My family once bought a rubber dinghy-
White.
Gigantic.
A six seater.
Called Moby Duck.
Yes, I know-
how original.
What do you expect from a family of English teachers?
(the truth is, after I took it out once, I wanted to call it Lassie,
because it never wanted to come home)
Moby was built in,
and a pure product of,
northern california.
My parents lived at that time in the giant redwoods near Calaveras.
Actually, we all lived there at one time.
in a small cabin we built by hand as a family, as a place for my parents to live
in the summer vacation time,
and us as a family to meet for family-get-togethers.
And since it was hot hot hot up there,
and the drinking water came from a storage reservoir,
where you could also launch boats,
if they weren’t motorized,
we spent a lot of time wrangling Moby,
and plastic blow-up palm-tree island swim rings,
jugs of iced tea,
a radio,
a flare gun,
(in case of emergency,)
into and out of the water-
adding air to mushy parts so we didn’t go under,
deflating to transport,
trying to not get hit in the head by the paddles-
like something out of a Marx brothers movie.
Duck soup?
But all in all, I guess you could say Moby was a friend,
And a foe,
A place to dive from,
To rest in the sun,
read a book in,
patch, repair, wash,
and through it all,
including the always trying to find a friend to help load,
or drive while you steadied it in the truck,
I would have to say Moby was
just plain
the onriest
most difficult,
and bulkiest
bulk buy
we ever made.
Except for the half a centner of cheese
the head of a religious community who lived next door to us wanted us to buy.
Or my uncle’s two dromedary camels,
or the special sale on half a tank car of oil,
to oil and rock our driveway,
when the oil came two days early and the rock a week later.
(Have you ever had to clean dogs, cats, and neighbors children with turpentine?)
But that’s another story.
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