Dreamseeker's Daughter~A memoir

The first time I saw the Elizabeth, she was about to get hauled out of the water. It was a brilliant October day with a hint of coolness in the air. Rentner’s Boatyard was a small enterprise perched on Chicago’s southernmost edge. The boats stored there were lined up row after row along a set of iron tracks designed to carry a large lifting crane to the water’s edge. Mounds of broken boards, loops of steel cable, and piles of long wooden masts set on sawhorses dotted the cluttered landscape. Tar was everywhere.

            Holding Gary on one hip, Mom pulled us girls through the yard just in time to see the Elizabeth being shoved into a pair of heavy straps. Dad was racing around shouting orders to the men about to lift the boat, but the minute he saw us on the riverbank, he looked up and waved.

             “This is a very important day for your father,” Mom said.

            I wanted to feel excited, but when they lifted the boat from the water, mud and green river-slime drooled out of every crack, hole, and crevice in the boat’s stained and battered hull. It sluiced down her deck and oozed from her waterway. The man standing behind me laughed.          “What a lunatic! Can you imagine the work this guy will have to do?”

            After the crane lowered the boat onto a cradle on shore, and all the gawkers and kibitzers drifted away, Dad came scrambling over to the spot where we stood. Flashing his Clark Gable smile, he threw his arms around Gale and me.

            “So what do you think, kids? There’s your new home.”  

“Hey, wait a minute,” Mom said.

Dad laughed. “Well, it might be, Marie. You know in the islands….”

 Gale and I had heard the same argument a hundred times. We knew who would win, so we set off to explore the boatyard.