Monty and his Party Boat

 

Some time  in our high school days, late 1950s, my friend Monty decided to build a cabin with Lake Allatoona as frontage.  How we got the materials to build the cabin are several long boring stories I will not bore you with, besides I’m not sure if the statue of limitations has ran out yet.

Monty picked a place for the cabin in a little cove just before the Boy Scout property began.  He said the cove  had the longest view of the lake.

He did all he was suppose to do, he thought.  I think one could lease the land for 99 years either from the Army Corps of Engineers or Georgia Power, I forgot which.  I think there was a stipulation you must live on the leased land at least one day per month.

So, we hauled the materials up there, it took many trips.  Monty and other friends did the nailing and digging.  I know I know nothing about building, so I was a gopher.

I remember we got the cement blocks base laid in balanced harmony and had par of the frame up when WHAM!  One day we got thee and the Army Corps of Engineers ordered for it to be torn down.  The lot it was built on land lower than Lake Allatoona’s highest mark..

We had to tear it down.

But being resourceful like Monty is, he decided to take the lumber and build a houseboat.

He took the boards and made what looked like a large floor.  I forgot how he did it, but underneath the large floor were frames about the same width and height as a 55 gallon drums.  On a cold Thanksgiving we stripped down to our jockey shorts and pried one 55 gallon drum at a time under the big floor or platform.  In the water,  once a drum is placed it is floating so it can’t go down, and cannot so sideways or forward because a board would be blocking it.

It seems like it took 18 55 gallon drums.  Again, I won’t bore you with where the drums came from.

Sometime or another we, via the water, floated the platform around the bend to Victoria Landing.  They had electrical  power sources. 

Monty built a cabin that was shaped like a pup tent.  It had a loft for sleeping and counter to cook.  Not bad.

Then he changed it to what looked like a regular weekend fishing  houseboat.

One time on Easter morning a bunch of us went swimming (in our underwear) and got drunk and visited some friends’ parents, who we did not know were having an Easter Party on their Boathouse and we crashed into the boathouse damaging it.

At work that Monday morning I was telling a friend that worked the same place about the swimming, the drunkenness', and the crash into the boathouse and she said, “Rock!  Didn’t you freeze your balls off?”  I thought one co-worker, a deacon would choke on his donut.

I do not remember why but Monty decided to change the house boat from looking like a giant pup tent to looking like a floating camp, but we did.

Bubba Johnson liked what we did and decided he and his friends would do the same.  They built the floating platform  and built the frame.  And decided to have a party to celebrate the frame looking so perfect.  I was not there that day, but this is what I heard.  They were all drunk, sitting on the rafters and all.  They started singing anti-religious songs.  Mike was the leader of the songs.  One girl told mike to stop singing bad songs about Jesus because something bad would happen to him.  He sung louder.  Then thunder and lightening came and somehow the frames began folding like dominoes and fell into the lake  Several kids fell in too. 

The girls said something like, “Mike!  I warned you!”

No reply.

Mike?

No reply.

Where is Mike?

Then they heard his whispering voice:  “Help me.”

Only Mike’s arms were sticking out of the pile of lumber.  Everybody jumped in and drug him out of he water.  He was rushed to the hospital.  He had a punctured lung.  He lived.