A Legend

One summer evening in 1965 a boat, a car and a lake all became part of a family legend.

First let me introduce the boat, a bit player in the whole affair.  Around ‘61 Pop bought a kit and built a seven foot plywood dinghy.   He painted it dark blue and affixed the name “Lavretni” (that’s “interval” spelled backwards) on the transom; thereby making it the only seven foot plywood boat on the face of the earth with its own name.  He kept it in the yard chained to an oak tree.  Some evenings he went fishing; he loaded Lavretni into the back of the second actor, his station wagon, and drove to the lake down the road.

That’s about all you can say about the stalwart plywood rowboat.

Now enters the second player in our drama, a white 1961 Chevrolet Biscayne station wagon, a mighty workhorse.  Pop bought it as a used car in ‘61.  This beast could swallow the entire family of eleven; now everyone went to church or on vacation in one car.  It had a V8 engine, automatic transmission, vinyl upholstery that stuck to your legs in the summer and a rear seat that faced backward.  You cranked the windows up and down by hand; there wasn’t any air conditioning.  The car defined utilitarian.  Over the years it carried tons of groceries, made hundreds of trips to the hardware store, took some direct hits from the stomachs of children fighting carsickness and provided the setting for passionate post prom or homecoming make-out sessions.  The old man called these necking marathons “trading spit.”  By 1965 the Biscayne wore a few scratches, minor wounds that added to its noble character.  

Like Boxer, the horse in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, the Biscayne seemed to start each day by saying, “I will work harder.”

Finally let’s hear from the lake, a young ingenue.  It began life as the county fair grounds.  After some classic Illinois backroom hi jinks, the government moved the pageant to another site.  They left the old fairgrounds abandoned and forlorn.  A man named Minear bought the land and subject it to a horrendous fate; he started a quarry.  All the surrounding acres laughed as Minear brought in massive shovels, installed railroad spurs and sold the limestone gravel back to the government.  He transformed the site into an unsightly open wound.  Ah, but the Almighty had a different plan.  Sometime in the 1930’s Minear’s excavator nicked an underground spring.  The gravel pit  filled with water; a  gorgeous lake was born.  They called it Lake Minear  The adjacent woods and fields seethed with jealousy.  In 1957 the community converted the stunning new lake into a recreational site with a sandy swimming beach, a ramp for launching boats, and a water ski jump.  They stocked the water with bass, crappie, bluegills and sunfish.   

The ugly duckling of a gravel pit became a beautiful swan of a lake. God bless its heart.

The legend unfolded on a June evening in 1965 when Mom and Pop tried to go fishing.  They planned a cheap date on the lake where they would escape their small house and their nine children.  They could talk without interruption, a rare chance to reconnect or hash out family matters in private.  Pop would fish and Mom would hope he didn’t catch anything.  

I helped Pop load Lavretni into the Biscayne.  The last two feet of the boat hung out of the open tailgate.  Next came the oars and fishing gear.  Pop’s fishing equipment was meager and dated.  He had a dozen sad lures, an old jar of Uncle Josh’s Pork Rinds and a few plastic worms.  He kept all these weapons in a dented and rusty metal tackle box.

Mom and Pop drove down to the lake, a little less than a mile away.

Pop backed the car down the ramp.  Mom got out; Pop put the car in park and stepped out.  They walked towards the water where they planned to lift the boat out of the car.

The Biscayne had a different idea; it slipped out of park and began rolling down the ramp.  Two tons of momentum took over and the car picked up speed.

Pop jumped in and started the car, put it in gear, and hit the gas.

Too late.

The rear wheels were already floating above the bottom of the lake.  The tires spun uselessly.  So he floored it.  Nothing.  Pop applied the emergency brake, but it depended on the rear wheels not floating in two feet of water.  GM really dropped the ball on that one.  They should have included an outboard or anchor option on their family cars.

After realizing he couldn’t stop the Biscayne from going for a swim, the old man tried opening the door so he could take a dip himself.  Like Ted Kennedy, Pop got a basic physics lesson regarding water pressure on car doors.  The door wouldn’t budge.  As the water surrounded his feet, he rolled down the window and bailed out.  Luckily he was too cheap to pay for electric windows.

At that point the Biscayne was more than thirty five feet from shore.  Pop climbed up on the hood and became captain of his sinking battleship.

Mom said, “Can you swim from there?”

He said, “Yes.”

The would-be fisherman removed his shoes, tossed them onto the land, and swam to shore – a wetter and wiser man.  

Meanwhile the station wagon began sinking; the weight of the engine forced the front-end down first.  The rear-end with the boat and oars still intact rose up.  Somehow the car spun around and it went under with the tailgate facing the shore.

After the Biscayne disappeared into the deep Lavretni and the oars popped up on the surface in the middle of the blossoming oil slick.  The little boat didn’t feel like drowning that day.  The sad-sad fishing gear was never seen again.

Mom and Pop stood on shore and witnessed the scene with two completely different attitudes.

Pop laughed.  He had seen some awful stuff in his forty six years.  He had shot Japanese soldiers at close range in the New Guinea jungle. He worked for years as the overnight police reporter for a Chicago newspaper.  He had personally seen the worst humanity could do.  Compared to all that, sinking the Chevy was a laugh riot.  

Meanwhile Mom did the math.  They owned one other vehicle, a tiny British sports car with only two seats.  Mom thought nine kids plus two parents totaled eleven people versus two seats.  Things just didn’t add up.  She knew the balance of their bank account.  She knew they had to pay tuition to three colleges in two months.  She knew how much they owed on the mortgage.  She knew they were screwed.

Her Irish nature dictated that she remained stoic; she knew they would get through this.  She began to make a plan.

Ray Yancey, a neighbor, saw the event unfold from his boat a couple hundred yards away.  He motored over and offered to help.  He tied his boat to the dock and drove Mom and Pop home.

I was shooting hoops in the driveway when they got out of Mr. Yancey’s car.  Pop was still soaking wet, but he wore a goofy grin.

Mom wasn’t smiling; she went into the house to call for a tow truck.

Pop told me to get my older brothers, Phil, Pete and Jud.  They came outside where Pop explained what happened.  They thanked God that they hadn’t deep sixed the Chevy; Pop would not have found that funny.  The feces would have hit the air conditioner, if we had one.

Pete and Pop drove back to the lake in the sports car.  Jud and Phil rode bikes to meet them.

After about twenty minutes Wayne Kick drove up with his wrecker.  He backed it up to a basswood tree on shore.  The tree would prevent the truck from sliding into the lake once it started pulling on the Biscayne.

Pete and Jud, who were nineteen and eighteen years old at the time, swam out and retrieved Lavretni and the oars.  Then all three sons rowed out to the oil slick with the tow truck’s cable.  Jud and Pete started diving while Phil rowed the boat.  They found the car about twelve feet down.  At this point they regretted the thousands of cigarettes they had smoked in the last few years.   

They  hooked the cable to the car’s bumper.  Wayne Kick engaged the winch on his truck.  The bumper said, “No way.”  The hook sliced through the chrome and the cable sprang out of the lake.  Once again GM dropped the ball; couldn’t they do anything right?

Kick explained that the cable had to be looped around the axle and get hooked back onto itself.  After an exhausting bunch of dives Pete and Jud accomplished the mission.

The tow truck slowly pulled the station wagon from the water.  Kick brought it to his father’s gas station.  

Pop and his three oldest sons returned home where for the first time the old man let them all have a beer with him.

In a few days the mechanics got the Biscayne running again thanks to the simple ignition systems and carburetors prevalent in 1965.  For ten days the car sat in the summer sun with the doors open to dry out the interior.

The family used that car for three more years.  However, a unique mold grew in the seats and carpeting.  

To this day when I encounter the smell of that mold anywhere in the world, I think of a plywood boat,  a White 1961 Chevrolet Biscayne station wagon, a little lake and a family legend.