Well, in 1968, Ray Pillow and myself learned a hard lesson about boat handling and water levels. Pillow and I had several shows together that year, heading up Interstate 40, and riding together to save travel expenses and share the driving. We kept crossing over this beautiful river on I-40, about 8 times in just a few miles as the river twisted and turned through the Tennessee hills. I said, "Pillow, we need to get us a boat and float that thing, it's probably full of fish!" Pillow answered, "Hell, you don't even know the name of the dang river." "Well, Pillow, let's watch the next bridge and get the name." In about a mile, here came another bridge, with Pillow driving wide open, I just barely got the name as we flew past...."Caney Fork!"...Well, we went on and toured with our little songs, entertaining the friends and neighbors, in various honky tonks, theaters, high school gyms and an outdoor park every now and then. Back home I called him up and said, "Let's go buy us a boat to float the Caney Fork." We headed to WalMart and bought the cheapest flat bottomed aluminum boat that we could find, a couple of paddles and some rope to tie the thing into the back of my station wagon. We headed up I-40 and found a Rest Stop on the River and pulled in and parked the car and unloaded the new boat, dragging it to the waters edge. When we got to the water, we noticed that it was really high and rolling like a freight train over the rocky river bottom, we figured it must have rained somewhere upstream, but we did not have any idea where upstream was since we had not checked it out on a map, just out our car windows. Man, that current is fierce, but, not being scared of nothing, we got the boat in and headed downstream, figuring it would probably take us about a couplt of hours to get down to the last bridge where we had left Pillow's car, shoot, it must have been 5 miles at least. When the boat hit the current, we took off like a rocket...I mean that boat was cutting through the water like a speed boat, but without a motor. Hey, there goes the first bridge, dig your oar in Pillow, dang it, help me steer this thing...whoops there goes the second bridge...the third coming up like a flash...."Pillow, we got to steer this thing over to the shallow water and get control of it..dig in, son, dig in".....about three miles downstream we finally got the boat over out of the strong current and I grabbed a tree to hold the boat. Looking up on the steep river bank, I realized that we were just below the area where we had spotted a big cave from the highway as we were passing one time. "Pillow, grab that tree in front and let's tie this thing up, and go explore that cave!" The trees were half submerged in the high water so we easily tied up the front and back of the boat with our new rope. Climbing out, we headed up the cliff face, climbing toward the cave we could just barely see from our vantage point. Took us about 30 minutes to climb to the cave, we went in and really had a good hour of exploring the very large limestone cave. We finally had enough and started climbing back down to where we had left the boat. Took us another 30 minutes to climb back down, and when we got to ground zero...Lo and Behold...our boat was hanging about 5 foot up in the tree! How is that possible? My gosh the water has dropped drastically in the two hours we had been gone...I never heard of such a thing! Well, we climbed up in the sycamores and untied the boat and lowered it down to the now shallow water, just shaking our heads in wonder. There wasn't enough current now to float a leaf down the river..so we had to dig in and paddle for a couple of hours to get to Pillow's car. A Great Mystery Of Nature! Course, if we had not been such dumb hillbillies, and just looked at a map of Tennessee, contrary to our self belief that we knew everything there was to know about everything, if we had simply looked at a map we would have noticed that the Caney Fork River, about 6 miles upstream and out of sight of the interstate behind a couple of mountains, pours out of Center Hill Dam, when they open the gates to heavy discharge of water. When we had put the boat in the water, the Corp of Engineers Dam guys or gals, had pulled the handle and opened the Gates wide open, causing a deluge of water downstream. While we were in the cave exploring, the same guys or gals, shut the lever off, just like shutting the water off in a bathtub...not leaving hardly enough water to float a rubber ducky. Lesson: When embarking on feats of great adventure, put aside pride, put aside the false belief that you know everything and look at a dang map....it could keep you from being up a tree without a paddle! And that, boys and girls, is todays lesson in living. stan
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