Midlife Crisis

In the early 2000’s I was 53 and leaving middle age.  I was wondering what’s next when some nasty questions popped up.  Like.  Have I accomplished anything worthwhile? What’s next?  How much hair can I grow from my ears, nose and eyebrows?  Do those ED drugs really work?

I hadn’t screwed up too much.  Because I was married with three healthy sons.  Had a fine house in a very nice suburb and a lakeside cottage up in Wisconsin.  I owned a successful small business.  There were no major health problems – cholesterol schlmesterol.  I didn’t drink, smoke or chew or go out with girls who do.  OK, I drank a little.

Nonetheless those questions festered in my brain like a chronic case of poison ivy.

I had to do something.  But what?

I could buy a motorcycle?  There would be nothing sadder than this old accountant on a Harley trying to resurrect the young rebel me.  The problem was…I was never a rebel, never cool, never a hippy, never a party guy, never anything but a dope who became an accountant.  It was hopeless.

I could get a mistress – a little action on the side?  But no one too young.  Who could talk to a woman in her twenties?  Hell, I couldn’t talk to a woman in their twenties when I was in my twenties.  Besides, I was raised a Catholic.  The guilt would crush me.

I could climb into the bottle?  Start doing a little mid-day drinking?  That reminds me of the W.C. Fields’ line which goes, “Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.”  I was too much of a wimp for heavy drinking, and did not want to set a bad example for my sons.  Although they seemed to have discovered beer without my help.

I could do drugs?  But back then they were illegal – even pot.  So they carried the same stink as boozing it up with the added benefit of becoming a criminal.  Besides, I could never inhale a cigarette.  When I saw friends suck on a joint they seemed to be choking.  No thanks.  Although, if I wanted some weed I could have asked my guys.

I could begin exercising?  Who has the time and discipline for that?  Not me.  Oh I could have made the time, but I never was into sweating; it’s too much like work.

I could dive into a new hobby?  Maybe collecting model trains, stamps, antique cars or old electric guitars that I couldn’t play. What about fishing, or hunting? I could participate in Civil War reenactments.  Perhaps I could  perform modern dance at Civil War reenactments?  There were so many options. 

I already liked woodworking, but had minimal skill and few tools.  In the past, I owned a couple plywood power boats, but they were decades old and succumbed to malignant cases of dry rot.  I put them out of their misery like you did with an old dog.

What would scratch the itch?

“Tell me Lord”,  I cried.

Then like Saul on the way to Damascus, the answer came to me. 

God spoke in a dream and said, “Make a wooden boat.”

I responded, “Thank you, Lord?  Are You sure?”

Noah could not ignore the Almighty, and neither could I.

I started small by building a kayak from a kit.  That was a simple project that only took about eighty hours.

The kayak made  the itch worse.  What a bastard.

I thought, if I build a small powerboat would the itch be cured?

At work on a Monday afternoon in early May I searched for boat plans online, while all my coworkers were wasting their time taking care of clients.  I discovered a sweet little boat called a “Zip”, which was a 14 foot plywood runabout.  It looked like something you’d see in a Popular Mechanics magazine from 1958.  Picture a handsome, blond, fit, tanned, and shirtless twenty year-old guy in his Zip with an arm around a gorgeous and buxom redhead wearing a modest two piece bathing suit.  They both have stupid grins as they fly across a northwoods lake waving like morons at another couple lounging on a dock.  That would be me and Suzy, except I was never handsome, blond, or fit or dated anyone named Suzy, and in 1958, I was three years old.   

A week later the plans arrived, and I looked at my garage and asked, “Are you up to the job?”.  My garage was my happy place.  It was built over 100 years ago to accommodate a Model T and now it was too small for a modern car.  Truth be told, I worried it was too tiny for this project, but It had to do.

The plans were 50 pages long and they came with two books.  One about building plywood boats and another on using epoxy and fiberglass.  My inner nerd screamed with joy.  I spent hours at work studying those books.  It was a good thing I owned the place.

I bought the things needed to construct my boat – including mahogany and white oak planks, bronze screws, copper nails, specialty plywood, epoxy resin, sheets of fiberglass, and a trailer.  The boys’ college fund took a huge hit.  They could go to the local junior college.  I needed a boat damnit.

I kissed the wife and sons goodbye and went out to the garage.  At this point, they were glad I was out of their hair.

Over hundreds of hours In the next eighteen months a boat gestated in that tiny space.

Here are a couple things that happened.

First I learned that my garage was too small.  The Zip’s transom (that’s the back of the hull) was supposed to be set at a 14 degree angle, but the best I could do was 12 degrees.  Oh well, no big deal, or was it?

One evening I was fitting a long mahogany board to the gunwale.   I bent the wood and clamped it to the frames. It was hard to force the lumber into place.  Next I got down on my hands and knees to see how it fit.  There I was with my face close to the garage floor studying my gunwale (you don’t get to say that very often).  A clamp slipped and the board sprang out.  When the recalcitrant gunwale was clamped, it had a ton of what engineers call “elastic potential energy”.  As the mahogany zoomed towards me I thought, “Wow that’s a lot of elastic potential energy headed my way”.  It smacked me in the mouth, and I performed a maneuver that hockey players call, “Spittin’ chiclets”.  

My tongue shrieked, “The port side upper incisor has gone AWOL”. 

My eyes wailed, “What is that tooth doing on the garage floor?”

I went into the house and found my wife.  After I showed her the tooth and my new Alfred E. Newman smile, She cringed and said, “You gotta get that fixed.  You’re flying to London in three days.”  

I was going there on a sales trip for the first time.  

I said, “No I don’t.  It’s England.  They’re all about bad teeth.  I’ll fit right in.”  

The dentist did the temporary repair the next day, and the college fund took another hit. Oh well, my sons could join a nice union.

When the hull was complete, I put it on the  trailer and dragged it to a shop that sold outboards.  I picked out a 40 horsepower motor. I said to the owner, “Could you mount that Evinrude on my transom?”

He said, “That’s too much power and weight for such a small boat.  I’ll never do it.”

The guy had no sense of adventure. 

I asked for a piece of paper and hand wrote a document absolving him of all responsibility for anything that could happen if the boat flew apart because that motor was too big.  We both signed the release and he stuck the Evinrude on my backend.  That sounds like the punch line to a dirty joke.

When the boat was done, I put it in the water and with a smug grin slid away from the dock.  Out on the lake I pushed the throttle forward to see how it handled.  Remember that 14 degree versus 12 degree transom thing?  I learned that 2 degrees makes a huge difference.  On flat water the bow of the boat bounced up and down like a five year old on a sugar high.  The angle of the Evinrude would force the bow skyward until gravity took over and slammed it back down. 

My grin turned into a grimace.

It took a couple of years to solve the problem.  Now my Zip flies along like a Japanese bullet train.

The mid-life crisis moved on to the next guy.  If I had done something else – drugs, drink, cheating, etc. – I would have regrets and family problems.  If I bought a motorcycle I could be sleeping on the wrong side of the dirt.  But building a boat got me through the crisis and it only cost me some time, my sons’ college education, and a tooth.  

I still have my Zip as I glide into life’s sunset.