my first canoe
I grew up in North Eastern Oklahoma during the 1960's, I remember the first time I saw a canoe in the flesh. My patrol dad in my early scouting years was a confirmed John Bircher, although I didn't understand what that meant at the time, I just assumed that my folks ment he was a little wierd. He built fiberglass canoes in his garage and it was one of these crafts he brought along on a patrol hike in the hill country of Osage County.
The patrol dad had only one canoe and several young boys, on that spring day on Sand Creek, so only two of the boys at a time could ride in the canoe with him at a time, while he paddeled stern. The rest of us had to hike along the stream bed until our turn came to get our ride in the canoe. I can still feel the anticipation and the urgent feelings of impatence that only a young boy can muster waiting for his turn for his first canoe ride.
Our family didn't have much spare cash in those days, so I didn't really miss what I never had, but what it meant to me at the time was that if I really wanted a canoe to call my own , it was up to me to make it happen.
So I went to work, mowing yards, caddying for the rich folks at the golf course, painting addresses on the curbs with my brass stencils and round paint brush that my dad had dug up for me, the only time I had any sucess at all selling door to door. This went on for months all the while I was pouring through the back end of magazines such as Boys Life and the Popular Mechanics subscription, that my Great Grandmother seemed to give me every year for Christmas, all the while searching for a canoe kit that even remotely resembled a canoe.
I finaly settled on a particular kit, it was from Trail Craft out of Levenworth Kansas if memory serves me right. It cost $48.00 of my hard earned dollars.
That winter I was in the 9th grade and my dad and I spent it in the garage building that little 12 foot craft.
We lived less than a quarter of a mile from the Caney River, a brown water high clay banked stream that meandered for miles through the wooded bottem lands of North Eastern Oklahoma and almost every weekend all through high school one or two friends and I would pack our gear Fridays after school was out, throw that little 12 footer on my shoulders and head for the river.
We would have the adventure of our lives, traveling through time in our minds to the days of the early explorers, as we paddeled down that muddy little river til Sunday afternoon would be upon us and we would start looking for a bridge for take out. We would hike out of the river valley and start looking for a farm house from which to call the folks to come pick us up and haul us home. In those days fear did not prevent folks from letting some ragtag boys into thier home to use the phone. I do remember several times we had to knock on more than one or two doors just to find a home that actually had a phone, making me realize that our family had a lot more financial resources than some along that little river and that I had a lot to be grateful for.
So from my boyhood point of view, 12 feet is plenty big enough to supply a young child's life with plenty of room for gear and friends to an avenue for limitless adventure and coupled with a little of the youngs imagination, the experiance far exceeds those original 12 feet.
And from an adults point of view, those winter nights in the garage working side by side with my dad remains, after some 15 years since dad passed, one of my most cherished memories of a fathers love for his son.
Hope this helps with the realization that some times it's the small things in life that bring us the greatist reward.
Tom Widney
