Aquatics

My first true passion perhaps was water skiing. Doing it once and it was all I could think or want, and didn't sleep and was worse than a lover of wanton longing. So I suppose I begged because I got a small sixteen-foot fiberglass runabout and a fifteen horse power Evinrude outboard motor, I think from father who lived in Chicago and visited on weekends. The water skiing was done standing shoulder deep in water - holding a wood handled newly invented fiberglass rope, with one hand; while putting on each foot a heavy wide-wood curl tip-end ski - and staying afloat head above the surface. We didn't use life preservers.

Point the tips out of the water while holding the rope with the left hand and balance paddling with the right, as the boat pulls the rope's slack taught - and the driver guns the engine.

However when one fails to get up or falls when over one's head - the skis must be retrieved as the boat loops the yellow line around - and one grasping the rope and staying afloat must put one un-gainly submerged floater ski on and then the other; and then protrude the tips out of the water, and the slack taken out of the rope with the idling motor boat slightly-white smoking while all the time treading water with hand keeping one's head atop.

Well I dispensed with all of that. I built a ski ramp just off shore at water height so that one could stand at water level on rails - and be pulled off on top of the water.

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