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Show RFVER "Hey," said Rosie. "Whaf s this shit about us staying here all day? What do you think we are, slaves?" "Yeah," said Julia. "How come we do all the work and you have all the fun?" I didn't have any answer, I just sort of assumed that was the natural order of things. We backed down and took them down to the marina the next day. ft- During our stay at the park band of gypsies moved in, forty or fifty of them A driving shiny new pick-ups and Cadillacs that hauled enormous house trailers. They were real who! nomads made their living doing roofing jobs, on their way from Chicago to Los Angeles. They ranged in age from gnarled, proud patriarchs and long-haired matrons in heavy black dresses down to a horde of jabbering children who could neither stop talking or borrowing stuff from our camp. At night the park throbbed with their music and passionate disputes in fierce Romanian. As the raft took shape, people came from all over to take a look at it: in those days of cheap gas, it was surely worth the ride. Most everybody who stopped to venture an opinion said it would never work. The guys who worked at the marina thought the whole idea was crazy. Dave, the thin, gapped-toothed foreman, told us to have the mess completed by Tuesday. Marv, a mechanic who liked guns and stag movies, made a lot of jokes. Mike, the marina's carpenter, assured us that the raft would never make it. Ray, the youngest of the crew, completed a long inspection and said, "Well, you've sure got a lot more balls than I do." John Adams, after several technical suggestions and some outright orders, finally conceded that the raft would probably do all right and agreed to launch it with his gantry. We hauled out our antique green outboard and couldn't get it to -60- |