Water Sports

No one in the family was very athletic in terms of participating in organized team sports. By that I mean that we were not members of teams like the swim team, the football team, baseball, tennis, track, or basketball teams. We played sports as a family. We raced back and forth in the lake, we went sailing, we held relay races in the yard, we shot baskets in the driveway behind our house in Toledo, we played baseball on Acklin Ave. We rode our bikes all over the place, played endless games of hide and seek, and we ice skated for hours on neighborhood ponds and a frozen Lake Erie.

In the summer we swam every day. Non of us had lessons, we just learned by doing. Dad loved the water and would coax us to duck our heads under the cool, green lake at an early age. Then he would teach us how to kick our feet and use our arms to stroke through the water with swift movements. We loved it and always felt safe and comfortable in the lake.

Sometimes we would take one of the motor boats out during the week on a hot, windless day. We would speed out to deep water, drop an anchor and jump off the boat into twelve feet of wonderfulness, so cool and fresh that it was like a shot of sun, wind and freedom all rolled into one plunge. We would laugh and do cannonballs, trying to see which of us could make the biggest splash. We would dive, and then swim under the boat and hide from each other. It was exciting, innocent and just plain fun. We simply called this activity "deep swimming".

When Dad bought the Anderson (mentioned in an earlier post), we took up water skiing.
This boat had only a fifteen horse power motor on it, so it couldn't pull much weight. Lucky for me, I was a skin flint of a girl, perfect for skiing behind the Anderson. This was living!
Chris would drive the boat, up I went and off I skied. I also learned to cut the wake, my favorite part of the whole experience. I got to be pretty fair, and years and years later, well into my forties, I skied again behind our Boston Whaler. I was shocked and thrilled when I was able to stand up on skis again after about thirty five years. Proof that once a skill is learned, it is always with you.

The down side of all this was that our boat was too small to pull my older siblings who had more height and weight than I. Enter Uncle Ray's nineteen foot Lyman. Our Aunt Betty was Dad's younger sister. She and her husband, Uncle Ray, had no children of their own and they loved our family with all it's boisterousness and they showered us with attention and gifts. One summer, I think 1957, Uncle Ray bought this big boat that had an in board motor and a steering wheel and cushions, luxuries we had never seen. It sped along the lake at top speed, but the best of it was that it pulled everyone on waterskis and often pulled two at once.

We all thought this was just too cool, and begged Uncle Ray to take us skiing every time he came to visit with his boat. I remember that the skis we used were heavy, wooden and painted a bright yellow. One sunny Sunday, my brother Joe decided that not only would there be double skiing that day, but that I was to get on his shoulders while he skied. I was the lucky chosen one because I was the smallest. I thought this was a capital idea until I climbed unto his shoulders in the water, waited while the boat pulled the tow tight and then blasted off, pulling Joe and me out of the water. Suddenly I was very high up in the air, (Joe was over six feet tall) shivering with cold and terrified. He kept telling me to stop shaking. I couldn't. The truth is that I was, and still am, a total chicken. I didn't admit this before we went out on the water. You guessed it, we fell. It was my fault. They wouldn't take me again. After that I skied behind the small, slow Anderson. Perfect.

Further adventures of the Pier coming soon. Stay tuned for Local Characters, The Farmer, Linda, Fishing, Fashion, Tomatoes and more.