I can’t really remember the first house that I remember living in. There was this little breakfast bar thing where Mama gave me one of her vitamin pills one day. She took all sorts of crap, and I have no idea what this was other than it looked cool. It was a capsule full of some kind of liquid which I immediately popped in my mouth and bit down on. The folks thought my reaction to the horrid fluid in my mouth was very funny. I’ll be laughing all the way to intern them in a cheap ass nursing home. Well, Pappy anyway.
So, that’s all I remember about the inside but I remember a lot more about the outside. Especially that we lived within close proximity of a lake. Through the magic of Google Maps, I have discovered that we pretty much lived on the lake. At 3 years old, that did not sink in so much, but I knew we went to the lake all the time. That was awesome. We’d get “inflatable mattresses” (which no one in their right mind would sleep on) and float around in the water. (Come to think of it, you shouldn’t really sleep while floating in the water. You could fall in and drown. Mama would get unconscious on the floating air mattress, but I’m not sure you would call that sleeping.) If you put your head under the water, you could hear the sound of the motorboats. We would sometimes get masks and look around under the water, but you could not see anything. That water was kind of nasty now that I consider it.
We also had a big ass metal canoe that probably would have been lost if it were ever swamped. It was fairly easy to keep upright. We’d paddle that thing around the lake or maybe go over to some river that the TVA had slowed to a crawl. We didn’t really care because we were kids and it was all a big adventure. By the time I made it to camp at Brigadude, canoeing was no big deal. Lanyards, yes but not canoeing.
How could it be, then, that I waited until Tallulah was in her seventh summer before I got her into a canoe? Inertia, perhaps? We do not live near a lake, it is true, but our neighborhood is almost as rednecky. That should have inspired me to some extent. The major drawback, perhaps, is the relative dearth of flat water in our area. Yes, whitewater is more fun but it is something to work up to. As luck would have it, the good people of Nebo host the Lake James State Park which in turn hosts some little canoe outings.
Tallulah was up and at ’em before the sun on Saturday morning as we prepared for our trip down the mountain. Being so Bunco-centric most of the time, I forget that it is really not that far to some pretty cool stuff. I prepared as if we were on an expedition to the arctic. In reality, Ranger Clay took us up around a point of land, back into a cove, and around again to the dock. 45 minutes or an hour of boating, plus a visit to the swimming area (no air mattresses, plenty of goose poop.) Not a big adventure for me, but it was the first big adventure on the water for Tallulah. Next time we will discuss the legend of Hiawatha.