Plan B involved a ’67 Johnson

Who goes to antique outboard motor exhibits? Lots of men over 50, in part because of the memories these machines evoke. Photo by David Roper

Last month, in the library of my town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, my friend and neighbor put on a world-class exhibition. Not of books, art or music. But of antique outboard motors – 20 of them. It was an exhibit of the first 50 years of outboards. These antiques were carefully displayed in a manner on par with a traveling exhibit of old masters from the art world. The motors ranged from the single cylinder Evinrude “Model A” Detachable Rowboat Motor, dating back to around 1910, to the beautiful Mercury Mark 15, from 1953. It was fascinating to see how outboards evolved in design, appearance and performance. I was transfixed, studying such motors from the past as Johnson, Elto, Lockwood, Caille, Bendix, Neptune, Flambeau, Martin, Wizard, Elgin and Scott-Atwater.

So who goes to something like this? Just about everybody. Well, everybody over 50. The place was packed. Standing room only. Driving home that night, I thought of the reasons for the enthusiastic attendance. For me, first and foremost, it was because the motors were evocative; and I could see that reflected in the eyes of the viewers, as well. Then I thought of what several outboards evoked from my own past.

One particular motor brought me back to a late summer day in 1960, when Dad and I were walking down the Hingham Yacht Club float toward the little boat we’d built together. We passed a boy about my age struggling to carry his small outboard toward his own skiff. He slipped and fell off the float. In an instant, he was gone. It was low tide, and there was only about four feet of water where he fell. Still, he went under and didn’t come up. Dad got down on his knees and reached under water, felt around, finally grabbed one of his arms, and started to pull him up. “Need help,” Dad said, “he won’t come up.” But just then the small boy shot to the surface and Dad pulled him onto the float. He blinked at us, coughing, while water cascaded off his wet clothes. “You were stuck there underwater somehow,” Dad said finally. “Not stuck,” the little boy said. “I was hanging on and I didn’t want to let go.” He peered down into the muddy water, a devastated look on his shivering face. “My outboard,” he said. “I was hanging onto my outboard down there on the bottom, but when you pulled me up it made me let go. Now it’s gone.” Clearly, to that little boy, who would now be in his 60’s, outboards meant a lot.

That same summer my 5-horse Johnson, of which I was never particularly enamored, began acting up. It had been all my dad could afford for me, though what I wanted and dreamed of owning was an Evinrude Fleetwin 7.5. I remember the first time I ever prayed; it was one night later that summer. I still recall kneeling by my bed, thinking of people in church and in movies in order to visualize the way they prayed, and I mimicked that, certain there was nothing wrong with praying for a Fleetwin 7.5. The prayers worked; my dream came true. In the summers to come, my used Fleetwin 7.5 proved to be truly a great motor.

As a young teen, I remember responding to a double dare from two friends while zooming along in a 13-foot Boston Whaler powered by a Speeditwin 28 Evinrude (a big motor in its day). “Stand up in the bow, no hands, Roper; see if you stay aboard while we spin out at full throttle,” came the dare. I took the bait; friend Robbie whipped the wheel hard to starboard, and the boat spun around. In just two or three seconds, three things happened: 1) I flew through the air; 2) for some odd reason I started laughing while in the air and then while underwater; and 3) I opened my eyes to see a propeller whip by my face. As I swam toward my friends on the fast-returning boat, I no longer felt immortal, having almost been eaten by a Speeditwin 28.

Many years later, during a boat delivery of a 50-foot yawl from Duluth, Minnesota, to Stuart, Florida, my crew and I were in the Erie Canal locking through in a little town called Brockport, in western New York. I was leaning against the bow pulpit, handling the forward line of the big yawl while the water drained from the lock chamber. There was a small sailboat, perhaps 23 feet, just ahead of me. An old man sat on the side of the cuddy cabin and handled his two guiding lines, which hung down from the lock high above. In hand-lettered script on his boat’s transom were the words “Homeward Bound, Auckland”.

“Where you from?” I asked.

“Auckland,” came the reply.

“No, where are you coming from?”

“Town of Erie, Pennsylvania. Used to live there. Lived there for 60-plus years.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Auckland.”

“As in Auckland, New Zealand?”

“That would be the one.”

There was a long pause on my end of the conversation, as you might expect.

“Soooo, how are you getting there?” I asked finally.

“I’m headed there on this boat,” he said proudly. “I don’t know if I’m getting there.”

I think he could sense me wavering about my next comment. He continued. “You see, I’d been sitting alone on this paint-chipped, rotting porch in this rental house for I don’t know how long since retirement, and all I’d been thinking about most of those days was returning to Auckland where I was raised. It’s home, really. It’s still where my heart is.”

I cocked my head at the tiny, far-from-seaworthy sloop and its tired-looking 6 horsepower Johnson outboard. “You think you’ll make it?” I said, finally.

For the first time he smiled. “Don’t have the slightest idea,” he said, adjusting one of the lock lines. “But I figure I have two choices, given my time and financial circumstances. Plan A is to sit on that crummy porch, think that I’m stuck there, and just think about Auckland until I die in that chair. Plan B is to get there or die trying to get there. You’re now witnessing me on the sixth day of Plan B. And you’re witnessing a happy man with a mission.” He looked aft at his faded outboard, lost in thought for a moment. Then he looked back up at me. “A mission with a good outboard, too – it’s a ’67 Johnson,” he said. “So I just might make it.”

Don’t know what happened to the man, or if he ever made it to New Zealand.

But I do know he would have had an even better chance with a Fleetwin 7.5.

Dave Roper’s latest novel, “Rounding the Bend: The Life and Times of Big Red,” was released last June and is available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.