Story Realm Live

Geniuses in the Making

IT has been said that the geniuses of the present stand on the shoulders of giants of the past. The problem for my friend Dick and I is that we couldn’t find a very tall giant to stand on, let alone, sometimes not even having a leg to stand on. This, of course, didn’t slow either of us down any in our attempts to do the impossible or hope to show flashes of genius. Not even the lack of knowledge or experience caused us to falter in an attempt to build most anything we imagined.

Dicks’ dream became our first project. Dick was a sub-teen neighbor boy, who, next to my own brother Russell, was an inseparable friend during my happy childhood years. Our families lived in the apple and fruit orchard country of the Okanagan Valley, 40 miles south of the British Columbia border of Canada. This was a great place for children to grow up! We lived near two very wonderful attractions—open hillsides, and a lake. The lake captivated most of our free summertime. Our first project of the particular summer in mind did focus our attention on the lake. We needed a watercraft to patrol the small lake where we spent the summer swimming and fishing. Dick had somehow come upon the name he wished to give the patrol boat we believed we desperately needed to build. “We must name our battleship the ‘Man of War’,” Dick declared proudly. I stood before Dick speechless. “Amazing”, I thought. I had never heard of such a wonderful idea. I had to be careful with Dick and his wonderful ideas not to show too much admiration. Dick’s ideas, in my opinion, were so good but I just didn’t want him to get too proud.

“Hey, pretty good,” I shouted, having a hard time not sounding too excited. “Wow,” I murmured under my breath. “What a great name for our battle boat!” It was decided to build our ship at Dick’s place. Only later did we realize that we would have to drag our completed ship a quarter of mile from the shipyard at Dick’s, through the orchard where I lived. Then we’d have to continue another half mile from there down the hill. We would drag it through a field of apple trees to the lake where we planned to launch our “Man of War, “ a small oversight, of course, but we happily began to make plans and gather materials. We both agreed that we must have a deck where the captain could stand at command and then some kind of armament to ram other ships, in order to defend ourselves. Dick and I hammered and banged away on our cruzer, as we sometimes called it. We weren’t discouraged by careless remarks made by my brothers or Dicks’ sisters who came by to see what all the noise was about. We attributed these comments to other people not realizing the significance our important enterprise!

The day came when we used up all the boards and nails that we could find. It was time to get our “Man of War” to the lake and christen the war ship. As we tied a rope around the front of our ship, it soon became very obvious that we had made an incredible error in judgment! We could hardly budge our well-armored war ship! We spent part of day grunting and dragging our prize through the orchard to where my family lived. When my mother saw us come past our front-porch area, she came out to see what Dick and her son John were doing.

“What is that thing your boys are dragging?” my mother wanted to know.

“Mother, can’t you see it’s a boat?”

“Strange,” I thought to myself. Some people, even my mother, aren’t good at visualizing something so obvious. “Of course it’s a boat.”

Dick and I pulled our “Man of War” on through our yard area and started down the hill toward the lake, our final destination. At least pulling was much easier going downhill. We quit for the day when we were only a short distance from our goal, the lake water. The dedication of the “Man of War” would take place the next day. Dick were much too bushed to enjoy the ceremony at that moment. Dick had given thought to his dedication speech. He was all set late the next morning when we arrived at the lake ready to launch the “Man of War.” The bank above the water slopes steeply for about 15 feet. Borrowing two wooden prop poles from the orchard and laying them down the bank, we had perfect slide for our lake cruzer to make its way to the water. Dick used a term in speech I wasn’t familiar with—“we bequeath the

‘Man of War’ to the waters she will guard.”

With these words, we pushed the proud creation to the poles sending it on its way to the lake it would be bequeathed to… whatever that meant. I’m not even sure Dick had any idea either, but I must admit I liked the ring of it. The slide worked wonderfully! Our heavily built warship picked up speed and hit the water with a great splash. Dick and I yelled with excitement and our hard work had finally rewarded us. We both watched intently to bounce up and settle on the water’s

surface. This did not happen. To both of our utter amazement, the “Man of War” just kept going and disappeared out of our site beneath the lake waters. As it turned out, never to rise again!

Dick and I stood for a long time staring at the spot where our “Man of War” went under and was now laying on the bottom of the lake she was supposed to guard. Even the bubbles stopped coming to the surface. We turned and walked slowly up through the apple-laden trees. Our warship had sunk without a shot being fired. I spoke first.

“Do you think we used too much armament?” I asked Dick.

After a long pause, Dick responded, “No we just didn’t build a big enough ship.”