrible sinking feeling in my chest. This could be the last time I ever saw my boat. Then he helpfully untied the ropes, and helpfully told her to put it into reverse. Nancy pushed on the throttle instead of the shifter, revving the engine up. Realizing her mistake, she pulled back on the shifter and the engine slammed into reverse, startling Nancy as the boat surged backward. Nancy tried to push the shifter back into neutral but the lockout was engaged. Unless she pulled back on the throttle first she wasn’t going to get to neutral.

 

Fred started yelling at her to kill the engine, but the engine was being uncooperatively loud and besides, no one ever told her how to kill the engine.   You did that by pushing in the kill button located on the front of the engine. So Fred is now yelling Push the kill button on the engine! and gesturing wildly. Nancy swiveled around to look at the engine Fred was pointing at. The boat is now twenty feet out from the dock. As Nancy turns to look at the engine she holds onto the wheel, turning it to the left. Watching in complete disgust, I think “That’s great, the boat is now apparently going to come clear around and hit the shore in reverse, but that’s probably better than running across the cove and killing itself on the opposite shore. I’d have to swim across to start it.”

 

Woops. Wrong. The boat was going to come even further around and crash into the dock. Jan was bobbing up and down in the water watching the spectacle and coming to the realization she is in the direct path of the out of control boat. The boat is now twenty feet from the dock and heading right at Jan. Fred leaves off yelling at Nancy and prepares to do something, anything.   Jan starts bobbing along the dock keeping herself lined up for a direct hit. Mom sits up to watch, and I launched myself from the picnic table to the beach and boat ramp.

 

Things happen very slowly when your adrenalin is pumping. The boat was three feet from the dock and the propeller was two feet from grinding up Jan. If the boat ground up Jan, Mom and Dad would surely get rid of it and we would probably never go to the lake again. Fred threw himself out against the engine with his feet braced against the dock.   Jan was right underneath him. I suppose his adrenalin was pumping too because he actually stopped the boat for just a moment. Just a moment was long enough. I leaped across the dock and bounded over Fred’s head into the boat.   I brushed Nancy aside with a superhuman strength born of fear of losing the boat (and perhaps my little sister), jerked the throttle back, and shoved the shifter into neutral.

 

The action subsided. The boat drifted away from the dock, harmless. Mother plucked Jan from the water in perfect horror of seeing chopped off limbs. Fred sat down dazed. My heart was doing triple time, but everything was ok. Snarling at Nancy, I brought the boat back to the dock.

 

As I think back on it now, I don’t believe Nancy ever drove the outboard again. The next year, Dad bought a twenty-two foot Chris-Craft inboard, a beautiful wooden boat. Eventually, she did drive the inboard alone and with girlfriends, frequently getting stranded by running out of gas which required the assistance of various and sundry admiring boys and young men, but that is another story.