One of my earliest memories of boating was at my grandparent’s cottage on Crooked Lake in northern Indiana. I was six or seven and it was the early sixties. My grandfather had a very ugly pontoon with a painted plywood floor that got so hot during the summer you had to wear shoes to come aboard.

The boat I remember most, however, is the small wood outboard my dad used for skiing and pulling my brother and me tubing. She was a fifteen foot Century Palomino with a 35hp Evinrude on the back. Of course I didn’t know who made the boat back then, and it didn’t make a difference to me as it was ours. Every spring my dad and grandfather would stick a garden hose in the boat for a day or two which made absolutely no sense to me at the time. All my dad would say is, ‘we have to do this or it will sink’. Well, it would usually sink anyway, or come close to it after they put it in. One time we went down the following morning only to see the top of the windshield and motor. Fortunately it was pretty shallow where we were. It was always interesting and entertaining to stand back and watch my dad’s frustration trying to figure out what went wrong. Without fail the boat would eventually tread water.

It was all the small boat could do to pull my dad out of the water on two skies. Slaloming was out of the question unless you dropped. Even then the underpowered boat seemed to whine ‘I think I can…I think I can’. I still remember the time he let me sit in his lap and ‘drive’ the boat for the first time. ‘Wow’ I thought, ‘this is living’. Then he opened it up for a few seconds while I held the wheel in a straight line. What a thrill that was! Of course my mother was not in the boat when this occurred…just us ‘men’. ‘Oh, and don’t tell your mother’, my dad said as we pulled up to the dock. I never did tell.

So, guess what I recently acquired? You got it, a ’57 Century Palomino. It had no engine, but I located a fairly good condition 35hp Gold/Cream Johnson Jubilee which will work out nicely. It needs some work, but this will be a special labor of love. Both my grandfather and dad have passed now, but I know they smiled the day I bought that little boat. Something tells me when it’s seaworthy again and I’m buzzing across the lake my dad will be in the seat beside me saying, ‘open her up!’ Then it will be my turn to smile and remember again that special day I sat in his lap. I think that’s why a lot of us love these old boats…memories. Remember that when you have the opportunity to create a memory with a young boater. It will last a lifetime.