"You bought what?" whooped my usually tiny-voiced mother, who kept the family budget balanced to the last penny. "You bought an airplane engine? Let me get this straight. You bought an airplane engine and propeller, but no airplane, right?"
Dad stroked his chin. "Yup. A beauty, too. Sixty-five horsepower Lycoming engine. It's on a boat. Boat needs some work, though. It's called an airboat, Lucy. You're gonna love it. It's a flat-bottomed boat. We'll be able to cruise the backwaters of Rock River and fish in five or six inches of water."
Mom shook her head and muttered something about preferring to hook her fish at the local Piggly Wiggly.
That was the summer of 1955.
Imagine a boat so flat on the bottom it could fly across deep river waters or skim across wet grass. Imagine a boat so noisy that it could scare whole schools of fish into instant retreat . . .or so quiet you could hear a tadpole flip out of the water ten feet away. A boat so versatile that in the winter one could attach runners to the bottom and blast across a frozen body of water toward an ice fishing hole.
Well, I didn't have to imagine it. I grew up with it. The Beast , as we sometimes called the airboat, was built from a little of this and a little of that. Bits and pieces. Old junk, new paint. Discards and treasures.
A few days after Dad introduced his new acquisition to Mom, he came home with two wide seats that he had unbolted from an abandoned school bus in the junkyard.
"Seats are in great shape!" he beamed to Mother. "Red leather. Not a hole or a scratch on 'em. I just have to cut 'em down a bit so they're not quite so tall. One's a two-seater, the other's a three-seater. The airboat will easily hold five people across."
Mother said something encouraging like, "Be still, my fluttering heart."
Dad spent the next few months getting the fourteen-foot-long, six-foot-wide, boxy-looking boat into shape. He built two large four-foot-tall rudders on the back end, telling Mom that two rudders would be much better than one because with two rudders the airflow from the propeller would provide a full blast of air with which to direct the boat.
Mother just nodded, probably figuring that his stint as a fighter pilot during World War II had left her husband with permanent airplane engine mania.
Next, Dad rebuilt the hull with all new oak framing and half-inch marine plywood on the bottom and sides. The front was bent up in a streamlined shape so there'd be very little drag. He covered the hull with fiberglass. A slick machine, without a doubt.
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