Rollin on the Mighty Mississippi, Verse 3

Bubba Jack Estes is one perfectionist to a nauseating level, such the consummate artist! Back in '72 he bought an Austin Healey and started out tearin it down to the smallest detail. This, after having placed a 22 foot inboard just outside the back sliding door, so you had to go around a long boat to get to Grummets Body Shop! We all saw the visqueen plastic go up on a wooden frame around a boat, only to see the whole schmeer expanded to include the "Healey".

Grummetts was Jack's workshop for a car he NEVER finished up till 1974, late in the year. Once his parents took off for a long weekend. This is when the Healey engine was torn down and rebuilt on the den floor, the ONLY part of the car that got the Mash style meatball approach to surgery- take it down quick, fix it, slap it back together! EVERYthing else on that car was the most pored over whatever ever made in the universe! Don't think Austin-Healey could've sold a car every Other year, the painstaking attention this re-build got! Jack re-galed us in his ad posters on the walls about his swatch colors- Sunburst black, Pimp Pink and others I can't remember. We'll never forget Grummets!

There was an importer named Billy Mars who knew Jack, and knew he knew his stuff. Offered him 2 grand for the Healey, no questions asked. Thing shifted like a tank. It was built like one! This buggy was made to last! Mercedes Benz should have such a craftsman as Jack Estes. This was one true Artiste!

But like I said, export the import and it was time for the boat! House got sold; boat got moved to the frat house lawn in the back. He finally put it together and sold that one. This is where Ole Man River comes in! Seems the other two, Silver Hair and Beer Man Mike had dads who were Yacht Club members, so the gang half lived down there!

One Spring the Ole Man River was splurging and running all over the place, like he liked to do in the days before Green House gases were melting Santa Claus's digs to where he needed a barge to stay in production. The spring meltdown had the southern end of Mud Island pretty much covered up. Now Mud Island USED to have an airport on it in those days. The I-40 Bridge across Ole Man River was being built at the north end of the runway. In 1973, the airport on Mud Island looked like a sunken aircraft carrier, which it often did at that time of the year! Beer Man Mike Lee, Bubba Jack and I decided to take a ride up the river one Good Friday afternoon and see what the Ole Man was on top of and what we could see. So we took off directly west, across the now underwater portion of Mud Island and proceeded upstream on the Ole Man to the Loosahatchie River. You usually had to go south 300 yards to the mouth of the Memphis harbor.

The boat was a Chris Craft, the infuriating kind to me, because the throttle was mounted in the middle of the steering wheel! "What an inSANE place for a throttle!" I thought. This is the exact same kind of Chris Craft boat shown in the movie "On Golden Pond". It'll get up and GO! If you skied behind this monster you had yourself tensed up before you said, "hit it", because if you didn't, then your arms ever after stopped at your elbows, the rest could be found hanging from the tow rope handle, if at all.

Of course, the Ole Man had the favorite river launching spot, Frayser Boat Ramp under water. We went further upstream on theLoosahatchie, and poked around, seeing who was polluting and what the potion looked like. It was black, and we didn't particularly care for a chemical analysis, we barely had anything like HAZMAT suits on. We concluded we didn't like the smell OR look of it, so we continued on. The engine then proceeded to have some problem, which the guys always knew to anticipate, so a detailed, well-equipped toolbox was always handy. So was a Memphis Yacht Club envelope. Whatever the situation, the repair needed a new gasket to keep fluids inside the water jacket in place, as they went from part to part inside the block. Well, of course, we DIDN'T have the right gasket for the fit, but paper makes a good fit. Jack proceeded to make a cut on the envelope to pale a world-class surgeon to shame, to fit as a gasket for this fitting. Needless to say it got us home that day, and got forgotten, so the next person checking the fitting wondered what the gasket was that had the Yacht Club logo hanging out one side. Later on, you had Permatex! For that one, it was Memphis Yacht Club Stationery! How'd it get THERE?
WE'LL NEVER TELL!

But I can't leave Doug "Silver Hair" Hay out of this. His story concerns his Chris Craft Capri, and the time he launched it and it sank in the new Mud Island marina across and down the way from where the Yacht Club used to be. Seems a wooden boat needs to be watched over VERY carefully when launched after an extended dry dock stay. The wood shrinks back after it dries out. When it's put back in the water, it warps after launching, to fill in the gaps between planks. It takes a week to warp itself completely sealed. The wood just sits there in the water and absorbs water until each plank is tanked, and has no more room to expand to. The guys at the club weren't completely either aware of or sensitive to this situation, and the poor thing had to be winched up out of its watery grave. Norm Fredricksen had a come along attached to the overhead girders in the roof of the marina, and just needed somone to attach the winch to the eyelet on the boat. Yours truly did the honors and the Chrissie was lifted to its proper location, on TOP of the water. Now just get the water out of the engine. 'Nother story.

Research- need you ask?