Gosh, I’d of loved to be there that night with those boys. I really like that last line.

EDDIE’S BOAT RACE

Butte, Montana, is famous for many things, not the least of which was Eddie’s Downtown Midnight Power Boat Race.

Eddie did day work for Randy and Leroy. That summer, he helped them refinish houses. Eddie was mostly labor but he was good at it. They paid him $250 a week, and he had to borrow money on Thursday to make it to the next payday. Eddie bought a lot of beer. At six feet and 260 pounds, he could hold a lot of beer! He hadn’t had a haircut since his sister’s wedding, and his beard looked like the ground side of a bale of hay.

Eddie had a change of heart one night. He decided to cut down on his party life. As therapy he chose to rebuild his boat. For three weeks, he’d go home every night and work on it. It was a seventeen-foot outboard, sleek-lookin’ craft, which he had sitting on sawhorses in his front yard. He stripped and sanded, varnished and patched, rubbed and polished, and tinkered. It was beginning to take shape the night he fell off the wagon.

Leroy had his own boat up at the lake, forty miles away. About 2:00 A.M. on a balmy Friday night, Eddie suggested to Leroy they oughta take a boat ride. He was persistent.

Finally, Leroy said, “Awright, you lunatic! I’ll take you for a boat ride!” But instead of goin’ to the lake, he drove straight to Eddie’s house. Eddie climbed in his boat. He thought it was hilarious! Leroy dropped his thirty-foot chain through the eyebolt on the prow and laced it around his trailer hitch.

“Hit it, Leroy!” yelled Eddie. He thought it was a great joke. He thought that right up until Leroy popped the clutch and jerked the boat off the sawhorses! You could see the whites of Eddie’s eyes!

Down through the garden they went! Tomato vines, chicken wire, and stalks of corn slapping the sides! Eddie was ducking the melons and ears of corn when they wheeled onto the empty street! Rooster tails of mud flew from behind the pickup; fruit tree branches and fence stays sailed in all directions! Eddie had a death grip on the steering wheel as the boat banked and swerved. He was stiff as a hedgerow post, and his lips were frozen in the shape of an O. With his hard hat pulled down and his cutting goggles in place, he looked like a walrus in the Indy 500!

The boat careened at the end of the chain, throwing a shower of gravel off the port side! The city road crew had graded a long strip of gravel and left the extra piled down the middle of the street. By careful driving, Leroy was able to whip Eddie and his crumbling, shattered hull back and forth across the gravel hump.

Splinters, aluminum siding, fiberglass, wire, cans of paint, leaves, dirt, and rocks sprayed like tornado droppings in the wake of Eddie’s speedboat! As the bottom of the boat disintegrated, it filled with gravel and ground to a stop.

Eddie stepped from the shipwreck, shaking. He asked for a Coke and said, “Tie ’er up, boys, before she sinks!”