Each day I am surrounded by boats or photos of boats. Actually, I am surrounded by boats and photos of my family on boats. There are pictures of Dad from about 1939 on the deck of a magnificent twenties-era Chris-Craft speedboat. There is Mom on the stern of the Wheeler cabin-cruiser that we spent our summers on so that Dad could get us out of New York City. Then there is the photo of Dad and I on my 1947 Lightning sailboat, number 2455.
Father's Day falls on or around Dad's birthday every year and I find myself reflecting on him and the things that the men in my life taught me. I bought the Lightning for $200 from Mr. Becker sometime around 1968 or '69. She was double-planked cedar on mahogany with a beautiful tall spruce mast. All of the fittings were in brass that had turned green, and the mast had been painted white many times. Dad just shook his head and told me what a crime it was to paint over and caulk a boat that to him was a work of art. "Those men were craftsmen in those days" he told me. "These planks don't need caulking, every last one was hand-fitted to be watertight after a few days hanging in the slings."
That first winter we stripped the fittings off of the mast and slid it into the cellar of our house through one of those small basement windows that they have up north. I couldn't wait to get home from school every day so that I could spend hours polishing the brass fittings until they looked like what I pretended to be gold. Most of all, I waited for Dad to get home so that we could strip, sand, bleach, and varnish that magnificent spruce mast together. All the time Dad shook his head and said, "it's a crime what they did to this boat." He was wrong about that. It was a blessing for an adolescent boy who is today overcome by memories of the winter that he learned the intelligence of the hands from his father. He was right about one thing though. They sure were craftsmen in those days to be able to build the dreams and memories of boys.
Happy Father's Day to everyone who is a father or who is today remembering the important men in their lives.