Who Stole Our Boat? -- Was it You?

by Ginny Raymond

In 1957 when my family acquired our property which we now call The Compromise, as

with any acquisition, it took us a while before we had all the necessities of life. For

us, among others, we did not have a picnic table on the beach, but we did have an

old rowboat. At some point, the boat had washed up on the beach. My dad, Chapin

Cutler, dragged this prize to the top of the beach, overturned it, and we used it,

dressed in a tablecloth, to lay our spread of food when we lunched and/or had our

corn roasts.

Now this boat had wonderful character. The wood was semi-rotten and punky, the

paint was peeling or actually just gone, and the transom or stern-board was long gone

so nothing really held the boat together. None of that bothered most of us. We

thought the boat really kinda cool and useful. However, my mother, Virginia, did not!

For her, it was kind of an embarrassment, and a very questionable picnic table.

One day she asked my father to get rid of it. Well, he took on the challenge of

sinking our boat-table in the lake. So, he dragged this fellow out to the end of the

far point, with a bunch of granite-rocks in his canoe. He gingerly and carefully placed

rocks in the old boat so presumedly it would slowly sink to the bottom. You must

remember, however, there was no transom, so as he placed the rocks in the bottom of

the boat, the floor boards like fingers, separated. The unstable rocks shifted and fell

through the fingers: the boat remaining afloat. My dad would not be undone by this

old boat! No sir! It took several iterations of the above, finding more rocks, placing

them just-so within this boat skeleton before he was able to sink it. But sink it, he

did!

A few years later, while my parents were lunching, there were a couple boys

swimming and diving at the end of the far point yelling and having a grand ol’ time.

They were diving and diving and yelling and diving: obviously excited about

something. After a while, guess what appeared? That friendly old skeleton of a row

boat!! The boys attached it to their own craft, and began towing it away, eastward

down the lake, yelling and laughing as they went!

My parents mused as to the boy’s reception when they reached their camp

!

So, who stole our boat? Was it you? Where did it go? And were the boy’s parents as

excited and thrilled to get the boat as the boys were? Is it now again at the bottom of

the lake? Who knows?