My Dad is a great guy. He stuck around my whole life. He taught me how to be a responsible adult. He even helped me out a lot this hell year of medical issues. So I’m trying to find a nice way to say what I’m about to say. I can’t think of a nice way, so I’ll just say it. My Dad is a cheapskate. He puts in maximum effort in order to save a minimum amount on something. I can’t really blame him too much. He grew up in a poor family with six other siblings (damn Papaw, you ever heard of condoms?) There wasn’t a lot to go around so they had to make a penny stretch. However, our immediate family included him, my Mom, my sister, and I. Not that big of a family, but his cheapskateness was still in full force. It made for some interesting times.

Before I tell you the main story let me give you a small example of my Dad’s effort to save a dollar or two. When I was sevenish one of my friends got a Mr. Potato Head toy. I thought it was awesome, so of course I wanted one for myself. In my house you didn’t just get toys out of the blue. It had to be your birthday or Christmas (mine is five days before Christmas which is fodder for a different story.) Any other time outside those two days and you had to earn it. So I did extra chores on top of my normal ones in order to earn a Mr. Potato Head. Then the day came that my Dad announced he had something for me. I expected to see this…

However, what my Dad handed over was this…

Yeah, that’s a real potato with all kinds of homemade crap stuck in it to resemble a face and arms and legs. I did extra chores for this? Did you see Toy Story 4 with Forky? Forky was a work of art compared to this monstrosity. When I expressed my disappointment for this K-Mart blue light special (yes we got our clothes from there too) version of Mr. Potato head my Dad just responded with his usual retort. “It’s just as good as a real one.”

Now that you see what we are dealing with here let me get to the main story. When I was around 13 my Uncle bought a ski boat. We ended up spending a lot of time with my cousins learning how to water ski. Some time later my Dad also bought a boat to replace our little metal fishing boat we had. When my Dad upgraded the boat (which was an ordeal because you knew he was shopping around for weeks to get a good deal) he got one that was more suited to fishing than skiing. That was cool with me because I also loved to fish. While the new (to us) boat wasn’t exactly laid out to ski, it had a big enough engine to accomplish the task. So my sister and I started in on him about getting skis of our own so we didn’t have to wait on my Uncle to invite us along on their trips. Dad, of course, had just spent money on this boat so he was not about to spend anymore on skis. My sister and I continued to beg him for several weeks.

Finally, Dad was sick of all the begging and announced that instead of skis we were going to get a knee board. That excited us because these knee boards had just started making an appearance at the lake and they looked really fun. I was surprised Dad was going to spring for this kind of luxury. Of course what I had in mind was this:

Dad crushed that dream pretty quickly when he announced that he would be making a knee board himself. “It’ll be just as good as a real one,” he told us. I said sure and went off to call my Uncle to see if he was planning any trips to the lake soon.

Dad had a little workshop in the backyard with all kinds of tools and a supply of lumber. He disappeared into that shop whenever he had any free time for the next couple of weeks. I heard all kinds of bangs, and saws whirling, and an occasional curse word or two. I never did go inside to see what was happening. I didn’t want to deepen my disappointment by viewing what I thought could only be a disaster in the making. Oh it was, but not in the way I thought it would be. We’re getting there.

The day finally came when dad was finished. He had us all come out to the workshop. A tarp covered something that was sitting on two sawhorses. I could only assume it was the homemade knee board. With a flair for the dramatic, which my Dad rarely displayed, he counted down from ten and at one he jerked the tarp off! There sat the homemade contraption that was supposed to be a knee board. To tell you the truth, it didn’t look half bad. It was made entirely of wood in the general shape of a knee board. There was a layer of green AstroTurf attached to the top where you would ride. There was a rope handle to hang on to. Underneath was something that my Dad says was an improvement. There were two little fins running the back half of the board. The idea was that the board would ride up on those fins and provide a smooth ride. I have to say, I was actually impressed and couldn’t wait to ride it. I never got that chance as you’ll see.

We wasted no time and loaded the knee board into the boat. We hitched her up and headed to nearby Caddo Lake. It’s one of the few natural lakes in Texas, formed when a massive log jam in the Red River caused water to back flow into the Cypress Bayou watershed. Because of the natural way it formed, it’s not a big wide open lake, but rather narrow with Cypress trees lining the banks. It’s also not a very deep lake. Take a look…

Even as narrow as this, it was still a popular spot to ski. Mostly everyone skied in one direction on the right and another on the left. We launched the boat at a nearby marina and were soon sitting out in the middle of the water waiting to christen the USS Dad Homemade Knee Board and send her on a maiden voyage. Dad decided he would be the first to try her out. He tied a ski rope (he actually sprung for this) to a fixed eye bolt that he had screwed into the wood at the bow of the board. Then we lifted the board up and gently slipped it into the water. It floated! That was a good sign. Next, Dad put on his life vest and went over the side. He floated too, which is always a good sign.

I was stationed in the aft chair of the boat as the lookout. My sister sat in the middle on top of the live well which had a cushion. My mom was up forward driving the boat. She put it in gear and slowly chugged away as I played out the ski rope behind the boat. Dad had gotten on and into position holding the rope handle that was attached to the board. His weight had caused the back end of the board to dip a bit below the water but the bow was still lifted up a couple of inches. When the ski rope was all played out, the tension caused the board to slowly inch it’s way behind the boat. That’s when Dad gave the thumbs up sign and I relayed to Mom to go!

She slammed the throttle all ahead full and the engine roared to life! We rapidly picked up speed and I observed Dad. He was holding on to dear life as the board dug in and made a deep trough in the water. But as speed started to increase, the board lifted up onto the surface of the water and began to glide effortlessly over it. It even lifted up onto the fins as Dad predicted it would. He seemed to get comfortable now and enjoy the ride. He even managed to shift his weight and steer it from side to side inside the wake of the boat. I doubted he would try to escape the wake on this first run as we had often done on skis behind my Uncle’s boat. As a matter of fact I was determined to be the first one to do it as my turn was next and I couldn’t wait to ride it!

As I was contemplating all the cool tricks I was going to do and wondering how long Dad was going to take on this first run, I got my answer. A boat going in the opposite direction veered a little close to see what kind of contraption was being pulled behind our boat. As he passed, the wake of his boat merged with ours and caused all kinds of turbulent water for the knee board. It began to bounce up and down and I thought, OK, Dad is going to fall off and then it will be my turn. Dad didn’t fall off. What happened was much worse than that.

Dad had done a great job on his homemade knee board; mostly. There was one fatal flaw in his design. You may have already picked up on it but for the ones that haven’t, I’ll spell it out for you. The store bought knee boards had a Velcro strap that would go across your knees to hold you in place. In turn, you held on to the ski rope yourself and your body provided the momentum to propel the board. If you fell, you let go of the rope and you and the board came to a stop. Well, Dad didn’t have any Velcro, so he decided to make the rope handle attached to the board to hang onto and attach the ski rope directly to the board. See where I’m going yet?

When the turbulent water caused the knee board to bounce up and down, it eventually came down so hard that the nose dipped below the surface of the water. That’s all it took. Board, rope, and Dad quickly sank beneath the surface of the lake as the forward momentum of the boat drove it deeper and deeper into the lake! I looked on in horror at the empty space my Dad had once occupied. Just a few moments later he popped up onto the surface, his life jacket doing it’s job and bringing him back after he let go of the rope handle. It was only a few moments but it seemed like an eternity for me. I was relived to see that Dad was OK, so maybe my shouts to my Mom to stop didn’t sound as urgent as they should have and she was slow to react. In my joy to see my Dad back on the right side of the lake I had forgotten something. The board was still attached to the boat. The submerged board was still attached to the boat and driving to the bottom like a submarine on an emergency dive.

As these thoughts coalesced inside my head and came to a conclusion that something bad was about to happen, it happened. The board rammed into the soft bottom of the lake and affixed itself there as firm as a Battleship anchor. The high speed of the boat combined with the sudden arresting motion of that anchor caused the boat to jerk back and veer wildly out of control! I don’t know how we did it, but the three of us managed to stay inside as the boat took a hard turn to port and shot straight for the rapidly approaching Cypress tree covered bank. At the last second my mom threw the engine in reverse, but it was too late to overcome the forward motion and we crashed right up onto the bank between two trees. We were lucky in our position because if we had hit a tree head on I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now, or if I was, it would be using one of those Stephen Hawking writing contraptions.

As scary as the crash had been we actually had gotten off easy. The bank was muddy and fairly smooth. The boat only suffered some minor cosmetic damage to the bow when it had struck land. Mom managed to back the boat back out into the water but we were still attached to the submerged knee board and could only travel in the radius it allowed. When the boat had first been jerked back, the knot on the eye bolt Dad had affixed to the boat had tightened down so much I couldn’t get it loose no matter how hard I tried. As I continued to try I was surprised by Dad, who had swum to the boat. He embarked and after determining that we were all OK, and making a few choice comments about the boat damage, tried to untie the knot himself. In the end, he couldn’t do it either. So he pulled out his pocket knife and severed the rope.

Being the cheapskate that he was, he was not about to admit defeat yet, even in these dire straights. He was already talking about design changes as he held onto the rope and had Mom putter back over the spot where he could get the most rope out of the water, figuring this was the ground zero where the board had plowed into the bottom of the lake. He pulled and heaved and shucked and jived and pulled some more, but try as he might, he could not free the board from the murky depths below. In an act of finality, he reached as far below the surface of the water as he could and cut the rope so it wouldn’t float and get caught on another boat’s propeller. I never got my ride and as far as I know that board is still down there. We solemnly made our way back to the marina. I’m not certain but I thought I could hear a funeral dirge being played somewhere among the Cyprus trees.

Once loaded back up we all expected a somber drive back home where we would go our separate ways and leave Dad good and well alone. But he surprised us by turning into the K-Mart parking lot before we got home. Inside he purchased a brand new set of water skis. They weren’t even on a blue light special.

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