We were on the Barren River in Kentucky. It was Thanksgiving Day and it was snowing lightly.
I was standing astride a steel-and-concrete mushroom-shaped anchor, balanced atop a rectangle of Styrofoam the size of a king-sized bed. There were two of us riding anchors, pulled by a johnboat into the deepest area of water.
The thick steel cable attached to the anchor would allow the boat marina to be winched in or out according to the river level. Our crew had a single wetsuit. I had ridden an anchor before, my coworker hadn’t. He got the protective suit.
There wasn’t much wind, but the steady pace of the boat made the cold air feel breezy enough. I was in a tee shirt, swimming suit, and tennis shoes – which would protect me from the elements only if I went in the water. No bulky warm coat to get waterlogged and drag me to the river bottom.
Once the boat had pulled the cable taut, I was to count to three and the two of us were to simultaneously roll our anchors off the Styrofoam, then leap down on the rafts as they popped up from the release of the weight. I sounded off: ONE! TWO!
At which point my buddy pushed his anchor.
Before the word ‘three’ could get out of my mouth, the weight of his sinking anchor began to drag my raft backward. Between the two mushrooms was perhaps twenty-five feet of steel cable. His anchor reached that depth in nothing flat and began dragging mine down, jerking it free of the Styrofoam, which shot into the air like a missile. I went the other direction.
When I surfaced, I looked back, expecting my coworker to be in the frigid water with me. He was kneeling on his flotation, reaching out to drag me from the water.
Me: Could have used that wet suit…
Him: Should have stayed on your foam.
The marina anchors were not set exactly according to the blueprints, but they tested fine later. I got the rest of Thanksgiving off, to try to get warm again.
That weekend, one of the locals let it slip that he was driving in to Bowling Green, a sixty mile beer-run from the dry-county forest in which we were working.
I hitched a ride and persuaded the driver to find a music store, where I bought a guitar to keep me company in the evenings. I was eighteen and had not developed any sort of taste for beer at all.
Today, a customer asked about the guitar, which is propped on a stand near the cash register. He wanted to know the story behind it and I just explained I’d had it for years and – although I have several other guitars – it is the most comfortable. He left and I did the math out of curiosity.
It was forty years ago at Thanksgiving I took a brief swim in the Barren River, and came away from that weekend with a long-term musical friend.
