Mr Anderson's New Houseboat.

When I was a growing up, I loved spending summers down at our lake house nestled deep in the Ozarks right along Norfolk Lake between the Missouri and the Arkansas border. There was always lots of things for us kids to do like swimming, boating, water skiing, pitching horse shoes, bike riding, fishing and jet skiing. 

Aside from all those actives, we also played with the other kids who’s parents elected to spend their summers down on the lake. There were so many kids coming in and out of our lake house, my mom always kept the refrigerator stocked with lunch meats and cokes. She never knew who or how many kids she would be feeding everyday at lunch. 

My father didn’t mind driving three hours each way to work during summers for he loved the place just as much as we kids did. 

But as we got older, the place began to get boring and we mostly went down there every other weekend if at all. But I didn’t mind going from time to time with my parents because I enjoyed taking our little motor boat out on the lake so I could do some fishing. 

It wasn’t two months after I first got my driver license when my dad asked me to drive down and winterize the place for the season. Labor Day was always the final weekend and after that, everyone just seemed to disappear until the following summer. 

Winterizing meant putting antifreeze in the pipes, turning off the gas, boarding up all the windows and pulling our boat out of the water and putting it into the shed. I often helped my dad winterize place which took the two of us about a half a day to complete. 

Given it was just going to be me this time, I figured it would take about a full day to complete all the tasks. So, the following Thursday after Labor Day , I decided I would drive down in the morning, spend most the day winterizing the place, stay the night and drive back on Friday so I could be home in time for the weekend. I wanted to enjoy the last two weekends with my friends before school started a week from the following Monday. 

At first, my mom was opposed to the idea of me driving down by myself. But my dad reminded her that both my two older brothers had done it when they were my age and they never had problem, so why would I? My dad told my mom he was going to lend his cell phone to me if she was all that worried about me making the trip by myself. 

On the drive down, my mom must have called every twenty minutes to make sure I was OK. For some reason she always worried about me far more than she ever did any of my brothers or sisters. I don’t know why , but she did. I guess mother’s intuition lead her to believe that I was different or “special” in some way from the rest of my siblings. And when I pulled up to our lake house, the first thing my mom made me do was call her to let her know that I gotten there safely for our lake house was out of cell phone range. 

No sooner did I phone my mom and got her off pins and needles, when I started on all the chores ahead of me. It was still hotter than hell with temperatures near close to 100 degrees. I peeled off my shirt & blue jeans and threw on some shorts and sandals. I always went shirtless around the lake and I don’t think I ever wore a pair of shoes. If I wasn’t wearing sandals, I went barefoot. 

I was about 5’8, 130 lbs. with dark brown hair and baby blue eyes from what everyone would always tell me. Two of my teachers once told me in front of a group of girls at a pep-rally (as they all giggled) that I had the cutest and most adorable baby face they had ever seen. While these kind of complements bugged me, I kind of appreciated the fact that people found me to be such an attractive person. I even overheard my grandparents once tell my folks that I definitely was the one in the family who got the best of their combined looks. 

Once I added antifreeze in the pipes and turned off all the gas, I went into the shed and broke out all the window panes so I could board the place up. I got delayed about an hour and a half because I ran out of nails and had to drive into town to purchase more. Once I had finally gotten all the windows boarded, I went down to our dock and drove our little outboard fishing boat about 300 yards down to the ramp so I could pull it out of the water and onto our trailer. After I secured the boat to the trailer, I walked back to our house so I could get my jeep and tow the boat back to our shed. 

On the walk back along the shoreline, a huge and beautiful brand spanking new houseboat was just then pulling up to the private boat dock alongside the Anderson’s lake house. The Anderson’s were long time neighbors although they were quite a number of years younger than my parents. Their lake house was about 75 yards down from ours. They had two kids (a boy and girl) who were a about four and five years younger than me. But we all use to hang out together when we were growing up during summers at the lake. 

Two things had happened to the Anderson’s in he last year. According to my dad, Mr. Anderson had recently inherited about five million dollars from a deceased uncle. And, he and his wife recently got divorced. In fact, it had been the first summer where I hadn’t see Mrs. Anderson around the lake. 

When I looked a little closer, I could see Mr. Anderson driving the houseboat. I waved at him and he waved back. I walked over to the dock cause I figured he might need some help tying his boat up. Just as he approached the dock, he stopped the boat and threw me a line. Slowly he guided the boat up alongside the dock while I tied it down. 

No sooner did he jump off when he asked full of excitement, “How do you like my new houseboat, Jeffery?”

I could tell he was happier than a kid who just collected a huge bag full of candy on Halloween night. 

I remarked that I loved it. It was much bigger and modern than his old one. When I asked when he got it, he informed me that he had just picked it up at the marina across the lake. He added that the boat was a close-out sale and that he got both a super price on it from the dealer as well as a great trade-in value on his old boat. Of course I agreed to let him give me a quick tour because it was obvious that he wanted show it off. 

The boat was huge inside! It was 110 feet long and almost 18 feet wide. It could sleep at least 10 people easily, had it’s own kitchen, living room and even two separate bathrooms with a bathtub and shower. There were four sleeping areas--two nice size bedrooms up front, one in the middle and two couches that opened in the den. The boat also had a sleeping area in the hull of the ship up towards the bow. 

In addition to all those features, the boat was equipped with two engines, two separate generators and could be driven from the bottom or top decks. The galley kitchen of course was equipped with its own refrigerator, oven, dishwasher and there was even a grill at the back of the stern out on the patio-deck. Aside from all those features, the boat was outfitted with a satellite dish which provided TV, computer and even telephone service. Certainly , it was one of the most impressive private boats I had ever seen. 

As we were talking about his new boat, Mr. Anderson informed me that he was going to take it over to Grover’s Pond and do some fishing later that evening, spend the night on it and then do some fishing early the next morning. I had fished at Grover’s Pond many times for Mr. Anderson use to take all us kids there over the years on his old houseboat.

When he learned that I was going to spend the night in our house by myself after I put our boat away, he insisted that I come along with him. He promised that he would drop me back off in the morning right after we fished so I could get started on my drive back home. 

Well, I was reluctant because I hadn’t planned on getting off schedule. But he promised if I went along, he would even cook me one of his famous T-bone steaks. Of course the T-bone sounded a hell of lot better than the hamburger I was planning on having for dinner that evening over at the marina. 

After some more arm tugging, I finally agreed to go along. I knew Mr. Anderson wanted some company, especially since he had his brand new spanking houseboat and wanted to share it with someone. Besides, I really didn’t want to spend the night in our boarded up house anyway and didn’t mind fishing one more time before summer’s end.

Mr. Anderson knew that I like fishing because he always use to see me out in our little motor boat with my line in the water. And I was always willing to go fishing on his old houseboat whenever us kids got invited.

There was something else too. For some reason, Mr. Anderson often paid me more attention than he did any of the other kids--even his own kids at times. He always made sure I had the best fishing spot on the boat, or he would brag about the fish I caught to everyone, or when we would all get together for a BBQ, he would say something like , “Jeffery, I am cooking this special piece of chicken just for you, or try a bite of this steak which is the most tender piece”. 

And he always called me “ Jeffery” when everyone else just referred to me as, “Jeff”. 

I never thought much about all the special attention he paid me because I was so young at the time. And besides, he was a married man with children and 20 years my senior almost to the day. His birthday was on July 5th and mine, the 6th. Our families would celebrate our birthdays together either at their place or ours. 

Mr. Anderson wasn’t a bad looking guy at all for a man his age. In fact he was still kind of boyish appearing for a man on the backside of his thirties. And he kept himself in perfect shape too. He was about 5’10 , slender build, short brown wheat hair and hazel eyes. He possessed very nice hairy masculine legs and always dressed in preppy docker shorts. Like everyone else at the lake, he either wore leather sandals or went barefoot. 

After Mr. Anderson helped me put our boat in the shed, I phoned my mom and told her about the new boat Mr. Anderson bought, and that I was going to go fishing with him that night and early the next morning. For some reason I didn’t think my mom would feel comfortable with me spending the night on the boat with Mr. Anderson by myself even though he was a long time family friend , so I told her that his kids were with him. 

I added that I would phone her just before I left in the morning, but if she needed to get a hold of me, she could reach me on the satellite phone Mr. Anderson had installed on his boat. My mom always felt better and could sleep at night knowing that I was only a phone call away.

Late that afternoon, we packed his boat up with groceries, soda, beer, ice, fishing equipment and all kinds of other items from his lake house and headed out to Grover’s Pond which was about 16 miles away. The trip took about two hours because houseboats only go 8-12 miles an hour and Mr. Anderson didn’t want to run the engines at full throttle until they were broken in.