The Sailboat

 My dad was a photographer of sorts. During WWII he carried an old Argus C3 and chronicled his adventures as his unit fought their way across Leyte and then again across Okinawa. I spent many hours while growing up scanning through the stack of war photos he managed to keep through the years. Only a handful are still in my possession with others being held by another family member. Wish I still had them all. Some years later while he was a high school journalism teacher he had access to a 35mm film camera...not sure what kind it was...but using it from time to time he chronicled a very few moments of my life growing up. One of the most memorable was the day he took me and a few of my friends to a small nearby lake so we could sail the wooden sailboat models we made in shop class. I still remember that day. At the time I wasn't aware he was taking photos. I'm sure glad he did.

The year was 1964, and time has faded the names of those friends in my mind, but not so of other events.  At the time we lived in Delano, California, for just a year, but it was an eventful year...sort of a coming of age year you might say. Learned a lot in shop class that year, simple but important skills really...how to cut a straight edge, how to use a jack plain, wood gouge, drill, sander, varnish...all those skills every young man should have. Our project for that semester was to build a model sailboat. And when they were finished, we possessed a work of art...well...to me it was.

I'll never forget that day at the lake. Seems it was slightly overcast with a light breeze that caused the palm trees to sway. It was perfect to catch the sails of the boats to propel them across the narrow arm that was just wide enough to let the boats get up a good head of speed, but narrow and shallow enough so we could run to the other side or wade out into the water to coral them should they start to drift too far in the wrong direction. 

We tried to set up races between the four boats. Most of the time the boats just drifted off in whatever directions the breeze inclined to take them and so it was pretty much impossible to declare a winner. Actually, we all were winners that day as we were able to forget about the challenges of being almost or at best barely teenagers and just have fun sailing something we made with our own hands.

I was this skinny 12 year old with an era style crewcut. Just 12 years old, but having already experienced some of the most dramatic events in history. A few months before in November of 1963, when we lived in New Mexico, an assassin's bullet struck down President Kennedy in Dallas, then the assassin himself was struck down live on television. Young minds should not have to see such things, but we did, and those wavy black and white television images were imprinted deep within our memories. They were difficult events to absorb, even more difficult to forget and move on, but they were none the less a part of that generation's history, memories that will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. 

When my dad snapped these few photographs at the lake, little did he realize that he was capturing a renewing of sorts. The kind of renewing only a young boy coming of age can experience. Thoughts of that terrible day a few months before were shoved aside exchanged for adventures and visions of sailing on the high seas, of dreaming of new possibilities and probably what should be instead of dwelling on something...well...something a young boy should not have to dwell on. There were no counselors in schools to talk to the students about what happened back then, at least I don't recall ever receiving any kind of counseling. That was left to parents and to the kids themselves to sort through such things. Even though several months removed, building those sailboats was a kind of default therapeutic counseling and probably the best kind too. Those few months after the President was killed, when we were shown how to construct those sailboats in shop class, well, it served to divert our young minds toward something that was far less encumbering and more positive.

On those occasions I rediscover these few photos, I see in the expressions of us boys, a joyful focus, one that took us away from a terrible past event to point us toward a stronger growth of character that only comes from something as simple as sailing a homemade boat across a small arm of water. 

When I bring these photo's close...for a few moments, I am taken back to once again become 12 years old, remembering what it was like to experience such a day. I still remember that sailboat for it helped me to move away from difficult memories and to develop an imaginative mindset towards amazing true life adventures.