A Good Sport

My wife is a good sport. She gave sailing a go for the first ten years of our, to date, fifteen years together. She never did care much for it, but I do admire her tenacity for the go of ten years. She's never hindered me; never held back, always said anytime I wanted to go sailing I had her blessings. She is and has been true to her word. 

Being a carpenter I built us a house shortly after we were married. After the drywall stage and working on the cabinets I was throwing together a small sailing dinghy for the local lake at the same time. It was little flat bottom stitch and glue thing. With the bottom cut out and standing against the wall of the garage, cabinets half done, in walks the wife: 

"Where's that curved piece of plywood go, darling?" She asked with a twinkle in her eye. Later we sailed together on the local pond.

Well she's never begrudged me having these other women in my life and their coming and goings. She knows she's the keeper and all these others play second fiddle. I tell her the good book says, “Husbands, love your wives." And I do, yes I do.

The picture above shows yet another example of her putting up with my shenanigans in the sailing world. We'd been working on a garden for several months now. The arbor you see in the picture just a few weeks ago held the cantaloupe vines she had growing up it until something got the cantaloupes and the buggers had to come down. 

If you look closely hanging from the arbor is a tiller drying in the only open sun this time of year in our back yard. So whatever killed those cantaloupes was doing me a favor. I don't think I'll tell my wife this, course I know I will. But heck, it’s empty now, just standing there. 

The Montgomery 17 left this morning. We were both glad to see her find a new home. She ended up being a never sail. Never got around to sailing her. Some of those other woman never even rate a date. Others get so tore up with make overs, one would hardly recognize them. Not anything like the TV shows. One fellow asked me just what it was I had. A Javelin, I replied. He said he liked what I had done. Thank you sir.

Yes, my Linda is a good sport. She lets me keep my own harem. Just as long as they stay at the backside of the property, and don't even think of bringing them near the house. There's five left out there now. Another will soon be gone. As encouragement she says after the next one gets sold and the proceeds go back into the house kitty if I sell another it'll be strictly boat money. 

I don't know if I liked the gleam in her eye that time, a little bit too much eagerness in it, but she is a good sport.

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Dreams

A question was asked of me yesterday by a likable fellow, doubly so because he had just bought a sailboat I was selling. It ended as it should with both parties happy and content. The proverbial best day of a sailor's life, the old saw, when he sells a boat and when he buys one. So we had two happy campers yesterday. 

Very near my age, though a few years short and still working, I'm retired, and he not nearly so blessed health wise as I, he'd been smitten with a few ailments that would slow a fellow down for sure except that the sparkle was still there, the hope alive. 

During the exchange, under the oak while sitting at the picnic table another sailor stopped by to take a look at the very boat that was soon to be history. Not to purchase but to gather ideas for his restoration of a like-kind model. The stopper by points to his ride and asked, "How do you like my new van?", bought especially for road trips in pursuing another of his dreams, 'Star gazing'. The van will give him a nice place to sleep out in the west Texas landscape. I guess there aren't too many hotels near the best stargazing spots. He's seventy. Still dreaming, and, he'll be keeping his boat in the water.

Hooking up lights, getting them to work, are a part of the hassle that can't be got around. So in the morning the boat will be heading back north, nine hours worth. The stopper by chimed in with his picking his up in Missouri, Linda happened by with her two cents saying how we went to Florida a few years back.

She relates often enough when the boat-travel-purchase-pick-up subject comes up of how the desk girl at the marina there in Florida asked, tongue-in-cheek,

"Don't they have any sailboats in California?"

They just don't understand.

Huffing and puffing and sitting down several times during the process, drinking plenty of water, the question asked "How does a fellow know when it's time to give it up?" 

"When the dreaming stops!"

Was my reply.

"When the dreaming stops!"

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