Author: Fred Blahnik

…..the bacterium in the gut of the dog supposed there was more to the universe than he could extrapolate from his extremely limited perspective, yet he was resigned to the fact he would never be able to find out definitively for sure. The dog supposed there was more to the universe than he could extrapolate from the fenced-in backyard enclosure he was confined within, but he was resigned to the fact he would never enjoy the absolute freedom to definitively find out otherwise.  The dog’s owner supposed there was more to the universe than he could extrapolate from his secluded little planetary sanctuary in one far corner of the Milky Way galaxy, yet he was resigned to the fact he would never have the means and wherewithal to definitively investigate the matter fully.  The theoretical physicist who lived next door to the man with the dog with the bacterium in its gut supposed there was much more to the universe than met the human eye, and this self-proclaimed savant was not bashful about proclaiming his extensive knowledge and ersatz omniscience to anyone who would listen to his preaching.  Same same with the pastor and priest and rabbi and evangelist down at the local place of worship.  And God???  God just smiled down knowingly upon all of these inquisitive souls and went calmly about His daily business…..

Work can always wait, but that doesn’t mean time stops to accommodate our every whim. Time marches on, and what we choose to do with the limited number of minutes available to us in any lifetime is strictly our own business.  Yet it is paramount to remember there is no such thing as “wasting” time.  The concept of “wasting” lies in the eyes of the beholder, and however someone chooses to budget the time allotted them is their own damned business and no one else’s!  Remember, not everyone is an adrenaline junkie.  If an individual wants to spend his entire life lying on a davenport snoozing and drinking  vodka on the rocks while watching serial episodes of “Seinfeld” or “Friends’, more power to him so long as he possesses the means to support himself and doesn’t bother anyone else.

NOTE:  The following original, copyrighted joke is off-color in nature.  If material like this offends you, do not proceed any further!

 

A lecherous old man walked into the bank and immediately took notice of the voluptuous, nubile young woman working in a low-cut blouse behind the counter. Trying hard to suppress a grotesque leer, he offered, “Young lady, I would like to make a king-sized deposit today if you would only be so gracious as to assist me.”  “Very well, sir…..would that be into your checking account or your savings account?”  The arrestingly beautiful vixen’s smile was as ingratiating as it was authentic.  The lecher found he could no longer restrain his leer, even as his heart beat ever faster and the fabric of the shabby pants he was wearing tented up embarrassingly in his crotch area.  When next he spoke, the lothario stared unashamedly straight down at the bank teller’s bounteous cleavage.  “Neither of those, sweetheart……that isn’t the type of deposit I had in mind…..”

…..“What went wrong this time?” she was asked following her eighth divorce. “Nothing major, really”, she replied without any seeming hint of remorse, as she toyed with the big, gleaming diamond strangling her left ring finger and took a nonchalant drag on a stiletto-thin fashion cigarette.  “It turns out the two of us weren’t overly compatible to begin with, and then we just sort of drifted apart over time…..”

Yesterday is a million memories away, tomorrow.…..a million dreams. Today consists of air to sustain me, a few morsels of food to temporarily silence my rebellious stomach, a soft spot on which to lie to temporarily de-clutter my brain, other mortal creatures to freely mingle with as I choose, and a trillion opportunities to chase after–some cleverly disguised as problems.  I love life with all its trappings; what is there NOT to love about it???

…..it rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained–rained for days on end–but almost as soon as it stopped pouring dump-truckfuls of moisture from the leaden sky, a sound burst forth, a welcome sound after that unremorseful onslaught of precipitation and depression. The sound was a wren–singing loud, singing lustily, singing its little heart out–as though it was making a bold, instantaneous statement that it would take more than a monsoonish rain to break its spirit.  And–sitting with a window partially open to celebrate the advent of dry fresh air–I drew inspiration from my picayune feathered friend.  If that tiny fellow had to weather such a hellish downpour firsthand out in the elements and could then bounce back so quickly and so determinedly and so boastfully, then surely I could too, having faced considerably less daunting circumstances sitting inside a dry house with Delilah pontificating on the radio in the background.  That little creature singing so beatifically to me out in a tree is not a mere bird; it is an angel sent to me by God…..

The Last Story

By Frederick J. Blahnik

(Note:  The following fictitious tale was originally included in a collection of short stories entitled “Second Helping”, a book that was published in 2015).

 

 The old man hovered over his laptop computer with a perplexed look etched across his leathery face.  The boy sat on the floor at his feet, fiddling with his I-pod Touch.

“Help me out, Noah.  I need one more short-short story to complete this infernal book, but for the life of me I can’t think of anything to write about.”

The boy looked up with little interest.  “Write about whatever you want, Grandpa.  You’re a good writer; you always think of something.”

“Yeah, I know that’s usually the case, Noah, but not today.  I’m just drawing a giant blank this afternoon when I try to come up with a novel idea.”

He stopped talking and glanced out a kitchen window at the swirling snow building drifts throughout his yard the size of bull elephants.

“I’m totally stumped…….”

“Why don’t you write a ghost story, Grandpa?  Ghosts always interest people.”

“Nah, I’m not any good at writing ghost stories, Noah.  Besides, that subject doesn’t interest me much either.”

“Then why don’t you write a story about when you were growing up on the farm, Grandpa.  I love listening to those tales when you tell them to me in the evenings!”

“Thanks, Noah, but this has to be a fiction story.  It’s gotta be something I made up in my head and it can’t be true.  It can’t be something that actually happened during my lifetime.”

“Fiction, huh?  I don’t know about that, Grandpa.  Why don’t you write a mystery story then?  People like to read those, too.  At least my mom surely does!”

“A mystery story in five hundred words??  I don’t think I have enough space to do justice to your idea, Noah.  But I must admit it was a good thought……”

“Why does it need to be five hundred words, Grandpa?  Why don’t you just write as much as you want?”

“Because the cover to my book says it’ll include 13.5 short stories, therefore the last one has to be kind of a pygmy runt hybrid, if you will.  The piece doesn’t have to be exactly five hundred words, mind you, but it does have to be a condensed version of the real thing and not drag on forever.”

The boy turned away in resignation.

“I give up, Grandpa.  Write whatever you want.”

But in the next instant his face exploded in exuberance and his head suddenly swiveled back in the direction of the grimacing old man.

“I’ve got an idea!  Why don’t you write a story about animals?  Or a sad story that makes people cry?  Or better yet—BOTH!!”

The boy stared at his grandfather with gushing admiration.

“You can do it, Grandpa…..I KNOW YOU CAN!!!”

And as the old man smiled back with unfettered pride at his grandson, a tiny light flickered on in the creative hinterlands of his brain and he bent over and began typing frantically on his trusty laptop:

 

There once lived a mighty squirrel named Roscoe……. 

Roscoe lived in a nest high up in a leviathan oak tree in Rochester, Minnesota with his wife Wanda and their three small babies.  Their home tree canopied a busy city street rife with four-wheel traffic.  Roscoe constantly admonished his young children, “When you grow up to be big squirrels, Kids, always make sure you are careful to check for traffic when crossing that wide busy street below!!”

He would castigate them unceasingly on the topic, and then make them back up their words by formally promising him they would be careful every single time they crossed the frenetic street.

One day in late autumn–with a long, brutally cold winter staring him and his family squarely in the face–Roscoe was outside gathering some last minute acorns to tide his family over for the savage, northern-latitude mean season that he could feel in his bones was inexorably approaching.  Roscoe was a perpetually careful squirrel, but on this day he was running a little bit behind and was in a big hurry to get back up into his nice warm nest so he could be with his treasured family.

First he had to cross that aforementioned busy city street, though, and as he reached the lip of its boulevard he remembered to dutifully check for onrushing traffic like he unfailingly scolded his children to always do.  However, since almost all of the street traffic came from the high school side to his left, he surveyed conscientiously in that vicinity–but in his haste neglected to look in the other direction as well.

The bushytailed varmint realized his oversight too late, when he was already beneath the chassis of an onrushing vehicle being driven by a reckless teenager who was late returning to school from lunch break.

Roscoe had to make a split-second decision at that juncture whether to freeze exactly where he was on the blacktop street……or attempt a mad dash to freedom between the mesmerizing, furiously whirling tires on both sides of him.  Inasmuch as he had never been in a similar situation before, Roscoe panicked and decided to make a determined sprint for freedom.  Unfortunately for our furry hero……it turned out to be the wrong decision on this fateful day……. 

Terribly wrong…..…

Up in the nest—several hours later–the three young squirrels were growing dreadfully hungry.  The first one spoke up and pleaded with his mommy, “I’m growing awfully hungry, Momma!  Where do you suppose Daddy is?”

And his mother responded, “Daddy is the most careful squirrel I have ever known in my whole life, and he would never take any risks that might jeopardize your livelihood.  You three babies are the most important things in the world to him by far.  I know he’ll be along soon with something to eat for us.…..”

Just a few minutes later, the second young squirrel spoke up, imploring his mother, “I feel like I’m ready to starve, Mommy!!  Are you sure Daddy we will be along soon with some food for us?!”

And his mother replied, “Absolutely!!!!  Your daddy is the most careful, conscientious squirrel I have ever met in my life, and that is one of the primary reasons I agreed to marry him.  I KNOW he would never take any risks that might jeopardize the futures of you three little squirts.  He’ll be along in a few minutes; you just wait and see!”

Fifteen minutes elapsed, and the sun–thoroughly exhausted from having been asked to heat a busy planet for an entire day–was starting to seek nocturnal refuge beyond the western horizon where it could repose and grab a few hours of uninterrupted slumber itself before dawn came calling.  The third and final little squirrel finally broke the gloomy silence in the gathering darkness, bashfully speaking up in a timid voice.

“I know you said Daddy was the most careful squirrel in the whole world and would never do anything to risk our lives, Mommy, but don’t you think we should do something?  Shouldn’t we go look for him at least?  I’m worried sick about Daddy.  He should have been home hours ago!!!”

“Absolutely not!!!  Your father gave us firm instructions that we weren’t supposed to go anywhere without his permission!!  Have you already forgotten that fact, Young Ones?!  Daddy said before he left that he would return safely with some food for all of us, and when was the last time your brave father didn’t back up his word?!”

The bushytailed matriarch’s brusque tone reflected no small degree of impatience with her pleading offspring.

“So shush now, young ones!!!  I know you’re all getting frightfully hungry, but we’ll just wait patiently for Daddy to come home and I promise you this one thing and I’ll go so far as to stake my very life on it too:  Your daddy WILL be along shortly with our supper, and then we can all kick back and feast on whatever good things he’s found for us down on the ground today!”

And the young squirrels, sensing their mother’s resolute certitude, fell silent and sat motionless in the chilly darkness.

Down at the base of the huge tree–nursing a badly broken hind leg that made climbing impossible–Roscoe sat dejectedly, waiting for help he knew in his heart would never arrive.  He had taught his dependents well:  To follow orders–to blindly follow any and ALL orders he issued–and he knew with no small element of pride that his edict had taken firm, intractable root.  His family would never leave their nest in search of him; he was, consequently, wholly on his own…….

Just fifty yards away the neighborhood German Shepherd–turned outside temporarily by his owner to take an evening piss and to do a bit of benign exploring–took notice of a forlorn squirrel huddled at the base of the towering sentinel tree which commanded the boulevard and its adjoining street, the same tree the big dog favored to relieve his bladder upon each and every night.  He had witnessed this same confident squirrel countless times in the past, and had built up a grudging admiration over time for the small mammal’s uber-carefulness in avoiding all hazards, including himself. 

But now, as the giant dog warily approached his favorite tree and, right next to it, the stricken squirrel–and noted with incredulity the nimble tree-jumper didn’t begin shimmying up the giraffine oak and then automatically rotate around to the back side of it so as to be out of sight–he excitedly sensed an opportunity that had never existed in the past.

And–being the cold-blooded predator he ancestrally was, an animal that followed his ancient DNA instructions to a tee—the jumbo-sized dog began salivating and instinctively accelerated his pace in the direction of the leafy pillar and the tiny injured creature that was huddled beneath it……

Now, to my undiscerning readers who are taking this all in for the first time, there exists among the mammal community a unique language understood by all mammals, from the dinkiest shrew to the most Brobdingnagian elephant–Mammalese.  Yes, Mammalese, a word constructed of three syllables and pronounced just the way it looks.

In any case, as our diabolical German Shepherd descended upon the hapless Roscoe, he decided to first have a little fun and converse with the sad stricken squirrel in Mammalese.  Thus he pulled up just short of the oak, looked our little tree-dweller straight in the eye, and imperiously demanded, “Give me just one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you on the spot, Fair Squirrel!”

Roscoe squirmed and his voice quivered as he replied, “Because, Mr. Dog, my family is waiting for my return high up in this tree and they can’t possibly survive without me.  Surely you can show an injured co-creature a bit of compassion tonight!!”

The canine assailant grinned broadly at our cowering squirrel.

“Am I then supposed to feel sorry for you now, you cocky little bastard?  All those times you went dashing before me and then went scurrying up this tree just before I could sink my teeth into your muscular back……you were pretty conceited and full of yourself then, weren’t you?  Now where has all that hubris and bravado gone?  HUH?!?!  TELL ME, YOU ASSHOLE SQUIRREL?!?!?!” 

He stopped talking just long enough to snicker a sarcastic doggy laugh. 

“You used to think you were King Shit and would snigger in my face every opportunity you got……and now tonight you sit before me as nothing more than a pathetic, quivering little coward seeking sanctuary at the base of this here oak tree!!  Why, you ain’t even worth the brief amount of time I’ll invest into putting you out of your misery once and for all!!”

The proud squirrel raised himself up on his haunches as straight as his broken back leg would allow.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid to fight you, Mr. Dog, but you must understand my family needs me, needs me badly, up in this tree right now.  They can’t possibly survive without my assistance!!!  NO LIE!!!!!  Don’t you have any compassion in your heart, Noble Sir?

Any at all???” 

He stopped talking just long enough to enable the ensuing pause to become pregnant. 

“If you ever fathered any little dogs, Big Friend, would you want some monstrous bully to come along and kill you before you even had an opportunity to raise them up to the point where they could survive on their own?  That’s all I’m asking from you tonight, Sir—just a little empathy and compassion!!!”

“Well, boo hoo hoo and go buy me a big box of Kleenex too!!!!!   A ‘monstrous bully’, am I now??”

The slobbering canine stopped talking for but a moment, just enough time to issue another sardonic doggy snigger. 

“I’m about ready to start crying over your miserable plight, Dear Friend!  Such a sad, tear-jerking story it was…….and so well told by you, too, you little bushytailed Shakespeare!!  I just loved the solemn tone you adopted at the end of your soliloquy for dramatic effect!!!”

“In fact, it almost registered emotionally with me………..ALMOOOOOOOOOOOOST………..”

This descendant of primeval wolves thereupon moved a step closer to Roscoe and his voice dropped an octave lower.  Whereas just minutes before he sounded pompous and maaaaaybe open to some sort of compromise, he now sounded just plain scary and resolute.

“But you wanna know the honest-to-God truth?  I don’t personally give a shit about this woeful predicament you’ve gotten yourself into, Runty Squirrel!  If you had just taken the time to be more careful in crossing the street over there, Pathetic Little Friend, you never would have gotten your ass end smashed to pieces in the first place!”

The big dog was now leering with unrestrained delight.

“But the information you just furnished will prove inordinately valuable to me down the road.  Cuz ya know what I aim to do now?  Huh???  HUH?!?!?!?!”

His opprobrious grin was altogether obnoxious and insufferable to anyone facing the misfortune of having to witness it up close.

“You see, I aim to park my ass right here at the base of this tree whenever I’m let outside and just wait for your young’uns who are starving up in that nest to start wandering down looking for food.  And there’ll be plenty of food available alright……plenty of food for ME, that is!!!!!” 

The German Shepherd interrupted his menacing monologue for a split second to laugh detestably once more at his perceived humor.

“No, I’ll gobble all those little bushytailed bastards down before they even have a chance to squeal for help!”

The evil cur stopped talking then for an instant to reflect; a sinister, scelerous expression was plastered all across his smirking face.  When he did resume his rambling shortly thereafter, a striking new dimension of enthusiasm tinged with urgency was carved into his voice.

“Come to think of it–I can do much better than that even!!  I’m gonna torture them–one by one by one–really torture ’em bad and for as long as possible!!!…….before making tasty squirrel hoeur d’ourves out of the entire lot of your offspring.”

The oversized pooch was now leering officiously as never before.

“And do you know what, Dear Squirrel Friend?  Do you know what…….???

There ain’t a damned thing you can do to protect your family as any CAREFUL, self-respecting father should…..because you’ll already be dead and long since passed out of my stinky asshole before this whole delicious smorgasbord unfolds before me on the very ground where we now stand!!”

The small helpless squirrel was seething by this point.  He knew what the hulking dog said was inherently true…..but there still must be SOMETHING he could do to save his beloved offspring from the upcoming violent, unspeakably grisly holocaust.

But WHAT?!?!?!

Our protagonist frantically scoured his brain for available options……..

And found nothing……

NOTHING, I TELL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Roscoe could never remember feeling this angry before in his redoubtable lifetime, yet the adversary standing before him had never been so formidable and behemoth either.  He sighed a big sigh of despair, offered an abbreviated prayer in the hope of a last-second miracle from the almighty god of squirrels, and resigned himself to the inevitable.

The grinning dog swiftly closed the final gap separating our two soon-to-be combatants…….

The proud daddy squirrel–who had been watching the oversized predator closely since the moment the mean-spirited animal clamored out of the nearby house–braced himself to face his fiercely growling assailant; he bared his sharp teeth, and slashed with his razor-sharp claws, and fought more gallantly than any squirrel had ever come close to fighting before him……yet no squirrel—regardless of how personally committed they are to their family–is any match for a hungry, vicious German Shepherd, and of course poor Roscoe was further fatally handicapped in securing the crucial traction he needed against the ground by his mutilated back leg.

As they heard this terrible, unexplained screaming and wailing tempest carrying on at the very base of their home tree, the three young squirrels eyed their disapproving mother without uttering a word.  She took notice of their fleeting glances and muttered determinedly in a voice scarcely loud enough for them to hear, “Your daddy will be home any minute, kids!  Whatever else you do—DO NOT EVER LOSE FAITH IN YOUR FATHER!!!!!  He promised us he would return shortly, and he is the most careful and responsible squirrel I have ever met in my lifetime; he loves you three babies more than anything else in this world, and I swear to you that he would never do anything to jeopardize your futures—ANYTHING, I GUARANTEE YOU……!!!!!”

 

The boy looked up from his I-Pod Touch and yawned.  “Are you finally done with that story, Grandpa?  I wanna go outside now and play in the snow!”

The old man blushed involuntarily.

“Yeah, yeah, I just finished the damned thing, Noah.  It ran a little over five hundred words though…….”

He glanced up from his laptop.

“D’ya suppose I can still put it at the end of my book and label it a half story though?”

 

…..the moment had carried me here and, to be totally honest, I didn’t have a fuckin’ clue what I was doing; I was just along for the ride. Just along for the ride, I was.  Just along for the ride.  A temporal passenger hopelessly lost in one forlorn corner of the cosmos.  So I stood up perfectly straight and pretended that I was brave and uber-confident and the master of my own destiny–King for a day was I!–even though that was patently absurd and no closer to the truth than seeing a Siberian tiger suddenly renounce meat and switch over to a vegetarian diet……

…..plunge boldly into that invious wilderness otherwise known as the future, Little Darling. It will hold multiple surprises as you seek to navigate its hills and valleys and waterways, but there is nothing out there that should intimidate you beyond studied reason.  After all, the toughest opponent you will ever face is death, but he always wins in the end anyway and hence should stand as no impediment to trying as many new things as time will allow.  Follow that rainbow off in the distance with a big smile on your face and never turn back to survey the path you have already trod.  The future is exciting, unexplored, rife with hopes and promise and unsampled pleasures…..everything the past is not.  So go ahead, Little Darling, charge into it sans fear  and trepidation, for although we do not know just how long the future will last for each of us, we do know with one hundred percent certainty that it is finite and will one day end for all of us……

(Note:  The following essay is excerpted from Chapter 8 of the non-fiction book “Leftovers From the Feast”, which was published in 2013.  That chapter was authored by James P. Blahnik and edited by Fred Blahnik.)

 

However, the one project which caused me to dream and scheme more than any other was to possess a boat……yes, Reader, you did hear me correctly—a BOAT!!!

But, y’know, this dream of mine was not as far-fetched and outlandish as it may sound at first blush.  I suppose a little background information is in order at this point to clarify the issue:

There was a pond out behind the barn on our ostentatious hacienda back by Austin.  It usually had at least some water in it, depending on the season and the prevailing weather patterns.  The pond was about one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in diameter during average times and swelled to two or three times that size during the spring thaw or after a notably heavy rain.

However, during dry periods the pond devolved into a bonsaied muddy mess where our herd of cows busily stomped about, trying desperately to keep their bodies cool at the same time they vainly attempted to thwart the ubiquitous flies which seemed to pester them unceasingly.  The reader can probably readily understand how a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn-thinking Jimmy Blahnik, who had already acquired a Paul Bunyan-sized reputation by blazing a trail through our impenetrable Blahnik jungle, saw this inconsequential body of water as huge and adventuresome……but also badly in need of a boat!

My first inclination was to obtain a boat that was already built.  I was probably eleven or twelve years old when our Blahnik family visited the Ashton farm that was located near the small thorp of Ramsey.  The rear of their farm abutted the “mighty” Cedar River.

At that point in my life, I considered the Cedar to be roughly equivalent to the not-so-distant Mississippi River in terms of sheer size and commercial importance.  For all I knew, the one-of-a-kind Titanic, in all its glorious splendor, would have had plenty of “arm room” as well as sufficient draft to come sailing up the Cedar River’s main channel if it hadn’t first met its match against that rogue iceberg in the North Atlantic in April of 1912.  Anyway, for some reason during the course of our visit we menfolk hiked back by the river; we also spent a small amount of time walking alongside an adjacent railroad track.

Lo and behold, I very nearly shit my pants and swallowed my tongue the moment I spied a half-submerged old wooden boat down amongst the weeds along the railroad—just lying there in shallow, swampy water!

I remember excitedly asking Ashtons if it belonged to anybody and they replied “No”–that it had only recently floated randomly into the area from points unknown.

A luminous light bulb immediately flashed on in my head.  If this valuable boat I was staring bug-eyed at didn’t belong to anybody…….then that logically meant it could be mine to claim!!

But–and this was a really BIG but, I know–how on Earth would I ever get the prized watercraft back home to our farm–a distance of about a mile and half by way of the railroad right-of-way……before  subsequently having to traverse the township road leading to our place?

I first thought about trying to build a crude trailer out of two tall steel wheels I had seen lying around our farm.  I envisaged that I could push/pull my unique invention the mile and a half to Ashtons, somehow rescue the half-rotted, dilapidated boat from its watery grave amongst the reeds, load it onto the wheeled contraption unassisted using just my own two pre-teen hands, and finally haul it triumphantly home on the back of my innovative trailer.

By the way, I didn’t share this fabulous plan with my family, for I knew there would be an instant veto by the staid, overly conservative Mom and/or Dad if they ever caught wind of my audacious brainstorm.  I might even have tried secretly facilitating my carefully considered scheme, too, had I not harbored an irrational fear of a train zooming by on the tracks just as I was in the process of crossing them during my journey home.  I fretted that I wouldn’t be able to get my cumbersome, steel-wheeled conveyance bearing a rotten boat off the tracks quickly enough to avoid being hit by an onrushing mechanical monster.

And so, alas, that ingenious plan hatched in a young boy’s fertile mind died a tortuous natural death while still clinging to the vine…...

In the meantime, I had come into possession of an old woodworking book that I believe was going to be thrown away by our teacher at fabled School District #101, the rural lyceum I regularly attended as a young lad.  This book contained multiple plans for items that could be built exclusively from wood, including the previously mentioned treehouse.  There was one plan which really caught my eye, however–a boat.  Yes, yes, an actual boat that could be readily constructed by a beginning woodworker.

EUREKA!!!!!

I rejoiced unrestrainedly inside as I hurriedly perused over the instructional diagrams; this…..THIS ethereal thing was definitely the answer to all my pre-pubescent dreams……

But Reader, make sure you bear this pertinent thought in mind before you start making false assumptions and get too hysterical over my unexpected good fortune:  The plans in the discarded book didn’t call for a sleek racy boat, to be sure, but rather a simple utilitarian vessel that would be relatively easy to build.  Having said that, the tiny boat in question would quite admirably serve my decidedly unpretentious maritime purposes.

Thinking back now from a salty old sailor’s perspective, that damned craft was admittedly pretty ugly–a flat-bottomed design featuring an identical blunt hull on both ends.  In other words, the uber-elementary boat was little more than a plain rectangular wooden tub, and one didn’t want to accidentally misplace your bearings while captaining the floating crate lest you lose track of whether you were coming or going!

After copious reading, studying and then restudying the building plans, and considering every conceivable angle relative to the engineering design for weeks–it was officially time to begin construction! 

One enormous problem manifested right away though.  The same nettlesome problem that unwaveringly stood in the way of any boyhood project I ever considered back on our home farm:  Building materials!

As I alluded to earlier insofar as my frustrating struggles to build a humble cabin on our backwoods farm, building materials were inordinately scarce around home, especially lumber.  Yes, true, there were numerous lumber yards sprinkled throughout the immediate area that were stocked with all types of wood, but the acquisition of said required something which I had virtually none of, namely money.  And about the only time Dad broke down and bought any new lumber was if we purchased a board or two for a 4-H project just before the Mower County Fair began its annual run in early August.

Ergo, I had to search and scavenge around our farm like a starving vulture in order to find somewhat suitable building materials for the dream boat I was envisioning.

For several years running, I had been ogling one particular board lodged within a partition in our upstairs granary which automatically captured and thereupon kidnapped my undivided attention.  It was unquestionably the widest board I had ever seen; the hippopotamic piece of wood must have measured at least thirty inches wide by ten feet long.  This outlandish specimen especially met my construction needs, because a board that wide would naturally result in a lot fewer joints between the individual components on the critical underside of the boat.  And that point was crucial, after all, given the fact my primary and paramount concern was to make the craft I was building as watertight and seaworthy as physically possible.

Thus–without consulting Dad or asking his opinion (Only a darned fool would risk being turned down!)–I took a crowbar and the exquisitely wide board was henceforth liberated from its boring, unrewarding job in the granary and immediately promoted to the more glamorous assignment of becoming the nucleus for my new boat’s bottom.  I subsequently scrounged around our farm and managed to locate a few more boards–again without soliciting Dad’s grumpy counsel–although they were of much poorer quality and much more diminutive than my prized ultra-wide one.

The plans in my woodworking book called for the boat to be about four feet wide and six and a half feet long.  Those instructions stridently stressed the importance of making tight, concise joints and cutting the necessary boards with a bevel so they would come together at an angle, thus ensuring a greater surface-to-surface interface with correspondingly tighter fits.

Unfortunately, the only tools I had available in my limited arsenal were a hammer and a rusty cross-cut handsaw.  I sighed despairingly to myself.  Oh well, minus the unlikely event some Good Samaritan might drive into our remote Blahnik farmstead and gift me with a brand new complete set of tools, I grunted in displeasure and resigned myself to the fact my two basic woodworking friends would have to suffice for the job at hand.

So I next clandestinely gathered my few boards and tools together in the hay mow of our barn and began construction of the boat in earnest.  I sawed as surely and as straight as I possibly could under the difficult circumstances I faced and fit the cut pieces together as tightly as I could squeeze them.  Yet when I finished assembling the main structure of my watercraft, I could see a fair amount of daylight between its various joints.

Not good if I expected the thing to float!!

The plans did mention that one could caulk any exposed cracks by wedging oakum (an oily, ropelike,  fibrous material) into them.  It should go without saying by now we didn’t have any oakum lying around unused on our Blahnik farm either, so in lieu of that “expensive” luxury I substituted old rags wedged into the boat’s cracks and thereby held in place by nailing wooden laths over the top of them.  I was not overly concerned about any tiny cracks that might be left, because I was holding in reserve my top-secret weapon:  PAINT!!!

I knew from experience that paint applied liberally would really seal everything as tight as a bug in a rug.  After much sleuthing and scrounging around the farm, I did somehow manage to find an unused gallon of old paint (Bless my lucky stars—I just found a needle in a fuckin’ haystack!!!), and to say I really slopped it on the exterior of my crude vessel would be a preposterous understatement.

When that thick “layer” of paint was finally dry, it was time for the official launching of the U.S.S. James Blahnik.  I proceeded to surreptitiously drag my runty boat to the edge of our pond and shoved it into the muddy water with an appropriate flourish.

Guess what?

Not surprisingly, the craft wasn’t entirely watertight, but a couple more of my trusty laths nailed snugly to it in strategic locations limited that leakage to a nominal amount.

SUCCESS!!!!!!!! 

Jim Blahnik—–you, my friend, my Einstein with a hammer and saw……..YOU are an undisputed woodworking genius and deserving of a patent on your magnificent rowboat design!  Moreover, the company that makes wooden laths should automatically grant you a small ownership stake in their corporation considering all the business you have just given them.  I very nearly dislocated my right shoulder that fantastical afternoon from patting myself on the back so strenuously and so often..…

Of course, following that historic maiden voyage any self-respecting sailor would demand a suitable dock for tethering his valuable watercraft to when it wasn’t in use.  Hence, I went ahead and constructed about a ten-foot pier extending into the pond so my boat could be safely boarded in “deep” water–in this instance approximately two to three feet.  There was something of a channel that ran from the pond toward the field to the north which served to drain water from the main body of water after a heavy rain.

In order to keep the pond as deep as possible, I next threw on my Army Corps of Engineers cap and dammed this channel with an array of old posts scavenged from around our farmyard, and then fortified them with a mess of mud and dirt which I carried to the immediate area.  By this time–extraordinarily tired and physically exhausted–I knew exactly how an industrious beaver must feel at the end of a hard-working day!

Yet with periodic repairs, this improvised dam worked remarkably well.  And to my complete surprise and to add icing onto the proverbial cake, Dad–who I never got the impression thought that highly of my pastime as a landlocked mariner, nor did he appreciate the glut of time I was devoting to highbrowed yachting when I could have been helping out substantially more around our financially-challenged family farm–even thanked me profusely for making the tract of land in question more easily farmed, since not as much water drained into the adjoining field and that section was consequently far less muddy and correspondingly more tillable.

I accepted the Old Man’s thanks graciously and with a straight face, of course, but didn’t bother telling him my real reason for the labor-intensive “conservation” project was only to acquire more water for my recreational boating.  Truthfully, I could not have cared less about any serendipity that may have overflowed to him or his dreary farm!

My distinctive boat resided in the pond behind our barn through every season for a number of years after that.  We older Blahnik kids would use a wooden pole to push ourselves around the picayune body of water from time to time, akin to the early nineteenth century party of Lewis and Clarke trailblazers who fought the powerful currents of the Missouri River on their historic upriver trek to the Pacific Ocean.

Fishing?

Nah, there weren’t any fish in that muddy little pond, because some years it damned near dried up if there was anything remotely approaching a drought.

Waterskiing?  Kneeboarding?  Inner-tubing?

No, we couldn’t afford the pricey equipment to do any of that extravagant stuff either.  Like I said, we only used my one-of-a-kind miniature yacht for leisurely recreational sailing in the summertime, and it served that singular purpose meritoriously for myriad years.

As I aged and moved into high school, however, my interest in boating waned considerably.  I grew to strongly prefer participating in the organized sports offered by the school I attended in the neighboring town of Rose Creek, as well as tooling around the Austin vicinity in one of the many cars I later owned (and which I discussed in detail in an earlier chapter of this book).  And, you know, I don’t honestly remember exactly whatever became of my old homemade boat…..my prized youthful creation……

My best guess is the brutal Minnesota weathering process worked hard to accelerate its natural deterioration over time, and then the unassuming vessel probably met its ultimate demise under legions of trampling hooves fueled by the aforementioned cattle that were always jostling around the moist pond area during the dry “dog days” of summer.

Poor little thing.  I imagine the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC is still ruing the fact they cannot display my classic watercraft within their hallowed halls……