I’m not sure exactly how old I was the first time I rowed a boat. I was young, I know that. The craft was a banged-up aluminum jonboat. The venue was Brockway Lake — actually a lily pad-choked pond — just down the road from my childhood home in western Michigan.
Early evening, the smell of irrigated corn, a bass chorus of bullfrogs. My dad casting a Jitterbug from the stern while I gave it a go. The oars were pine, silver with age, warped and splintery. They, along with generations of mice, lived under the boat, which we stored overturned behind the garage. The boat fit in the back of my dad’s pickup. There were no seats or life jackets, just two aluminum benches that got blistering hot in the sun. Our anchor was a Maxwell House can filled with cement, an eyebolt sunk in before it had set. A tangled, yellow, nylon rope tied off to the bow eye.
I don’t remember rowing instruction, although there must have been
