pugetsoundboater asked for the story of my first outboard

[bullie]

The old Chrysler saved my life.

Me and Red meet the Sasquatch
By Mark Smith

My Therapist had me write these events down in an attempt to cleanse me of my PTSD. I think it worked because I am fine now. My tale begins in an outboard motor repair shop. This is the story of Me, Red, and the Sasquatch.

“Never seen one of these tiller handles break like this, this old motor is made of steel. What did the boy do, twist it with a pipe wrench or something?” My father glanced at the old Chrysler outboard he had inherited when my grandfather passed away then at Ready Red and me. He let out an amused snort and replied to the greasy mechanic, “The boys say bigfoot chased them.” I looked over at Red in an attempt to avoid the teasing tobacco stained smile of the mechanic. Actually, it had been an Arkansas Sasquatch (we always pronounced it Sask-wah-ch) that chased us, not some common bigfoot. And, the tiller handle had broken because I twisting it in the wrong direction as hard as I could. At the time, I was frantically trying to throttle down because Red and I were hurtling towards the boat landing and likely our deaths, after being pursued by the sasquatch. “Well,” the still smiling outboard repairman said as he wiped the excess tobacco juice from his chin, using his noticeably darker right forearm, “I might not be able to find a new part for this old kicker, but I’ll fix her up somehow for ya. Keep them boys away from them bigfoots alright? hehehehe”. I heard a partially muted and totally non-humorous “hehehehe” from behind me. I turned to Red and could see by his expression that he was also a little agitated by the mechanic’s mirth. At that time, we had not talked much about that fateful night’s frog hunt on Mud Lake. And now, nearly 40 years later, I still get chills when I recall the night Red and I almost gave up frog hunting forever.

That frog hunt took place in the summer of ’81. I was 12; Ready Red was half past 13. At that carefree time in our lives, we spent every moment we could at my father’s cabin in Arkansas. The cabin is on an oxbow of the White River, deep down in the “flat as a pancake” Mississippi River Delta. In front of the cabin, as far as your eyes can see, are seemingly endless cotton and soybean fields. And behind the cabin, miles and miles of rich hardwood bottomland. Lakes are scattered in broken chains throughout the huge expanses of hardwood timber, and at the edge of all that timber lays the White River itself. It was a veritable paradise for Red and me. (This large expanse of timber company land later became the White River National Wildlife Refuge.) In the summertime we would begin fishing at dawn and soon after that the white hot delta sun would begin broiling us. Oppressive heat and humidity baked the smelly delta gumbo to our jeans or bare legs, and the overly abundant mosquitoes raised crimson whelps in every small opening they could find in our coating of mud. It was paradise I tell you! After spending the long summer day not catching fish, Red and I would remove all unnecessary equipment from our jon boat just before dark, leaving only our spotlights and .22 rifles. We would then go inside the cool cabin for supper. I loved suppertime. Supper usually consisted of whatever fish my father and his buddies had caught, french fries we made from real potatoes, and homemade hushpuppies all prepared in the big cast iron pot on the back porch of the cabin. After we stuffed ourselves with fish and fixins, Red and I would lounge around waiting for it to get “good and dark”. “Good and dark” was gradually taking on a new meaning for the two of us. That summer marked our 2nd year of frog hunting by ourselves and we considered ourselves to be veterans. So now, being pros, we were actually waiting for darkness to arrive to begin our hunt. Another sign of recently earned pro status was that Red and I had also graduated from the electric trolling motor and paddles we used the previous summer to what we called “the big motor”. It was an 8 hp Chrysler outboard passed down from my grandfather. With the addition of the outboard motor, Red and I had become a frog hunting force to be reckoned with!

The outboard was ancient. It was white where paint remained, had no cowl, and looked like it could not possibly run. It would in fact run, if halfheartedly, if you knew the process required to start it. My part of the cranking process consisted of turning the throttle wide open, wrapping a cord with a knot on the end around the flywheel a few times, standing upright on splayed legs in the center of the boat, and giving the cord a stout jerk. Red had commented that there were two stout jerks involved with the cranking process, but he was always rambling on about one thing or another. I learned that it was a good idea to remember to place the gearshift in neutral BEFORE jerking the cord. It is my experience that even an eight hp engine can accelerate faster than a person can sit down and steer. At some point, the manufacturers of outboard engines began taking some of the fun out of fishing by installing a gizmo that keeps people from starting outboards in gear and subsequently participating in unplanned experiments with inertia and accidental acceleration in boats.

Red’s involvement in starting the engine was a bit more defensive. He would begin muttering threats at about the same time I started winding the cord around the flywheel. Then Red would perch on the outer reaches of the bow as far from the engine and the soon to be snapping cord as possible. The little 12 foot jon boat we used did not allow him much room to retreat. He had learned early on that starting the engine required me to jerk the cord as hard as I was able, turning the knotted end into a bullwhip of sorts. On the increasingly rare occasions when Red forgot to block or fully retreat from the cord when it arched over my back he was rewarded with a whelp and later with a small, almost perfectly round, bruise. Whenever he was not given enough notice to avoid the knot, Red would gently remind me to let him know before I started the engine by screaming out “AAAAAAAAUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!” and charging my end of the boat, his eyes often filled with pain and malice. Sometimes I got lucky enough for the engine to start at the same moment the knot made contact with Red’s back and I became quite good at rapidly shifting into reverse to offset his charge towards the rear of the boat. To this day, Red watches me carefully whenever I start an outboard and sometimes even has to be coaxed down from the bow of the boat. Something traumatic must have happened to him before we met to make him so skittish. Poor boy.

After the engine was started, it had to be kept at almost its highest rpm to remain running. It would not idle. As a result, if you attempted to motor along at a slow speed every stump or other underwater obstruction caused the engine to sputter and die. Then the whole cranking process had to be repeated. Maybe this was not the most convenient setup ever, but it was great big step up from the trolling motor we had used the summer before.

On this fateful night, Red and I had managed to wait an hour or so after dark to begin our frog hunt. We pushed the boat out into Green Lake and I started the engine. Red kept his spotlight pointed fully into my face until he was satisfied that he would not be receiving another stripe on his back from the starting cord. We motored slowly down the narrow oxbow, searching the bank for the huge bullfrogs only the delta can grow. When we located a frog, I would turn the boat toward the bank and line the bow up with our target. Red would lie on his stomach across the front seat of the boat, one hand directing the spotlight into the frog’s eyes while the other hand remained poised to the side waiting for the precise instant to shoot forward to grab the frog before it jumped into the water or was run over by the boat. The engine would die the moment I released the throttle. So, as Red pulled the frog from the muck I would quickly paddle the boat away from the bank. We tried to avoid tarrying near the bank for too long due to the large population of copperheaded water rattlers that call the lake side home. Red would smile and hold the big, mottled, smelly frog by its middle for me to admire while I readied the outboard for a restart.

Red and I always kept a cooler full of ice and drinks in the center of the boat. Red would toss the freshly caught frogs into the cooler and slam the lid down quickly. The frogs would bump and thump against the lid for a few minutes until the ice cold water in the cooler sapped their energy. If we did not have a good night froggin’ we would let our sluggish but very much alive frogs go when we returned to the cabin. We were proud of this process and we considered ourselves the pioneers of frog catch and release. We had followed the winding lake bank for a mile or two, long past the last cabin, when we decided to drink a soda and feed the local population of mosquitoes. We switched off the spotlights and total darkness surrounded us. We drifted about on the lake for a few minutes swatting bugs and discussing our strategy for the rest of the hunt. “Red,” I said, “Green Lake is hunted out, and we only have 3 or 4 big ones. What cha say we paddle through the run-out and into Mud Lake?” We had never been into Mud Lake at night before and getting there involved traveling down a very narrow winding channel between the two lakes. The channel was filled with cypress knees and stumps, rotting logs, and other underwater obstructions. Being relatively new at operating the outboard, I was not confident enough to motor through this area even during the daylight hours. Red was just as nervous as I about being so far away from the cabin and our traditional hunting area, but also wanted to bring in a few more frogs if possible so he said “ok”.

We paddled slowly down the channel; feeling a bit unnerved by the confining ditch and the towering cypress trees crowding around us. We heard several animals running away from the water and deeper into the woods. We would look at each other, laugh nervously, and say “deer” or “coon” and then paddle a little faster. We used our paddles as push poles to get over the cypress knees that were just below the surface of the dark water. Though the paddling was fairly easy, Red and I were very relieved to make it out into the open water of Mud Lake.

As soon as we cleared the ditch, I fired up the engine and we took off. We immediately started seeing frogs! One after another, Red plunked the big stinky frogs into the cooler. After catching 10 or 12 big ones, we turned off the engine and the spotlights and drifted for a moment to celebrate our success and drink another soda. We had so many in the cooler by this point that it became necessary to dip the cans down into the warm dark waters of the lake to rinse off the stinky slime left on our drinks by frogs. We were listening to barred owls sing their slightly spooky songs back and forth to each other from the sides of the lake and we were enjoying ourselves immensely, laughing and talking about our good fortune, when we heard the first screech.

EEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! Echoed across the river bottom. Soda shot out of Red’s nose in great Grape Nehi rush. Again, EEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! was heard from the near shore. At almost that same instant, a huge gar splashed on the surface of the lake close enough to throw water into the boat and on the two of us, thus adding dampness to our terror. Red and I discovered that damp terror is one of the worst kinds. “Wha….wha…what was that?” Red stammered. “I donno” I whispered as I switched on my spotlight and began sweeping the bank with it. Red soon followed suit with his spotlight. We had the bank lit up like the opening of a Broadway show, checking out every shadow and every cranny on the lake side. We both homed in on the reflective eyes at about the same time. EEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! The third squeal almost caused us to drop our lights. We stared at the shore then at each other for a moment. We could make out tufts of long brown fur around the trunk of a cypress tree as the creature peered at us. Its wide spaced eyes were a menacing red glow approximately 8 feet off the ground. Then, another of the piercing screams echoed through the woods.

Red dipped his paddle into the water and began moving us away from shore. His hand was in a white knuckled clutch on the spotlight that he had trained over my shoulder, its harsh light illuminating the woods and the screeching creature behind the cypress tree. Red mumbled, “I…I think it’s a Sasquatch (Sask-wah-ch)! I heard they got em over here.” I looked over my shoulder one more time to see where the creature was, and then began looking in the bottom of the boat for the starting cord. I quickly looped the cord around the flywheel a few times, stood up, spread my legs out wide, and as I yanked the cord, I asked Red “Is it coming?” From the front of the boat, Red responded with a ear splitting AAAAAAAAUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! and his light quickly changed directions, hitting me full in the face. I was terrified first by the scream and now Red was blinding me with his light and the sasquatch was coming for us!!!! We were in a bad situation. The engine hadn’t started so I quickly wrapped the cord around the flywheel for another pull. I pulled the cord as hard as I could this time, arching it over my back with such force that it cracked like a whip. AAAAAAAAUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! rose again from the front of the boat!!! “Oh no!”, I thought. The creature must be getting closer for Red to be that scared. The engine sputtered and caught on that pull and revved loudly. Blue smoke billowed into the air as the little motor hit its maximum rpm. I turned my light back to the front of the boat, Red’s eyes were wild and darting from me to the woods and back again. The sasquatch must be getting close! I heard a loud splash near shore as I throttled the engine down slightly to shift into gear. The boat lurched forward just as another scream filled the sticky delta air with more terror. I twisted the throttle as far as it would go and the little boat sped up Mud Lake and soon planed off, cutting a white line through the dark water. As I neared the run-out between the two lakes I remembered that I had never motored through this stretch of water before, even in the daylight. Another equally terrifying thought entered my mind too, while in this channel the boat would be mere inches from either bank. It was the perfect Sasquatch ambush point!

“I’m gonna try it!” I yelled to Red over the straining engine. The terror and malice (?) in Red’s eyes was made all the more spooky by the mess we were in and the eerie illumination from the harsh lights. He still had his paddle clutched in one white knuckled fist, his spotlight in the other. Red trained his light up the narrow channel as we entered our dark gloomy escape route. The sides of boat were very close to banks, too close really as the Sasquatch could be waiting up there anywhere! I was just thinking that, if the sasquatch attacked, I hoped he would attack from the bow when suddenly I felt the whole boat lurch sideways and then the engine sputtered and died. It was instantly deathly quiet except for waves splashing on the nearby shore, to me, they sounded a lot like really heavy foot falls. The Sasquatch had caught us! After very rapidly and energetically scanning the surrounding woods with my spotlight for a few seconds, I realized that although we were still in grave danger (is there another kind?), we had only hit a submerged stump and were still ok. In the same instant, Red’s paddle began thrashing the water into froth. He had turned his back to me and was down on his knees stroking alternately down each side of the boat. And, incredibly, the boat did not seem to have slowed down much. In fact, we were possibly picking up a little speed. “The engine is dead!” I yelled up to Red. “Crank it, Stupid!” he yelled back. His arms and shoulders were a side-to-side swaying blur as he stroked the paddle. And that’s when I smelled it. I had always heard that Sasquatches had an offensive odor and now I had one close enough to me to smell it! That stench had to be coming from something as scary and disgusting as a Sasquatch. From the intensity of the smell I thought that there might be more than one of the creatures closing in on us. It was putrid! We needed to get out of there so I wrapped the cord around the flywheel as quickly as I could. My back was to Red when I jerked the cord with all my strength.

AAAAAAAAUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! Red screamed from the front of the boat. As I whirled around to sit down and shift the outboard into gear I yelled, “Do you see him?” Red stared back at me, that strange look in his eyes again. I figured he was still scared so I twisted the throttle as far as it would go. We shot out of the ditch and into the open water of Green Lake and I made for the cabin at full speed Water splashed up the sides of the boat, adding to the dampness the splashing gar had left earlier. I realized I could still smell the Sasquatch and surmised that they must hunt in packs and had somehow surrounded us. How else could I still smell them? I twisted the throttle a little harder.

We covered the mile or so back to the cabin quickly. Red looked over his shoulder at me every once in awhile and his eyes had a funny look to them. He was obviously terrified. When I made the turn toward the cabin I could see the lights inside through the windows and the little yellow squares of light on the shore looked so inviting. Those little squares of light were coming up fast so I tried to twist the throttle backwards to slow down. It wouldn’t turn!! It must have become stuck wide open because I was holding it so tightly. I turned the handle with all of my 12 year old strength as yet another terrible thought seized me. We were going to hit the shore at full speed! I twisted again, even harder, and felt something in the tiller handle break away, but we still did not slow. I tried turning the handle in the opposite direction to loosen whatever was holding it and that worked, the engine slowed just before we slammed into the bank. Red timed the boat hitting the bank perfectly and his jump landed him several yards up the slope. He sprinted up to the cabin with me following closely on his heels. I skidded to a stop when I entered the cabin but Red continued on to the bathroom, to further hide from the Sasquatch I guessed. I stopped and caught my breath, then told my father and his friends about our adventure and the Sasquatch. I didn’t mention the broken outboard motor until the next day.

Years later, when Red and I could finally discuss the happenings of that night without our voices quavering, I asked him if he smelled anything unusual on our speedy trip back to the cabin from Mud Lake. He denied smelling anything. And, he said that he only rushed to the bathroom because of the water the gar had splashed on him and something else about clean clothes helping him to relax after a scare.

[20mercman]

Great story! 😀

[fisherman6]

That was an excellent story. You kept me in it all the way through. 😀

OldJohnnyRude on YouTube

[Buccaneer]

Mark Twain couldn’t have wrote it any better!

Prepare to be boarded!

[joecb]

Excellent… that story need to go in the next "Outboarder" for posterity and all to enjoy

Joe

[PugetSoundBoater]

WOW ,what a story! You should find a publisher to include your story in a collection of animal encounters . I’m sure the sasquath researchers would like to hear your story and exact locations and date.
Thanks for sharing! Jim

"Some people want to know how a watch works, others just want to know what time it is"
Robbie Robertson

[bullie]

I have talked with the sasquatch folks a time or two. Those nuts actually go looking for the things! A description of my encounter appears in a book about monsters in Arkansas. Personally, I don’t ever even want to get close to one again.

[PugetSoundBoater]

How about a movie based on your experiences? I’d go see it. Call Hollowod. Find a script writer, agent. Seriously. Think of all the dumb movies out there. Yours would be based on "true story". Turn your bad experience into something more positive …$$

"Some people want to know how a watch works, others just want to know what time it is"
Robbie Robertson

[cron78]

Outstanding!

[bullie]

quote pugetsoundboater:

How about a movie based on your experiences? I’d go see it. Call Hollowod. Find a script writer, agent. Seriously. Think of all the dumb movies out there. Yours would be based on “true story”. Turn your bad experience into something more positive …$$

It’s a shame that Tom Selleck has gotten too old to play me. And, well…he isn’t fat or short either. I guess there are a few problems with that.

[Author]

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