The First Boat

So while I was working at McDonald’s, my manager—who lived out in Tennessee—said one day, real casual, “You can have my boat.”

That sentence lit a fuse.
Didn’t matter that I’d never seen it. Didn’t matter that I had no idea what shape it was in. Dreams don’t ask for specs.

A little while later, me and my buddy went to pick her up. And when I say in the woods, I mean in the woods. Trees grown up around her like she’d been abandoned mid-escape. Moss, leaves, the whole deal. I think she was a 1967 Renken cabin cruiser, though at that point she was more artifact than boat.

We hauled her to the lake, then dropped her off at a mechanic’s yard to get rewired and made lake-legal. Another thousand bucks gone—big money when you’re a teenager—but that test ride when we went to pick her up?
That changed everything.

She floated.
She moved.
She was real.

Right there on that lake we made plans—big ones. We were gonna live on this boat. Key West. Sunburns, salt air, freedom. The whole damn postcard.

After the lake trial, we loaded her up and headed to Boone so we could make her livable now that she wasn’t actively trying to sink.

But first—lesson time.

Cresting that hill on the 105 bypass in front of the Christian Academy of Boone, the trailer popped off the ball.
No warning. No mercy.
The tongue dropped, slammed through the back window of the Ford Explorer, and glass exploded all the way up to the driver’s seat.

Me and my friend jumped out on pure adrenaline. No thinking—just moving. We rolled the boat uphill by hand, muscled it enough to get the hitch back on the ball, and this time we LOCKED IT.

Lesson learned forever:

Always check your connections. Even if someone else said they did.

We made it as far as the two-story Wendy’s in Boone. That’s where I called Mom.

“Hey… I shattered the back window.”
It was winter.

She didn’t yell. Didn’t freak.
Just asked if I was okay—and when I’d be home.

So we dropped the boat at my friend’s place, and I went home stressed, exhausted… but still dreaming.
Because now I had something I’d never had before.

A working boat.

We worked on her every day after school. Late nights. Cold fingers. Big plans. And then the day came.

Stepdad says,

“Here’s your graduation present. We’re all going to Key West. We’ll stay in your efficiency—and bring your boat down too.”

I said okay. I wasn’t losing anything but space, and space was never something I grew up with anyway.

Then came I-95.

Running just under 95—
BOOM. One trailer tire gone.
BOOM. Second tire gone.

Only two left.

Someone says, “I think we hit a construction cone.”

Stepdad is pissed. Full regret mode. We pull over. Wait hours for AAA. They show up with one good tire and one wrong size.
Another few hours burned.

But eventually—we’re back on the road.

And somehow… we make it.

Key West.
Sun. Salt. Everyone ready to cram into a garage-turned-efficiency like sardines with tan lines.

And sitting outside?

That old Renken.
Scraped, stubborn, and absolutely loaded with possibility.

Because I didn’t know it yet—but this boat wasn’t just taking me south.

She was teaching me how chaos, dreams, bad decisions, and grit all somehow end up tied to the same hitch.