Part Two

                               Building the Schooner Pamela Ann

                                                   Part Two

After the center line was laid and that two was something the old boat builder told me. You leave the center line alone and put it in your pocket the day you launch the boat. What he was saying was everything is built of that center line. Now we set out to find a way to deal with all the hurtles in front of us as they came along. One major problem as always was money. All the money we had was what we could make doing small jobs around town. After being at the Annapolis boat show before we came to Southport and seeing them there, we decided to build two rickshaws to try to make some money that way. Mr. Harper again, he gave me two old Schwinn girls bikes to start with and with the help of a fabricating shop going out of own using my design that they wanted to change with me sticking with my design two things happen I wasn’t thinking about. I had no tools to work metal at the time, and they welded it up for me and also, I made friends there that helped a lot after I got stared building the Pamela Ann. Them loaning me tools I needed for just one day sometimes and giving me advice on how to build better using steel. Now with this we had problems with City Hall again. They said we needed a pet-ti-cab license to work with our rickshaws there in town. Big thing was the insurance policy. It was extreme to me what they wanted to give us as license and what that cost. We painted a large house there in town and it took all the money we made doing it but now. We didn’t think about the insurance being this high before we built the rickshaws but now, we had a license for a pet-t-i-cab and insurance. First day there on main street was a total failure. That evening Mr. Harper to the rescue again. He said, “Location, location, location. You’re in the wrong place on Main Street. Go work the waterfront. Go ask the restaurant owners there at the Whittlers Bench if you can work out of their parking lot.” To my surprise, the owner thought it was a great idea to entertainer the costumers waiting to get in the restaurant in the afternoons. Now we weren’t setting in the hot sun just working in the afternoons now and it was fun making extra money this way.

This picture was put in the State Port Pilot newspaper soon after we started to do tours on the rickshaws, of the town of Southport. It was taken in front of the Whittler’s Bench on the waterfront.

The money wasn’t great but for the time spent it was good. Now as we went along this was part of the adventure of building our boat. We went at six in the afternoon and came back home at nine. We learned quick how to work grandmothers with grand-kids and this worked out. Don’t ever take them out of their grandmother’s site and how happy they were coming back laughing like kids do. This primed up people wanting to take tours of the town. We were soon noted for our entertaining along with the ride. One of our popular story telling was the Toni the ghost and how he was still there at the once hotel now a house after he drown and his girlfriend stayed a long time before she left, and he was still there waiting on her to come back. People at that house really believed he was still there with things happening there. One event that happen to us there that makes me smile thinking about it even today an older woman across the street had the beginnings of dementia wanted to go to her daughter’s house on the other side of town on the Fourth of July. With the state celebration going on there in town it was hard to walk anywhere with all these people there and as I said she had some age on her. I put her on the rickshaw with her daughter already there that morning taking them back to the other side of town. With this crowd there I was going down sidewalks through people yards any way I could, ringing a little bicycle bell saying emergency, emergency, coming through. Now, Miss Alice was back there squealing like a little girl. Laughing like she was having the time of her life. All this time they had a big bowl of something like Jello trying not to spell it. If you’re wondering. There was no way to work a rickshaw in this crowd but a few years later a friend road one of our rickshaws in the Fourth of July parade with one of Pam’s little nephew, nine years old in the back waving to the crowd and this meant he was on TV. I told him if he told him mother when he went back home, he was on TV it would be bragging and if he was as much a man as I was, he wouldn’t tell. He went as soon as he got home and got his aunt he came to the beach with to tell her so he could tell me when he saw me again, he was as much a man as I was. With us working as hard as we could we was raising a little money. We needed everything. John Gorham, that lived on the waterfront said he had a welded I could borrow that needed work. Now I was headed to our little shop on Jabbertown road with the welder on the rickshaw. That was another thing we discovered about rickshaw they make a great little truck. Lots of days going to work somewhere in town with our rickshaw loaded with what we needed to work with we became; famous I guess for being a little different or maybe it’s just who we are that makes people talk about us. We had and old car when we first came to town, but Pam was in a wreak with it and totaled it out. Woman fell out of the driver’s seat of a big van hitting a really rough bad spot in the road trying to get her purse falling in the floor. The van hit Pam head on even though she was stopped. Thankfully she was slowing down, and Pam was only bruised really bad from the set belt. We took what the insurance paid that was really about what the old car was worth, not much. This meant we went a long time there without a car. Bicycles and rickshaws. Now with us living there so long trying to build our dream boat this meant we had a lot of interaction with lot of people there. Earlier in my life I had a problem with drinking alcohol, thinking it was a way to have fun. By now we had both given that up and quit drinking. If anyone reading this is getting anything from any of this, quitting drinking is harder than most people can fandom. Doctors know most people that drink can’t quit. It’s just that hard. If you know someone trying to quit don’t be too hard on them. They most likely can’t quit and it will likely kill them, and they know it. Being there in Southport and working around town we met a woman that had a shop there that ask me to go to the liqueur store every day to buy her a small bottle of vodka and not tell anyone what I was doing. Remember we don’t drink now and it’s none of our business if someone does. This was fine with me with her paying for it and letting us use her car. Over time we developed a relationship with, her and later in this we will refer back to what happen that we never dreamed she would do that helped us with building the boat. Now time was passing by. I put a used torch, and gauges set on layaway at Long Beach pawnshop and paid on it every week till I got it out just to find how out hard it is to get oxygen and acetylene tanks. I finely rented them from the fabricating shop going out of town. This was really helping us a lot. Now with all the money we could raise we went with the woman’s car we bought vodka for everyday to Wilmington, NC to Queensboro Steel Company to order metal to start our dream boat. There a man at the gate said, “Go in the office and look for the pretties woman you have ever seen. Maybe she can help you.” Inside he was right, and I had no trouble finding her. Pam was with me. I told her what I wanted, and she looked at my list and said, “Company name and tax number.” At this I knew we were sunk. Now I’m watching a blond and a red head going at it with Pam about to cry. Pam explaining what we were up against and how long we had been dreaming about doing this. The women said, “I have a boss with her hands up. At that I said, “Let’s just go. As we turned the women said, “Wait let me run this by someone. Just wait.” As she came back, she said, “Is there any way you can come up with a larger order? After that, I never got to see this woman again or talk to her. She and Pam always worked it out. Her being a pretty woman was one thing but her helping us out maybe why we have our boat today. We had so much criticism building the boat but good people like this helping us made it happen. Queensboro Steel only sales wholesale to companies and with her help we bought all the steel from them. I never dealt with her it was always her and Pam working it out for years. All of this as it came together there were more people helping us than against us but even a few working against you can make it hard sometimes. It was two more months raising money to make a bigger order before our first load of steel came and the driver delivering to the power plant had our order on his truck too. As he stopped and got out, he said you got a forklift. All I could think of was here we go again. He said, “No problem we can just roll it off.” He pulled the trailer over as far as he could and not be in the ditch and we rolled it off on the side of the road. He was really into what we were doing after seeing the plans. Now it was back to find Pam on my bicycle to get a rickshaw and head to the drugstore where they sold cheap beer and then back to the waterfront looking for help. A little later taking two commercial fishermen back to the waterfront on the rickshaw with a case of cheap beer the metal was all where I wanted it to start working. This turned out to be a great source of help. Cheap beer and I found out you can ride three grown men willing to help on a rickshaw if you peddle hard and go slow. After most of the keel was tacked in place and time to start the frames some people call ribs, I was in Lowes on the Beach Road on a Saturday evening looking for some cheap lumber they piled out front and the manager called me a cheap-cape and said he had a deal for me. Six hundred twenty, 2 x 4s in a banded bundle for 20 cents apiece and he would deliver them. There when I cut the bands all of them had something wrong with them but what a buy. I could use them by cutting the bad off or doubling them up. Now using the measurements from the plans, I lofted the frames up in wood with these bad 2 x 4s and laid up the first bar to make up the chime bar cutting small pieces of metal screwed to the wood frames and welded to the bar holding it in place. Now for the second chime bar I used 2inch pipe. This was the most critical piece now in the hull so a man I had met ask me if I could use some plywood. He had a factory making kids furniture and the plywood he used came in shipped with a scrap piece of thin plywood on top and bottom. It was thin maybe quarter inch and bad with ban marks and scratches from being shipped. Now with this bad plywood and these bad 2 x 4s I laid out the main chime bar with a wire I made up as compass. This meant using a lot next door so I could us a real long wire to make up this compass. With the marks on the plywood, I had laid down and borrowing a horologic pipe bender from the fab shop on a Sunday I bent the pipe and now with this held in place with small pieces on flat bar screwed to the wood and welded to the pipe the last was laying out the deck. Pieces of that thin plywood laid out and cut to shape the deck using a one-inch solid bar to make the temple. Now the frames could be welded in and the wood taken out. This is the first picture to be put in the paper as we laid her up. This brought out the people against us with them saying this is no way to build a metal boat.

This picture was in the State Port Pilot newspaper when we first got into the project to build the Schooner Pamela Ann.

He doesn’t know how to do anything. No one uses wood in building a metal boat. Maybe they were right in how metal boats are built but to me it was laid out with as smooth a shape as I could get it. Now with all this criticism had me checking anyway I could. With the frames in some people call ribs I could climb the tree there beside the boat are climb up on top of the little shop building and look and dream of what she would maybe look like some day.

                                                      The Adventure of Life Goes On

In the Beginning

                     Blog Part One Building the Schooner Pamela Ann

Here as I promised last week in our blog, I will try to tell how we came about building our boat on a vacant lot on Jabbertown Road near the town of Southport, NC. We have had some people contacting us about people building houses there that may want to know what went on there before they came there and what has already happened there. First before I start maybe I need to tell a few things about who we are. I was never any good in school but always good with my hands. I had no trouble learning to read early in school and was always good at math, but the rest just wasn’t my thing. I had a mean teacher in the third grade, and we clashed a lot, and I failed the third grade. Taking the grade over messed me up some I think with why I was even going to school. Taking that grade over the next year that teacher wasn’t there anymore and I made that grade. Fourth grade I decided to quit school and all they knew to do was beating me till I changed. Some people say I have a little stubborn streak in me if I decide to do something. I went on to school with them beating me, but I spent the w hole year there at school not opening a book. The next year still being beat and made to go back to school I had the same teacher. She came to me and explained to me that I had made my point, and it would be easier on us both if I just did what I wanted and not just set there to prove what they couldn’t make me do. She let me draw when I wanted and I am and established artiest now and do sell some of my work and she let me read to the kids that were having trouble reading. Setting where I always set in the back of the room. Failing two grades now meant they couldn’t hold me back another year. We lived on a farm and my daddy drove a truck. We had a commercial eggs business that I worked at hard taking care of chickens with my mother selling eggs. At the age of fifteen, just a few days before I turned sixteen, I quit school to work on the farm, when mama came and got me at school again to work on the water pump and mama and daddy were into it that night. Soon after that she sold out the chickens and we were trough with farming. When she did that, I went in a box without asking mama kept important papers in and got the Certification of Birth they got me in school with. Changed my birth date and made myself 18 on paper and got a job in a cotton mill working as a man at 16. Almost a year later with me just turning 17 and working hard I met the girl of my dreams, and she had just turned 15. Then all that trouble stared. No dating in the deep south until a girl turned 16. Five months later with them determined to break us up making it so hard on us we ran away, foraged some papers and got married. There is a lot more to this story how hard we worked during this time to be together, and it is a love story, but the point here is she has a stubborn streak in her too when she makes up her mind. She ask me to marry her if that tells you anything. We called her parents and told them what we did, where she was so they shouldn’t worry trying to find her and when we would be back. We came back 3 days later, and it was scary with them wanting to hurt us I believe. She had and uncle that stepped up for us telling everyone there no one needed to touch us that they all knew just how stubborn she could be, and she told her mother we would not be separated, and we left. One week later we moved out of my mother’s house at 15 and 17 with no help from anyone and set up housekeeping with some junk we were trying to fix now like a stove and a bed. This meant we needed everything, and we stared to find anything we could find we could use and fix to live with. This has been the story of our life a lot. Find something, we can use and fix it.

Now to building the Schooner Pamela Ann. I named the boat “Pamela Ann” named after her. Tough as nails and hopefully pretty. A fully rigged topsail schooner of our own design. Before I hush with who we are. Married now 61 years with getting older now I believe most things in life people talk about is just there opinion and I say this all the time. I think we have had a wonderful life where some people say we have had a hard life with how we like to live. Been on a lots of adventures together for sure. Some we talk about in our blog we are doing even now. Now to building the boat of our dreams. We made it to Southport, NC going there to work in the nuclear power plant. There we decided to see if we could build the boat we drew plans for all the time. We had been living on boats for some time by now. The sail boat we had and was living on at the time was not paid for, nice but not what we dreamed we wanted. After the outage was over at the power plant and we were working around town looking for a place to build a boat. I was working near the end of South Atlantic Street at a little house when a car came up and a man came to me asking who I was then stared cussing telling me I was not building a boat there, no where. That was over in the town of Southport. He had heard people talking around town what I was planing. Telling me he was the city building inspector. I went to the boat yard there at Southport marina and they said I could build it there if I put up fifty thousand dollars for the clean up and pay them every month for them letting me work there. I was about to give up when Mr Harper that owned the newspaper and the little house I was working on said he had a place that was out of the town city limits, I could build it on if I could get alone with the poor people living out there. He wanted to see me build it after seeing my work. We went out there and it was a mess. Two old small building falling in and a really old camper made in a factory some where out of pressed plywood covered with cloth and paint falling apart. He said someone had been living there years before and had died. The big thing was the mess that was there. It looked like people out there had been dumping trash there for years. I told him I didn’t know how I could clean all this up. He said I will see if we can get the city dump truck out here Saturday nights and they can pick it up on Monday morning. Pam and I went at it. I fixed the main building to be used as a small shop and painted it with paint mixed together Mr Harper had left over from something he had done and added the name over the door “ Schooner Pamela Ann” Talking to an electrician that worked around town he said they wouldn’t hook the power up to the weather head on the old building I needed a temporary pole and service and he had one. With money always tight it cost more than I wanted to pay but we managed to make the money to buy it and I put it up. Now with the one building I could use for a shop fixed up some and the mess on the ground gone and it took weeks hauling the mess away and the lot now clean I went to get the power turned on. The girl there in the front office said, “I have a note here. You need to see the city building inspector.” With more of him cursing me with me saying it not in town city limits and him saying well we still control the power out there and I told you. “You are not building a boat here.” Back to see Mr Harper with him saying, “Business and politics, is the hardest game there is and this game is not over yet. We will go see the town aldermen and the mayor.” Now this took a couple of months to set up. On the night of the meeting Pam had her long red hair down in curls and was dressed nice. The people there were really noticing her but she would not make the speech like I was asking her to trying to get them to turn on our power. As I was called up I stared to make my speech. The city building inspector was interrupting me saying. “Are you a navel architect? I heard you never even finished school and you drew the plans for that mess you think you are going to build here.” The mayor saying, “Let him finish.” When I made my case the city building inspector was up and in-to why I was as he was saying not going to build some piece of junk the city was going to have a problem with noise, clean up and people complaining all the time.” The mayor said,“Can I see the plans you drew?” The city inspector was on it about it just being a drawing. I told the mayor it’s a workable scale drawing and I showed him the lofting plans. He ask, “How long to build this?” I said, “One year.” He said, “I think we are going to have one more boat built here.” The building inspector went off along with the people there with him. With them still yelling and with the mayor saying we could have power I just took Pam by the hand as we stared walking out. We stopped on the steps outside of City Hall with Mr Harper and he said, “It’s ironic the last ocean going boat to be built here is a fully rigged two mast topsail schooner.” Pam told him, “We plan to keep the name Southport on the boat as long as we can. It will be documented, and the home port has to be on the stern.

On Monday the power people came and hooked up the power, but they were very rude. I sat down on the steps of the little building thinking about how rude they were. And why? A car pulled up and a well-dressed man came walking up. He said he was the city electrical engineer, and with all the yelling and crazy going on at that meeting they messed something they could have done. They could have made me have a port-a potty out there and have it inspected each week. He said, “I’m on your side right now but if I hear anyone complaining about where you’re going to the toilet out here, I will pull the meter myself and you won’t get it back. After he left this was a test in some way for me setting there by myself. Was all this worth it with all these people against us and how long it had already took to get this far? When Pam was back from shopping seeing me knowing me and how I looked she was loving on me saying, “Cheer up. You know the most important step doing anything is the first one and we are on our way.” I had a pile of old 2×4 boards out of a house I had been working on over on Long Beach with the ends rotten the rest was good. She and I with power now stared cutting the rot off and building the forms the first piece of metal would be placed to start the boat. Then we had another problem starting before it even got dark that first day.

We had been in Virginia, working at a nuclear power plant up there. We had our boat in a boat yard there, where an older man there had been building boats all his life. His work was beautiful. If I ask him questions about building boats, he would get rude. On our last day there I was talking to him, and he cut a limb off a tree as a stick and stared drawing in the sand. He showed me how they designed boats in the old days. How to find center of effort, lateral resistance, buoyancy, and using just math to figure where the water line would be. Lots and lots of stuff. Then, he left still acting rude. I ask his helper as he left why he would get rude when I ask him about building boats. His helper said, “You going to try to build that schooner?” I said, “Yes I hope I can someday, still working on the plans.” He said, “A schooner is like a mule. What it wants to do it does really well but what it don’t like, it won’t.” and he laughed. I ask about him about him being rude to me. He said, “Remember this the first day you start that boat and you will know why he gets rude.” and he walk off.

As I said before dark that day with us just laying up a form and the center line to build from, a car pulled up and two people that had boats in the Southport marina got out wanting to see the plans. It stared right then how bad this boat would be. Them saying no one builds a schooner anymore for a reason and they stared naming reasons. Saying this boat is going to be just junk. After that it never stopped with what I was doing wrong up to the day we left headed south the last time. Next week we will have picture of us building the boat and explain what a lot of people said is so wrong with the boat. One thing is we have round varnished wooden mast the way they would have been built a hundred years ago and that is just a start. Even with us being stubborn or very committing to what we are doing this was a challenge.

The criticism has never stopped even today. One thing for sure it was an adventure in itself building the boat, Was worth it? Hard to say if you weight all points of what we could have done but the feeling we felt as we passed each milestone is hard to describe. Feeling her power up the first time as the sails were set and responded to her rudder. Making our first port-of- call to another country. Hard to describe how that felt. Next week we will try to show pictures of us building her as I said and her slowly taking shape. That is another experience hard to explain what that felt like. Maybe it’s like loving a pretty woman a little more ever time you she her. Maybe that is why boats are described as her. Sailing her around the world not sailing him around the world. Pamela Ann had not sailed around the world yet, but we are proud of all the ports we have made and where she has taken us. One thing for sure she has been a big part of the Adventures of life we have lived since we built her and that adventure of life goes on even today with us doing a refit in a boat yard in the Caribbean and her still home to us. Looking better every day. Better motors and a fine paint job. 

                                             The Adventure of Life Goes On

This picture was made and sent to us. We were sailing in Alabama. You can see Southport, NC is on the stern. It’s still on there now.

Different Cultures

Last week I was telling what it’s like living on our boat in the Caribbean. We are up a river in Guatemala. I said last week most people dream of warm breezes coming through the palm trees in the Caribbean and endless lazy days. Most dreams are affected by where you are and how much money you are spending. Where we’re at is in a boat yard out of the water with our boat on stands working on it. Last week the temperature hitting 108F with the heat index hitting 115F. Remember we are out in the sun living on our boat working on it. Working on it is a stretch maybe some days with it this hot. If it seems like I’m just bitching, maybe I am a little telling people the truth. Why do we stay here doing this. I want our boat back in the water and us going again bad enough to me back here working like this. Is it all bad here? Of course, not but even that is an opinion. Everyone seems to have one. I say this a lot at my age. A lot in life is just someone’s opinion. What is success seems to always be there if you’re around people. Maybe they are right, and the scale “IS” how much money you have. In that case we are not too successful. On the other hand, Pam and I have been together since we were teenagers. Still waking up next to the girl of my dreams may not be much to some people but to me it means a lot. Most people coming down here see these people as poor. Is that just an opinion with how happy they are? This is a culture down here and cultures but, in all cultures, it seems big loud and flashy is always there. Even here you can’t tell them cutting a hole in the exhaust of their motor bikes so they will make more noise hurts their power and mileage with the exhaust being a turned exhaust engineering for the right back pressure. With the flash you can’t believe how many lights they can put on a bike. Even thebig truck here come down the road is covered with light. Also, chicken buses get tricked out. Maybe to them their success is how many lights they have on their trucks or buses.

To us our success is getting our boat back in the water better than ever and being underway again. Even with us working so hard and worrying about money this is still the life we chose so long ago, and we are here. This may not mean much to a lot of people but to us with how long we dreamed of being on this great adventure the work is worth it. We had someone contact us this week that was there when they tore down the old building on the vacant lot, we built the boat on in Southport. NC. They said the name, “Schooner Pamela Ann” was still there over the door covered in vines.

A picture of the building we used on the lot where we built the “Schooner Pamela Ann” in Southport, NC.

There are houses there now and the sleepy little town is never going to be as it was again when we were there. The town is someone else dream now. Pam and I talked and maybe we will do a three- or four-part blog with pictures about the building of the Schooner Pamela Ann and the people there now maybe can see the adventure it was. The day we left going south on the ICW Pam and I looked back until, the town disappeared. They say if you don’t look back, you’re never going back but we knew by now it would be hard to live there again. We knew we could not afford to live there anymore. We will explain in the coming blogs how we still take a little of Southport with us. If you see someone interested in any of this spread the word. Maybe something to print and make a scrap book. Just building the Pamela Ann there was an adventure in itself.

                                           The Adventure of Life Goes On

We can walk down the street and buy a cool drink.

Hot In Caribbean

One week back in paradise and it’s hot. Home on our boat and working in the Caribbean. Most people have a vision of the Caribbean as endless lazy days. Pam and I don’t drink so my drink of the day is cold Pepsi in a glass returnable bottle like it was in the deep south growing up in the USA. Working here can be a challenge. Unreliable power. Hard to buy what you need sometimes. Things are expensive here. Eleven pounds of welding rod in a foil package is 100 US dollars. Hiring good people that will work hard is not that hard but training them is. Then there is the language barrier. Everything is against training them. They use the metric system, and we use inch. Our boat is metal, and we have some problems with rust. Easier to just cut it out and welded in another piece. Maybe the piece is only a foot square. I was told that spray foam was the best way to go insulating the boat when we built it and it was a mistake. It’s about all gone now that we have been taking it out, but water got behind the foam in places. The hull is getting back better that ever now. Making some changes as I go to make the design better. Remember we designed the boat ourselves. Getting someone you can hired to cut out a piece of metal somewhere hard to get to it is not that hard. But impossible for them to cut the piece to fit going back. If we cut out a piece even if it’s small and I do the fit going back getting them to hold the piece in place while I tack it. They will put on a heavy long sleeve shirt, cover their head and wear heavy gloves with me bare footed in cut-off jeans and a tee shirt. I almost never wear gloves to weld if I have the piece wedged in with a long screwdriver. Right now, we are working on our boat with no help. Doing it all ourselves. With always living our life taking time to smell the roses, we are trying to take time to enjoy being here. We have gecko lizards on the boat, and we leave them alone. Here is a gecko egg. They’re like ducks they just drop eggs and leave them.

There is a banana tree behind the boat this week it had a big purple bloom come on it and two days later you can see the bananas growing.

In town the town is growing and crowded. It’s still a Caribbean town with heavy traffic and no sidewalks in town. Vendors put their wears all the way out to the street. This means walking down the street can be an adventure.

Need Eggs? Just walk into any store and you can by one or ever how many dozen you want.

Sorry we have not been able to get a blog out. Computer trouble. Everything is working now.

                                                                     The Adventure of Life Goes On

Back Home

Sorry for not doing a blog last week. Been so busy and nothing interesting to talk about with us getting ready and going home. We are there now on our boat.

It feels good to be Back Home.

If you use logic, we need to work more at making our little house out on the prairie our home. We are getting older, and age is a factor in our life now. These trips getting back here are getting harder with us getting older. Five-hour ride with our son taking us from our little house in Kansas to the airport. Getting through all that mess at the airport just to get on the plane. Layover for 3 hours in Florida to make the next flight. Getting into Guatemala City after midnight and the cab that was to take us to a hotel didn’t show up. Found another cab and got to our room to sleep some by 2AM. Next morning ate breakfast at McDonald’s and they got our order wrong. Not speaking Spanish that well just eat it and let it go. Now it’s getting to the bus station. Another cab. There the bus was late leaving, and the driver was terrible. Jerking to start off then slamming the brakes to stop. This is Semans Santa week (Easter Week) and this is when most people here in Guatemala take a vacation. The river her is a vacation spot.

Durind the weekend they parked cars and buses during the day. At night a helicopter landed in the boat yard and took off in the mornings to give tours over the Rio Dulce.

When we were young, we dreamed about this boat all the time. With no money and not knowing anyway to get any boat we would talk, and dream and I would draw boats not knowing what we really needed. When we finely got our first sailboat we were living on Lake Greenwood in a log cabin Pam, and I built from our own plans. We have always been talked about like we are not normal. Always. Running away when Pam was 15 getting married. I was 17 at the time. Had lied about my age and was working at a man job in a cotton mill at16. Against the law to be working at a public job at 16 when I met Pam. Had a hot rod car dress like the Fonz on Happy Days and her mother was not impressed. The big blow up happen at 15 and 17 with her mother telling me to never get near her again. She was going to put the law on me. When I saw Pam two weeks later by accident, she ask me to marry her and we made a plan and here we are married 61 years now. After we got our little sailboat after work we would go out in the lake sail dream and sleep on our little boat so much it had people talking about us again. Still drawing plans for our dream boat. Sold our log cabin and bought a nice modern sailboat the bank liked, and it took us a lot of places, but it wasn’t the sailboat we wanted. When we were working in a nuclear power plant in Southport, NC we sold that sailboat we had and decided to build the sailboat of our dreams. No idea how much it would cost or how long it would take to build it. Ten years from laying the keel to leaving on our first trip. Remember dreaming about building this boat for so many years and the money and time it took to leave the first time. Sailing around the Statue of Liberty on our way north Pam was crying and when I ask her what was wrong, she said, “Hush.” I felt it too. So, this is why we still call and feel like our sailboat is home. The boat needs some work, and we are doing it. We get it back together it should be better than ever and maybe if we bring it back to the US we will put it in boat shows. It is a fully rigged top-sail schooner with lot of antique stuff we have collected along the way boats don’t have any more. Named after Pam, “Schooner Pamela Ann” if we get her ready to go, we will leave her here in the boat yard till we are ready to leave. We need to go back to our little house out on the prairie and try to republish our book and hopefully get it to sale. Money is always our problem. Getting my art and the book to sale is a bird in a tree so when we go back there, we need to finish the 1951 Chevy truck we are restoring so we can work out of it going to farms out there upholstering those big farm tractors, combines and farm trucks. This is work but we can make some money this way to hopefully make this all this we are doing happen. Can we do this at our age? Win or lose our life has never been boring.

                                                                     The Adventure of Life Goes On

This is what we are working for. Out there sailing and going places.

More Projects in Kansas

Last week our blog was a bout Pam and I marring at 15 and 17 and us not finishing high school. One year and one month after we were married Pam had a baby boy at 16. Our only child that lives out here in Kansas and the main reason we bought this house out here. We “did not” have sex before we married like it was the driving force in what we did, and people seem to always go there. Teenagers with a baby out of school to most people this was awful. Now here today with us getting older still together as I have said 61 years later, we still have dreams of adventures ahead of us, we hope. What, we are working on out here is a business dream of becoming a writer and a artist. Just think what we could do with just a little money coming in with us doing all this and with our home-built sailboat we still call home and the places we have not been yet. I know the odds of it happening with this being me doing this and us this old, but we have never been one to give up.

This is the steering wheel we made while we were in Belize out of some local wood there. The dash we found in a junkyard here in Kansas. 

The plans for our car. “A Pennington Cozy”

I also said last week I would put some pictures of the car we are building we designed ourselves out here. Crazy as our life can get, we took on another project. We need away to promote our work with art and our books is what the experts are saying. We also need a way to take our art to shows and galleries. We were given a truck a little tired but if you know us you know we are Frankenstein people. A lot we own we have we raised from the dead with bone yard parts we can find.

This is our 1951 Chevy truck.

This is a project. Friday, we managed to get an abandonment title from the DMV. By law it now belongs to us, and we can get a tag. No record of who owned it before with it being just a little old. Last tag on the truck was 1975. It was in a junk yard, and they were going to crush it. Now for a box to put on our truck to carry our art, we were given a camper. We hope to cut it apart and build a box van out of it to carry our painting. Remember all this is old, we’re old and it’s crazy but sometimes “crazy works.”

This is the trailer we are taking apart and using to make a box for the back of the truck to carry painting to Art Shows. 

The other night we went to a potluck for seniors and there the speaker, was an 18-year-old girl trying out for Miss Kansas, Beauty pageant. Seeing a girl this pretty will make you think. Remember our first night together as a couple Pam was just 15 and I do believe she could have given this girl a run for her money on how she looked. I hate to hear, “I bet that is was a pretty woman when she was young about any women.” To me Pam is still a pretty woman. It’s always about the what ifs in life. What if I had left Pam alone like her mother wanted. What direction would her life have taken. After the girl made her speech, she asks if anyone had any comments and if you know me you know I have a disability, my mouth, is not in direct contact to my brain. I said, “You have made it this far and pretty as you are if you have a setback, don’t let it stop you.” People there seemed to agree. On the way home Pam said, “With all we have going on you may have to take some of your own advice by not giving up.” (Remember things we did we are proud of in our life together is just our opinion and not everyone see it as the same.) Now with all the things we made happen being high school dropouts in our life with all we have going on right now this may be a little much with us being this old, but I guess time will tell. Either way what a life it has been with the adventures we have had.

                                          The Adventures of Life Goes On

More Adventures

 

Well, it has happened again and I’m not talking about the blizzard we had out here this week. Last week in our blog I was talking about the first time I spent the night with Pam in bed with me. We did it again last night and the difference was the passing of 61 years since we first did it. Married now 61 years and her still with me. Looking back, we were for sure two scared kids 61 years ago. We were just two young people that were maybe a little head strong that we were going to be together no matter what, with what seemed everyone trying to separate us. Her parents treating me with the law if I kept trying to see her. With them so hard on us we made a plan, and I picked her up at school when she got off the bus before school started on a Friday morning and we ran away together to Georgia. Lied about our age and got married. The big deal was her being 15. No one cared about me being just 17 it was all about her being 15 years old. Another thing was how pretty she was. You’re showing how dumb you are if you don’t think how, you look changes things.

This is a picture of Pam taken when she was 17 years old. Can you see the determiation in her eyes?

Her being that pretty it was like I had soiled her and messed up her life. Pam has always been a good girl and having sex was out before marriage, but after we were married, we had a little boy when she was 16. More disgrace and people looking down on us. Not finishing high school and now teenagers with a baby. How did this work out? Got a pilot license at 19 and you can bet she has always been right there beside me telling me how to fly when I’m flying a plane. Saying, “Bank it harder or give it to me and I will. Fly back over that so I can get a better look.” We both worked at some really good jobs but early in our twenties we gave up on what other people wanted and set out live in motion for what we wanted more than ever. A crazy life of doing things. Living on a lake in a log cabin we built together cutting the logs and finding ways to get them to the house. First trip we made in a tractor trailer truck together she said, “I can drive this thing it only has ten more gears than our pickup truck.” Together driving as a team is so much better than leaving her home waiting on me to get back. Having her with me on the road doing things as a couple will do but one thing Pam being Pam we tried to stop on the road and have one good meal a day. This meant me driving and her in the sleeper getting ready. Hair and a touch of makeup. Dressed for the occasion. As a driver we knew said one night as I was told to go get us a table, she would be on in a minute in a truck stop we like to stop at. He said, “Pam is in the building.” Like they use to say Elvis has left the building as she walked in the restaurant part of the truck stop. Everyone now looking. Her bright red hair combed out in high heels and a nice dress. Later with our love of travel it took us ten years building our sailboat the way we wanted we have lived and travel on. Her right there helping me put the pieces together after her working all day helping raise the money we needed for the boat. Most people never realize we had to raise the money as we went to build the schooner, we designed ourselves we have traveled on for over 20 years now. (The Schooner Pamela Ann) Guess where the name came from? Now with us buying this little house out on the prairie we have no indication of giving up our boat or that way of life. Hoping to put all this together and create a new lifestyle. Publish a book, sell some art, finish the car we are building from plans we drew up. Bring the boat back to the US and put it in boat shows. I been told I need to self-promote, to sell our book and my art. Even our lifestyle may help. I will try to put some pictures of our car we are building next week but for now, I guess we will never know what our lives would have been like if we married in our twenties, got degrees and lived like we were told we needed to. Going fishing sleeping in a tent camping out for weeks at a time. Would that have been better if we lived our life like we were told we needed to, to be successful? What about all the times we finally made something happen like making it to Mexico with the sailboat we built ourselves. After three days getting it there, with the main boom broke in a storm at sea. After getting the anchor set going to bed to rest. Would waking up there together been better if we had waited to get married and went along with what we were told to do. It’s hard to explain what that felt like with the adventure of getting that far working at it together. And knowing the adventures that were coming. Doing art and publishing a book doesn’t make you a writer or an artist. Working together at another dream is an adventure no, one can take away. Marrying at 15 and 17 has been a dream no one can take away from us now and how full a life we have had is just someone else opinion. We have always took on life together as an adventure, and now getting old is no time to stop.

                                       The Adventure of Life Goes On

Our home away from our boat, Pamela Ann we call home. 

This truck is our main transportation while we are out here on the prairie in Kansas. Great for riding around on dirt roads watching the moon come up.

Moon Watching

If you read our blog last week our life is changing. I put in last week’s blog we are dreaming again. Working on it really. Art contest coming up and working on a deadline coming up Wednesday. With the book we published we heard things we needed to change so we stopped promoting it and stared rewriting it as a revised addition. Working on it two years now and I think we are about ready to try it again. This time I think with the changes we made we will feel more like promoting it. Story line, everyone is not born the same and everyone doesn’t like living the same even if you hear it everyday day. Were all born equal and we must live by the rules set for you to live by. In last week’s blog I put I only finished the eighth grade. That puts me in the loser category with most educated people. Then after quitting school I fell head over heels in love with the prettiest girl I had ever seen. With what people say, I messed up her life too. Now, Thursday this week, March 20^th it, will be 61 years since I spent my first night in bed with her. Yes, we were married and broke a lot of rules to make that happen and no we didn’t have sex the first night. We were so tired with what we went through to get married we fell asleep in each other arms and it was daylight when we woke up. No need to say how happy we were. Why was it so hard getting married? Rule number one in the deep south back then was no dating until you’re past your 16th birthday. Married her at 15 and no we didn’t have sex before we married but she was pregnant at 16. I was a lot older myself at 17 the day we married. No more public school for her. This has been our life now as they say living outside the box all these years. Out here this week at our little house on the Kansas prairie away from our boat we left, in the Caribbean, we have lived on for years it was the Lunar Eclipse. We stayed up and watched it. Quite a site but this was not our first. I think the most romantic eclipse was on our first cursing sailboat. We were anchored in Southport, North Carolina in the Yacht Basin. Sat in the cockpit of our sailboat with no air moving, the water was calm. You could see it happen in the water but what was romantic was watching people holding to each other and making-out onshore. Lots of people came down to the waterfront to see it. Even now with Pam and I getting older making out a little under a full moon eclipse is still special. How have we stayed together all these years; I don’t have a clue. Maybe it has something to do with us always enjoying being together. After the moon eclipse the next night Pam and I were out riding in our old truck on dirt roads out here to watch the moon rise with her seating as close to me as she could like we were dating backing in 1964. With the wind blowing, we were dodging tumbleweeds watching the moon come up. Maybe with us, its life is still good.

Been working hard getting this ready for the Smokey Hill Art competition and exhibition. 

Don’t have a lot of pictures to put in the blog this week but this is the oil on canvas painting I’m presenting to the art contest. Won’t know if it will be selected in the show and if so, will someone want to buy it for a few more weeks. Been selected twice. Remember dreaming again. What a dream now with how we have lived our life if any of it happens. Selling some art. Maybe our book selling a little more.

Our Car Plans. We hope to drive it this summer.

Driving the car when we are out here away from our boat, we are building from plans we drew up from scratch and maybe putting our sailboat we built from our own plans in boat shows when we bring it back to somewhere on the Gulf Coast next year.

Aboard “Pamela Ann”

Anyway, with us being such failures with not finishing high school and not making loads of money to put in the bank what a life it’s been so far.

                                      The Adventure of Life Goes On

More Dreams

As I have put in lots of our blogs Pam, and I stared our life together early. Quitting school and having a baby as teenagers everyone treated us as losers. We worked ourselves into some really good jobs early and set our lives up the way most people live and wanted us to live. House, cars but with us not that happy living the way everyone seemed to want us to. We both dreamed of living a different life. With Pam it was to travel with me it was go to Alaska and build up a little homestead. Live in a log cabin in the wilderness and maybe run a trap line. Oddly enough I’m really good at running a trap line and know how it done. It was my granddaddy on my daddy’s side. I helped him trap when I was growing up on the farm for years. This was not a hobby this was how he made a living. One of my sisters still has all his and my traps in a barrel of oil at her house. My granddaddy on my mother’s side was a really smart man and I told him about my dreams of Alaska. He said, “Dreams can be deceiving once you get there. When you talk, I hear in there somewhere you want more freedom than just having a forty hour a week job you need to make a living for the rest of your life. Be careful what you dream it may be just that. Just a dream. That is a hard way to live up there and you have a kid and a woman that you need to take care of.” He also said, with simple living there is simpler ways to live here. A little later in life we did give up our life working those good jobs. Sold what we could including our house. Brought some land on a large power lake and built the log cabin of my dreams. Was this better than going to Alaska? The dream of going there was still strong but this was doable and going there was not. I will never know how this compares to going there but I know doing this with Pam and I still young with our boy still in school and us only finding work we could do when we needed money was a dream life for us. Not for our family’s and people that knew us. We heard we were living hard and living poor. What did we learn living this way? Building a log cabin Pam still calls a house was a learning experience. Of course, we designed it and with a garage and utility room under the house our first log we laid was eight feet in the air. Remember on a lake no basement. After living there and raising our son there we learned that it’s hard to keep the chinking tight between the logs. Cold windy days made it hard to heat. Now with that in mind we were not in Alaska. Now out here in Kansas we are snowed in. Again. “Our little house on the prairie. The temperature hitting -30F below zero.” Now thinking about dreaming about building a log cabin where it can be dark most of the day and 60 below in Alaska. I think my granddaddy was right. Even if it wasn’t in Alaska in a way, it was a dream, and we did it. Now as for the people that know us know we dreamed of living on a boat. We sold our log cabin and bought a boat we didn’t like that well after we bought it. With the dream of what we wanted we sold that and built the boat of our dreams. Again, designed and built that. Now after all these years of traveling and living on our sailboat and getting older life it’s self will throw you curve balls sometimes. Maybe that’s what happen with us buying this little house out here. It being so cheap near our son out here we bought it. Now this may be bringing changes to our life. Our sailboat has history now, and we are working on it in a boat yard in the Caribbean to bring it up to where (we think) we can bring it back to the US and put it in boat shows. “Part of what is the dream today. Out here we have been doing things that may change our lives again. I said things not just one thing. We wrote a book. Didn’t go well. We’re doing a revised addition. Been somewhat successful with my art doing shows out here. On top off all this when we are out here, I been building a car from scratch. Not just a car but a car Pam and I designed ourselves drawing our own plans. Running gear almost finished building the body next. Now with the dream we have now how to put all this together and make a living with all this we love to do as old as we are. We have written a book and have sold some art but I’m reluctant to call myself a writer or an artist. In the future we may be adding some of this in our blog and giving and update on our progress. Win or lose?

                                      The Adventure of Life Goes On

An owl painting getting ready for an art show.

One of the paintings getting worked on for an art show.

Change of Seasons

Well, here we go again. Pam and I truly love the changing season but being here in Kansas with all this weather we are missing our sailboat in the Caribbean. Cold and snowed in again. We are prepared of it and being snowed in is in a way an adventure.

We had an ice event just before we got the last snow. It sure was pretty.

Being here for Christmas was great. Being in the Caribbean for Christmas like we have before it feels strange with it so hot. Their seasons there is hot and not so hot. Being out of the country even being with newly made friends it doesn’t feel the same. I think it’s the season that makes it feel so strange. We are doing some things here for a few more weeks at our little house out on the prairie before we go back. It cost to fly back to Guatemala where our boat is so we try to do all we can while were here. Most people live in their little world and never think how different other people live. I still hear or read things that are not so nice about the old south in the USA but why are so many people moving there. Out here in Kansas it is a two-sided coin. City and rural. Our little house out on the prairie in in rural Kansas. Cities here are the same as cities anywhere with pockets in the cities that the politicians are going to fix, to get rid of crime and get poor people more money and hand-outs because they can’t work. Now out in the rural parts of Kansas it’s mostly farmland and miles between houses. There are lots more dirt roads than paved roads here. Here in town where our house is the streets are still all dirt. The wildlife here is different from where I was raised in South Carolina. We have seen a squirrel in our yard but they’re rare out here but are everywhere in towns where they can raid bird feeders. Another thing out here with small wildlife is birds of prey. Great horned owls can fly away with a grown chicken. Hawks everywhere. Prairie dogs and badgers. Badgers are not something you want to take out of the wild and make a pet.

Badgers dig holes to find mice and other rodents.

Coyotes are the call of the wild out here for me. Hearing them at night sounds a little scary, lonesome and somehow a connection to the past. Cowboys long ago bedding down for the night out here on the prairie listening to the calls of the night. I have put in our blog before we had a full-grown mountain lion, come out of a field and run down the road in front of us on our old motor bike. That’s an experience you can’t buy and may never happen again. Our son that lives 3 miles away (that is close out here) has barn owls. They’re somewhat rare and chose where they live. Building owl boxes doesn’t mean you will get barn owls. He leaves a little door open so they can get in and out of and old building there in his yard. They don’t fly to that little door and land. They fly in and out through that small door.

Barn owls have been nesting and living in this barn, before and ever since our son brought his little farm out here on the prairie.

Pam says if I was and owl that is how I would do it. What does she know about me? Coming up soon 61 years together and counting.

                                        The Adventure of Life goes On