Published Aug. 17, 2008 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune

On boat maintenance and our fathers' mysteries

By Aaron J. Brown

Today, I have a boat. Not a boat, but the boat. I would need to consult my notes, the dusty old owner’s manual and the title to tell you all the things true boat people would want to know. Most of this information – from the construction of the engine to the physics of the hull – is a mystery to me. Here’s what I do know. My great-grandfather bought some version of this boat when he lived on Serpent Lake down on the Cuyuna Range. It’s been through a lot; now, after last weekend, it’s mine.

Even though the old pictures show my great-grandfather standing in front of his 1957 wooden speedboat, wearing a brimmed hat and glasses, for me the boat will always be my dad’s. My great-grandfather died shortly after I was born, so my only memories of the boat are of dad rebuilding the relic from his childhood. The boat lived in our garage, always there and always changing, maturing from its old form to something greater. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway. The truth was that dad was always there and always working on the boat, usually to the detriment of his marriage, occasionally attempting and usually failing to explain the workings to his bizarrely academic son.

In the beginning, this classic wooden speedster sported blue paint and wood grain along the sides. Unlike the low, slow rides of a fishing boat or the high, powerful excursions of mightier vessels this boat mixes both, riding low to the water while using power and a unique shape to leap through waves. But, like many boats of its kind, despite Herculean maintenance efforts, the wood hull rotted beyond use when I was still very young. By chance, sometime in the ‘90s, dad found a ’62 fiberglass hull that almost perfectly matched the shape of the old wooden boat. So again he began a restoration, converting all the fixtures, adornments and the old motor over to the new hull, which bears a similar patch of blue over its white base. The title calls it a different boat but it is the same boat, certainly in spirit.

I’m part of the fifth generation of Browns on the Iron Range, the first in my paternal lineage to never work in a mine. I’m also the first to make a living in the vague, foggy margins of modern human society: writing, teaching and causing words to appear on something called “the Internet.” Most important, I only recently began to understand how this boat actually works, and even so only barely, like a child’s knowledge of animals at the zoo. The deep inner workings of machines have always been second nature to the men of my family. For some reason, perhaps simply an outcome of my time on this planet, all of that escaped my interest as a boy. By the time I realized how good it would be to know these things I was completely absorbed in other interests, my career, marriage and, now, my family.

Dad now lives in a big city and couldn’t bear to see the boat so far away from water when he knew I lived so close to it. So one day he called up and asked if I would take it. But the truth is that the transfer of my father’s boat to his eldest son was bound to happen eventually. This boat, so warm and familiar, but also so mysterious to me, was always something that I would have to reckon with. I tried taking notes when he explained the motor, the fuel mixture, the connections of tubes and ropes that make this boat go. Taking notes is what I know how to do. The notes, however, got wet. This transition will not be easy.

I can only be glad that my dad – now plotting his next garage project – is only a phone call away when the mystery grows too great. I can only hope that one day my own sons enjoy unraveling their father’s mysteries as I do today. For nothing rides on a Minnesota lake quite like this boat.

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