"Is
it hard to steer," asked Duke.
"Uhh,
no." But, compared to what I wondered. I have no source of comparison, nor
did Duke have sample tillers in his outboard shop: THIS TILLER STEERS HARD,
another: THIS TILLER'S EASY, to swing back and forth to get a feel for the
difference and thereby assign a degree of difficulty to my own boat's steering
effort. It's just the way it is and my arm's aching from curving upriver gets
that way from steering a boat.
"Oh.
They already drilled the bolt holes, but the motor should be three-quarters of
an inch higher."
I'd
drilled the holes last July; the salesman said to as a prudent move to keep the
motor off the bottom of the lake.
Duke
squinted his eyes at the lower end of the motor. "You've got a 13-pitch
prop. With this heavy boat you'd get a helluva lot better performance with an
11, so the engine can rev its maximum horsepower through higher RPMs."
My
emotional sphincter muscles relaxed. Slackened further than they had an hour
earlier when I'd stopped out at Duke's to purchase a bottle of OMC
Carbon-Kleen, or something like that.
"Oh,
yeah," he said and picked up a lone dusty bottle lying on its side in a
cardboard box on the floor. As he began to write up the $7.95 sale I put my
ploy to work and asked, "I've had this problem with my Johnson sneezing,
coughing and killing. It's getting worse. Do you think this will solve the
problem?"
He
eyed me as one does an idiot who's farted in court.
"You
don't need that." He took it back, paused, then said "here. You can
have it," and gave it back.
I
didn't want it either, and pushed it back across the counter.
"Your
motor needs a linkage adjustment."
"Can
you show me how to do it?" I asked, knowing full well from an Internet
search earlier this morning that symptoms like mine were caused by too lean a
mixture and I wanted him to show me the needle valve.
He
hesitated. "I really can't explain how to do it yourself, especially
without the motor here to show you."
"How
much will it cost and when can you do it?"
"It
takes about a half-hour. Twenty-five dollars. Bring the motor on the boat and
I'll get to it yet this morning."
I
drove home to get the boat, exhilarated that I was going to be rescued from the
motor's chronic bad behavior. And, at the hands of someone who seemed to know
exactly what tweaking to do.
Duke's
Outboards is a small old-timey automobile repair garage converted to boat and
motor service years ago. It sits, with backwater access to the Wisconsin River
flowage, on a curve of a dead-end road five miles from town. It is not the
place where social climbers shop for expansive expensive umpteen-hundreds
horsepower engines or military-grade cruisers. And it is a serendipitous
discovery for me who appreciates competence and an sensibility of "do it
right is enough, more is too much".
I
brought the boat, with motor attached, within the hour. That's when Duke told
me about the too-low motor, the hard steering and introduced the subject of my
improper prop geometry. I gave him permission to replace the prop in addition
to performing the fixative sneeze adjustment.
He
said to call him at 11:30 and I drove away ninety-percent confident,
ten-percent dubious, wondering if this man was trustworthy or just another
smooth salesman.
11:30-
"Is
the tune-up and propeller replacement on the Johnson ready?" I asked the
phone.
"Let
me see."
Papers
rustled beside his receiver. A minute later he picked up the phone and asked,
"What was that name? Johnson?"
"I
didn't give you my name, but it was the idle adjustment and new prop you were
going to take care of this morning."
"Oh.
Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's all ready."
I
entered the shop beneath half of a wooden rowboat with an antique motor on its
transom, hung over the outside of the door. Inside, ancient outboard motors
line each side of the small room. Some are mounted high, between old outboard
posters. Old motors--Mercurys from the fifties and Evinrudes from the forties
and enormous bulky old motors on display with long water pipe tillers and
sparkplugs sticking out before the days of cowlings hid all the mechanisms.
Each model had a small sign detailing the make, year of manufacture,
horsepower, and original retail price.
I
gawked alone for a few minutes then Duke came over from the house and startled
inside the door to see someone there.
"I
put the new prop on. It should make a helluva big difference."
As
he wrote up the receipt I asked, "and the idling problem was fixed
too?"
"I
pushed it into the lake and idled it for a few minutes. It didn't cough once."
I
shriveled the pained look customers do when a chronically troubled car won't
act up for the mechanic.
"But,
I adjusted it before trying it out."
He
wrote out the bill and I studied a snapshot of a man and small child under-way
on a lake in a small racing boat. Realization dawned bright and complete that
it was he I'd seen in that same boat upriver last summer, followed by a woman
and child in a 1950s runabout with a period-correct outboard.
"Have
I seen you in this pumpkin seed out on the river?"
"Yes.
But it's a tri-hull hydroplane. I've got four of them out back. C'mon I'll show
you." (Not a hard proposal to get a passionate man to show off his
reserve.)
He
led me out the back door down to the water. Two of the boats were ramped on
skids. "Those are the other two I'm restoring, under that tarp"
I
drooled and murmured impressionable rapture as we perused the fleet. Duke
squatted at the front of one on the ramp, "see, if you look underneath
you'll see the narrow outsides of the undersides have small runners along the
outsides. That's a tri-hull. Once it's planing the boat skims on those two
points and along the rear."
We
headed for my boat in the lot, passing a pair of small aluminum speedboats. He
said, "This is the one my wife likes best. The other, the white one, was
just restored."
Impossibly
small, short and narrow, each had blue Evinrudes. "They are great fun, so
different than the big new boats."
We
commiserated on that cultural big-business tendency, then arrived at my boat.
"Are
you going out soon?" he asked.
"Right
now," I replied.
"Bring
it right back if you don't see a big difference in performance and I'll refund
your money for the prop."
A
friend for life.
Elmer
was just preparing to launch a boat different from his birthday gift boat of
two years ago. I'd only seen him in the hardware all last year and wondered
what was up.
"Hey
Elmer," I said, "That's a boat I haven't seen before," getting
out to see.
"Yeah,
I just got it. I'll wait. You go ahead and put in."
"Let
me help. What happened to your birthday boat?"
"It
was too damn heavy. Took three men and a boy just to pull it back onto the
trailer."
He
unhooked a strap and a rope, got in the truck, while I held the rope and
followed it down. Off it floated, high and lightly proper for one man to
control with a twenty-five horse Mercury on the back end and electric trolling
motor furled on the front. He walked onto the dock and stepped in as I held
fast. Then he started the motor and backed slowly out, a sweet gentle man with
a new dreamboat.
We
idled out of the landing channel. Then I cracked the throttle open. EZ
staggered and I was pressed deeply into my seat. We hit top speed and I
gassed-back to half throttle. EZ lunged forward at the sudden slowing and
almost went over the bow.
My
God! A helluva difference in performance, as though the propeller blades have
been hard-slotted into gear drives rather than patient fluid water. The engine
indeed runs revs to a higher whine; top speed is not appreciably greater, but
who cares? The machinery is singing the song it was intended to sing. No longer
a Daffy Duck throttling himself with two hands trying to produce Figaro. Where
has Duke been all my boating life!? A man who knows what his customers need
when they don't know no different, or quit trying to tell him what they should
have.
I
am guilty of it. Part pride, some cynicism, at being sold unneeded baubles by
salesmen who knew nothing but exceeding last month's profits. Hard to find
genuine experts who know what they're doing, are deeply immersed in their work,
and derive great satisfaction when things are done right.
3:55 p.m.-
I
am pulled up on glitter beach after two hours anchored in SSC. EZ is lying on
shore on a new layer of silty sand surrounded by sparse fresh tufts of grass. A
majestic day. Temperature mid-70s, trees half-leafed out, few bugs but for the
occasional gnat. And, there is enough shade to escape the
too-hot-to-stay-still-in-it sun. Just like that. The months and days and
minutes and hours of dreadful shut-up indoors is done and we can sit here
listening to a cricket singing across the river in the grasses and trees limy
green.
If
human ears could hear chlorophyll being produced the hum would be heard on the
moon. Infinite trillions of chemical transactions taking place each second in a
single large oak. It's a mind-boggling conjecture, so silent, just happening.
Atoms and molecular fusion's manufacturing new substantiality's. It's a good
thing we can't hear it. Seeing daily change is enough.
The
river is back inside its banks; the erosion trench scoured along Grand
Sandbanks is two feet above water.
A
bicycle is a friendly exercise, especially when it has been serviced by a young
man who takes one look at its badly chewed gear cluster and dripping oily chain
(I thought it was the responsible thing to do) and threatens to have me
arrested, especially for riding on too tight and too dry rear bearings. Another
example of relativity with nothing to compare it.
I'd
brought it in because the crackling and crunching sounds grinding around my
feet was annoying, maybe there's something somebody could do. I apologized and
he hung up the phone to the cops.
He
took my bike in the back and "whisshed" at parts with an air hose for
a while, removed the old chain and the gear cluster and soaked everything in
some technological miracle paraffin stew. Installed a new chain, measured and
sang mountain biking songs. He worked his magic, even stayed a half hour after
closing, loosening and tightening and muttering disgrace about me under his
breath, then told me to wait while he went out for a test ride, leaving me in
silence with bike accessories and an unattended cash register.
He
came back in five minutes and pronounced that it peddled quietly and shifted
much smoother than ever. I paid him fifty-two dollars and went away holding my
breath.
A
silent ride, he was right. Done right because he too knew exactly what needed
fixing and did nothing more than it needed.
Now
riding sixteen miles is actually fun, not like it was riding three miles to
school while the car was being re-timed. Maybe now, since exercise is this
pleasurable a daily one-hour ride will finally take off twenty pounds. A lovely
win-win.
The
time is now nearly 5:00. The day is still lovely and warm, and birds I don't
miss being absent during winter are trilling, fighting over mates.