By Danny E. Cook
| Remember the first time you went rolling down the street on your bike, without the training wheels on?
Exhilarating! You were on top of the world! Remember the first time you accelerated down the runway on your
first ride in a jet plane and the heaviness in your chest as the nose lifted into the air? You were above the
world! Remember the first time you longingly touched the naked flesh of your lover? Your heart was racing
and you felt lightheaded with the intoxication of intimacy and you "were not of this world"! Many of our
memories are burned into our conscience along with the emotions of that moment in our lives. We often
sustain ourselves with those memories as we anxiously look forward to the opportunity to create new ones. Two months have passed since I was able to launch the boat and be out on the water fishing. And as I sit here on a cold, January morning with the snow glistening from the sun trying to peak through the clouds and watch the birds slip and slide off the ice covered wires, I can't help but think of the new memories we created last season. I find myself having to relive those memories to sustain me through this winter season. What a fishing season that one was! Oh, we didn't catch many fish, but we added a formidable weapon to our bass-fishing arsenal, a weapon that would put us right in the thick of the battle with our largemouth foe. We bought our first boat, ever. Now, for those memories to have real impact you have to realize that you could count the number of times I've been on a boat on the fingers of one hand of an incompetent table saw operator! When I was a child my dad took me out a time or two in his "hood boat", a boat that was made by welding together two hoods from 1940 Ford automobiles. You sat on bowed, wooden boards and bailed water while he fished. About 15 years ago I took a 10-minute, nail-biting, white knuckled ride in a fool's runabout. And there was that pontoon boat ride the same day. (Not quite as nerve racking.) Why did they make me nervous? Because I didn't know how to swim! I've had a deathly fear of the water for over 40 years, and these incidents did little to alleviate that fear! We took up fishing, as a family, a few years back and patiently walked the banks trying to find our foe. We were having some good times, a catch or two thrown in, and making memories. After a couple of years of bank fishing my wife got the idea that we should buy a boat. I thought, "All right, I'm probably over half way through this life, you only live once, and we all have to go some way, so let's give it a whirl." My wife's next words contained the word "pontoon" and I lost all interest. You never see Roland Martin, Bill Dance, Jimmy Houston, Orlando Wilson, or any of the other Saturday morning heroes fishing from a pontoon boat, so I wasn't going to either. A bass fisherman must maintain some form of an image! The next year she saw a fish/ski unit in a commercial and asked "Why couldn't we have a boat like that?" Now that I could live with! Sure, it wasn't a bass boat but this may be as close as I was going to get! We went to a couple of dealerships and looked at the boats available. My wife was concerned about the comfort and enjoyment that our two daughters could get from a boat and I was concerned that I may be loosing my mind in my old age! I couldn't believe that we were actually doing this! If you took my experience with boats and put it in a matchbox, it would roll around like a BB in a boxcar! At one of the dealerships my wife walked around with the owner talking about the fish/ski units that he carried and I wandered off to look at the bass boats. While wandering through the maze of multicolored gleaming gel coat hulls, I rounded a corner and stopped dead in my tracks. Before me sat a 20 foot, black and brandy, BADASSIN Bassin' Buggy with a black 225 HP Vesuvius strapped to her backside! Ohhhhhh, mannnnnn! I gingerly walked up to her and lightly stroked her metal flaked body. She was sensuous, seductive, and powerful! Now this was a bass boat! A half-a-dozen people could fish from her deck and you'd still have enough room to land a helicopter on her! At the sound of my wife's voice I quickly wiped up the drool that had dribbled on the gunwales. "Oh, Honey, this boat is gorgeous. Why couldn't we have one like this?" BINGO!... A week later and I'm pulling into the dealers to pick up the boat. The mechanic guided me back into position and I stepped from the truck. I had not seen the boat in the sunlight and the sight that I beheld caused my heart to beat even faster than it had been. Our new, black, 4x4 pickup truck looked as if it had been made just for that boat. They were both waxed and shining to the point that I needed sunglasses to look at them. The mechanic began walking me around the boat, explaining all aspects of the rig, and I tried my best to keep up with him, but concentration was very hard to come by. My heart was starting to pound even harder at the aspect of what was coming next. I had never even pulled a trailer, let alone own a boat, but I jumped into the situation and towed the boat down to the river and Winter Park. The mechanic took over at the ramp, showed me how to prep to launch and backed the trailer in. He hopped up on the bow, threw on his vest, and fired up that big Vesuvius engine. I stood there for a minute, in total disbelief, watching that big, black BADASSIN beast sliding out into the water. What in the hell had I gotten myself into! Someone yelled and I jumped into the truck and went off to find a parking spot. On the walk back to the water I knew I had lost it! I was embarking on a voyage into the unknown and I was gonna' have to drive the Enterprise before all was said and done. I stood at the water's edge as the boat pulled up to the shore. I grabbed the bow, gave a shove and leapt into a New World. She gently rocked in the waves kicked up by the jet skiers. I stayed to the center of her deck and stepped down into the helm well. Grabbing my vest, I sat down next to the mechanic and tried my best to listen to his instructions. But that big, beautiful outboard had a very deep and loud voice and she was about to really sing! We idled out past the jet skiers, the mechanic turned his head and shouted "You ready?" And like a fool, I nodded yes. He threw the throttle forward, Vesuvius roared to life, 20 foot of BADASSIN fiberglass raised her face to the sky, and I swear I saw the face of God! And he was smiling! The bow settled to plane, he trimmed Vesuvius up and we rocketed out across the water. The wind whipped and stung at my face. I tried my best to watch the mechanics movements as we ran around the river basin because I knew it would soon be my turn to take the helm. We stopped at the back of the basin, he shut her down, turned to me and said, "Your turn." I settled in behind the wheel, looked over the gauges, felt the throttle and trim button and reached for the ignition key. She rumbled to life, the throaty lub-dub matching my racing heart. Now or never! I threw the throttle forward. She reared her head to the heavens and then flung me across the rippled water. I trimmed up and that BADASSIN buggy shot off down the river. This was unbelievable! ! I was suddenly riding my bicycle down the aisle of a jet plane that was taking off with nothing but naked women on board! I was doing something that was totally alien to me and I was loving it! The feel of power as that big Vesuvius motor ripped into the water and sent that BADASSIN hull slicing through the waves fused through me. I wasn't on top of the world, above the world, or not of this world, I WAS THE WORLD! Fifteen minutes later the mechanic said we had to get back. "I know that you're new to this so I took it easy at first, but I would like to show you what your BADASSIN is capable of." I yielded the wheel to him and took his advice to hang on. He slammed the throttle forward! He wasn't going to take it easy this time. In seconds the speedometer was bouncing around the number 70. Hell, I thought we were flying at 40 but we were all out screaming now! "Hang on!" came the yell, a good look over his shoulder and he jerked the wheel hard to the left as he yanked back on the throttle. The bow rose, the stern settled into the water and began to slide out from under us. I anxiously glanced behind me to see a large hole opening in the water and the sensation that we were sliding right into it. Oh shit! We were going to start going under by the ass end! And then, without missing a beat, he slammed that throttle back forward and we shot out of that hole. Damn! He had turned that beast around in the space of a driveway! I couldn't believe it, and I also couldn't believe that my pants weren't soiled! He throttled back and began to laugh. "You all right? You look a little pale." I took a deep breath, swallowed my heart out of my throat, and hung my head, shaking it in disbelief. He just kept laughing. We trailered up and I drove him back to work. All the way home I sat tall in the cab of my truck, towing my 20-foot BADASSIN bass buggy along with me. I was here, now, and felt so alive. Fear me fish, for I'm on my way! Yeah, memories on a frozen Saturday morning. |
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