One hot July day, Mr Schregardus came into the lunch room and asked if anyone was good at rowing a boat. Immediately I shot my hand up and volunteered. Anything to get away from mowing in the heat of the afternoon and rowing a boat around a lake sounded like a better option. I followed the boss out and climbed into his truck. We drove down to the dock, loaded a rowboat into the back then headed to the maintenance shack. There we picked up Bucky. Great! Suddenly things weren’t looking so positive. We travelled to the far end of the resort, unloaded the boat and Mr. Schregardus explained what we had to do. We had to measure the volume of water in the pond. To do so, I had to row around the water with Bucky standing in the back of the boat with a long measuring stick. Bucky would shove the stick into the water until he hit bottom, then relay the depth measurement to Mr. Schregardus standing on shore with a pen and clipboard. So I am on the oars, Bucky is standing at the back of the boat and away we went. The first hours or so were uneventful. I was doing a good job rowing and took on the additional task of interpreting since Bucky was pretty much unintelligible. It sounded like this. Bucky: “fgoretene fgeet.” Paul : “Fourteen feet”. Mr. Schregardus: “Check, Fourteen feet.” “thwelf fgeet” “Twelve feet” “Check, twelve feet” And so it went.
Now I should explain to those who haven’t done it before that manoeuvring a row boat backwards involves a great amount of concentration especially when a man is standing at the stern with his back to you. The standing man has to have a lot of faith in the expertise of the oarsman. If you want to go right you have to push your right oar over the left oar then pull gently backward – or that may be to go left. If you screw it up what was supposed to be a move in one direction can become the opposite. If that happens the unsuspecting standing man can be at risk. After 2 or so hours in the hot sun I became somewhat distracted and made a slight error and just about put Bucky in the drink. He was not impressed.
To be continued
