The story below was written by Corey. He had me type it up for him. I think it was probably for some class assignment.
Everyone has seen one of the movies or read one of the books about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Most people like their stories of floating down the river on a raft because it gives them a sense of freedom. I’ve got a story similar to that, but mine, at least to some, is a little funnier.
My best friend Levi and I were floating down the river in a boat fishing one day and thought of how fun it would be to just float along on rafts. So us, being the two wild and crazy guys that we are, decided to do it the next day, using some swimming pool rafts we had in the car trunk. We asked the lady at the bait shop about the length of time the float might take. She told us that it USUALLY takes about two and a half hours to float from the boat ramp where we were camped to the bridge downstream. We thought we would go ahead and do it. Levi and I both had dates for that night at eight o’clock so thinking we had plenty of time, we started down to the boat ramp to the water. We put in about 2:15 p.m. and had trouble from the beginning to even get going. I had to catch up with the cooler we were going to tow behind us since it started floating away, faster than we were paddling. Levi kept sliding off his raft. It was so funny! As soon as Levi would get on one side of the raft, he would slide off the other. This happened several times, but eventually he did get on though - to stay.
At about 2:30 p.m., we had moved only a small distance. The water was just moving nowhere. We determined very quickly that we were already going to be late for our dates.
I had brought along a knife for any emergency that might occur. Levi used it to try to open the tab on a Coke can and broke the knife tip. He thought this was funny and laughed himself off his raft. When we had floated about what we thought was half way, we ran out of drinks.
I was then caught by the current and hit a tree. This popped a hole in my raft. Not a good thing! I had to try and plug the hole with my finger. The only problem with this is that I needed both of my hands to paddle the raft. My tongue now plugged the hole.
We went around a couple more curves and there was a man beside the river mowing his grass. He had a large pot belly stomach and a beard which looked like he had stolen it from ZZ Top. His yard was set on the top of a hill so as he cut his grass, it fluttered down into the water. Having a bird’s-eye view of us, he saw my problem. He quickly came up to the water’s edge with some duct tape like he knew I would need it. He was laughing at me as he gave me the tape. I used it, and realized that he was still laughing as we went around the ox-bow of the river...right into a waterfall. Other than all of the laughing, he seemed to be very nice.
As we continued to float, we saw an older gentleman with a very dark tan playing with what we assumed to be his grandchildren in the river at the end of an island. He was acting as a diving board for them and sometime a five foot high launch pad. They didn’t appear to have a boat or raft and to this day we have no clue as to how they got out there. He offered us some drinks which we thoughtfully accepted. We then set out thinking it shouldn’t be much further, right?
We kept paddling and floating and floating and paddling and wondering if we had missed our bridge somehow. We then floated halfway around a sandbar and saw a big camp with tents, tables and two fires and about 10 people. There were about four boats, all green, all the same size and all pointing out into the water like they were ready to go at a moment’s notice. Their dining flies had tiki torches all around them and their tents were behind the flies. A shower was in the back constructed from a barrel, a water hose and a gray tarp. I still don’t know how they made it up river with all that stuff, even with three or four boats. The people seemed quiet and nice, but I just don’t know. One of the men walked out to the water calling to his wife to bring his knife. He might have just been trying to scare us when he asked for his knife, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out. I was truly scared! It was like something out of the movie “Deliverance.” The people in the camp were even playing the dueling banjos song from that movie.
So we started paddling and running over sandbars on curves and skipping through the woods.Little did we know there were about 100 curves between us and the bridge. So when we got tired, we quit paddling again. We then saw a deer on the side of the river drinking water. It ran into a clear-cut when we came by.
We then started worrying because by now it was getting dark and cold and thinking we’d be done a little before 4:00 p.m., we hadn’t taken a flashlight. About this time, we got to the bridge.
Dead as we were, we pulled two guys in a Jeep out of a hole. They followed us to a store where they bought us some drinks because they said we looked like “death burnt and wet.” We drove back to camp in a truck we’d left at the bridge earlier in the day, called our dates to apologize for not showing up and went to sleep.
Believe it or not, we’re going to float down the river again this summer. Our two and a half hour trip turned into a seven and a half experience. The lady at the store had forgotten about the river level being low. This apparently slows down the water flow. The whole experience wouldn’t have been so bad if we could have slept in the next morning, but we had to drive an hour to be at work by 7:00 the next morning.
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| Notice that "three of Levi's hogs had piglets Sunday." Corey was almost 9 years old. |
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| This is Corey attending his first school dance when he was in 5th grade. I don't know what kind of story he was telling the group of guys, but Levi who is standing off to his right doesn't seem to buy it. |
