On July 1, 1990, a day of boating on the Potomac River nearly turned into disaster.  We were at Fairview Beach, on the Potomac River, about 40 minutes cruising time south of Quantico, Virginia.

Our boat was a 19‘ center console fiberglass SEA SQUIRT, with a 115 HP Mercury Outboard and a 10 HP Mercury kicker.

Terry, our sons, Joey age 6, and Mark age 4, and I were swimming.  We were at anchor, tied to a 24’ cabin cruiser belonging to our friends, John and Diana Long.  The boys were swimming and playing with Diana and their dogs.

We had been there about an hour when a storm warning was broadcast.  I immediately got the boys back in the boat, untied and headed back to Quantico.  I didn’t want anything to do with a thunderstorm on the water.

The Potomac was glassy and flat.  We joked that it was the calm before the storm.  I opened the throttle and we skimmed along at about forty-five miles per hour.  The boys had frequently asked how fast the boat would go, so I seized the moment and showed them.  After a few minutes I slowed back to cruising speed of about twenty-four miles per hour.  I wanted to conserve fuel and avoid frightening the boys.

About 15 minutes south of Quantico it started to rain and hail.  The sky was getting dark, we were not going to beat the storm.  I followed the example of a boat ahead of us and turned east, out of the channel, toward the Maryland shore.

A lot of boats were taking shelter in the same cove, Wades Bay.  It was too crowded for my liking so I went south about a quarter of a mile to avoid the many boats and anchor lines.  I didn’t get a good look at the shore near our position but it looked like red clay bluffs going straight into rocky water…not too hospitable.

About 400 yards from shore I turned west, into a rising wind, and slowly made headway against the waves to maintain control of the boat.  I decided to ride the storm out there.  We were out of options.  It was getting rough so Terry put on a life jacket.  The boys, as always, were wearing theirs.

In retrospect, I should have run the boat up on the beach.

Within a few seconds the wind came up hard, blowing the tops off the waves.  Rain and hail grew intense and the waves began breaking like ocean surf.  The waves quickly rose higher than my head as I stood at the console.  The sky blackened, and lightning began a constant barrage.  Between the flashes, the air was a very dark, thick grey-green.

Visibility dropped to about ten feet.  I could hardly see the bow through the darkness and blowing water.  It was a struggle to keep the boat headed into the waves.  With the roar of the wind, and the constant thunder, we had to shout to be heard.  Somewhere in the course of things Terry handed me a life jacket; I didn’t have time to fasten it.  I could barely see.  Terry gave me some swimming goggles so I could see into the wind.  They blew off.

Terry yelled for me to turn on the bilge pump; it was already on.  She yelled something about bailing.  I looked back and saw the ice chest float out of the back of the swamped boat.  The engine drowned.  We were going over.

I grabbed Mark as a big wave broke over the boat, turning us broadside.  Terry was holding both Joey and Mark and we inadvertently had the upright aluminum support of the Bimini top within our grasp of the boys.  The top was badly wind damaged.

The next wave rolled the boat.  As we went over Terry and I were trying to get the boys out of the boat.  We were concerned that someone would get tangled in the top.  I kept yelling to her that I had Mark; I could see that she had Joey.  She couldn’t hear me.  As the wave turned us over, we went under and down with the boat.  I pulled Mark out of her grasp and to the surface with me.

I was relieved to see that Terry came up with Joey.  Terry was frantic, she thought she had lost Mark.  She almost let go of Joe to go down looking for Mark.

After a brief eternity, Terry saw Mark and I.  Things were happening fast.  I kept yelling “stay with the boat” but it never surfaced.  I swam as hard as I could to get Mark and me over to Terry and Joey.  The storm was violent; I knew if I couldn’t assemble us immediately, I never would.  By the time we were huddled together and rolling under the next wave, I was physically spent.  I desperately needed to rest and regain some strength.

I couldn’t believe the boat was gone.  In retrospect,  we were lucky.  If we had been with it, the waves would probably have thrown several tons of boat and water on top of us.

The speed and violence of the storm was astounding.  I believe only two to three minutes elapsed from the time the rain began, until the boat went over.  I was exhausted; Mark and I were in real danger of drowning.

Terry and the boys had their lifejackets on securely but mine was not fastened.  I was holding onto the belt of Joey’s life jacket with one hand and Terry with the other.  Terry was holding onto the boys.  Mark was holding my face against his chest with his legs under my arms.  His feet were pushing my life jacket behind me, which negated much of the vest’s floatation.  Luckily, he had on a new life jacket that was designed to hold children that were fifty pounds heavier that he weighed; that helped a lot.  The waves grew larger and kept breaking over us.  We were under water most of the time.

Mark was taking on a lot of water and I was having trouble getting air.  We were huddled together, which gave us some added buoyancy.  I wanted to let go of everyone and try to fasten my vest but I wasn’t sure we could stay together if I did.  I knew that if we gave up, or made a single mistake, we would surely drown.  I needed to conserve strength as much as possible.

A full, six gallon fuel tank; floated within my reach.  It was unorthodox, but offered buoyancy.  I grabbed it and put it under Mark.  With the gas tank supporting him, I was finally able to keep my head out of the water between waves and get enough air.  Later a seat cushion floated by, I caught it and replaced the gas can with it.  Several more life jackets eventually drifted within reach and we retrieved them for extra flotation.  I began to believe that we had a chance of surviving.

As the waves continued to grow and break over us; we held together, and drifted, conserving strength.  I knew that panic would kill us, and kept verbally minimizing our predicament. Terry and the boys held up well.

It was forever before the worst of the storm passed.  Visibility slowly improved.  The waves were still huge, but turned to swells and stopped breaking over us.  At one point I felt something under my feet and thought it was the boat.  Terry felt the same thing, she said it was slimy, maybe an old tree trunk.

As the water calmed, I began to touch the bottom between waves; and was eventually able to walk.  I could barely see the shore through the mist.  I was concerned that the waves would pound us into the rocks and cliff.  Luck was with us, there was a narrow rocky beach between the water and a high vertical bluff.

Terry had lost her glasses and her shoes.  She could neither walk nor see well.  I left Joey with her, walked Mark up to the shore, left him in a safe place and then made the same trip with Joey and Terry.  Our gear littered the shore.  I found the ice chest and a waterproof bag containing dry clothing, and towels.

We bundled up the boys and sat them on the ice chest at the base of the bluff to shelter them from the rain.  I began looking for a way out.  The bluffs were too high to climb with Terry and the boys.  The rocky beach petered out into water against the bluff on both sides of us.  We were not sure what condition the boys were in but they seemed of sound mind and body.  Terry and I were exhausted but ok.

As the storm dissipated, a boat became visible offshore.  I waved the life jackets in hopes of getting their attention.  I thought they didn’t see us.  They did, but their anchor was hung-up in the rocks.  They finally cut the line, picked us up; and took us to Quantico.  They had watched us go down and were determined to find us once the storm passed.

On the way back, Joey and Mark huddled together down in the cabin.  Terry and I sat in the stern savoring the rest and the breeze.  It was over.  We had survived.

It was a miracle.  The magnitude of the storm was apparent everywhere.  Two of the large motor boats that had been anchored in Wades Bay, about fifty feet and sixty-five feet in length respectively; had been blown up on the beach about a mile from where we wrecked.  It looked like their bottoms were badly damaged and they were a remarkable distance from the water’s edge.

When we arrived at the Quantico Marina, it was a mess.  We learned that many boats on the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay were capsized and a lot more were damaged.  The staff told us the storm winds at the Marina blew between 50 and 80 miles per hour.  The Harbor Master opined this was one of the worst storms he had ever seen at Quantico.

It seemed like years since we had left Fairview Beach.  John and Diana’s boat was not in their slip.  We had lost our keys and waited for them in hopes they were ok and could take us home.  I wondered if they were in trouble and had not been as lucky as we were.   Finally, I saw them coming up-river.  John was hunched over the wheel and looked like hell.  Diana was sitting behind him looking dazed.  They too, had been through an ordeal.

John had big rope burns on both of his hands, a finger that looked broken and ribs he thought were broken.  He had been standing halfway out of the bow hatch trying to set the anchor when it hit.  He held on, half out of the hatch, through much of the storm; wrapped in the anchor line.  Diana was shaken but ok.

Diana took Terry and the boys home.  John took me back to look for the boat.  As we approached Wades Bay we could see there were several boats.   The Maryland Natural Resource Police, Coast Guard and a Virginia Game Warden near where we had wrecked.  I could hear them on the radio saying that they had just righted a boat and had not found the bodies.  I got on the radio and let them know it was my boat and that I was inbound to their position.

One of the Maryland State Officers brought his boat alongside and took me aboard.  John went back to Quantico to tend to his boat and wait for me.  The Officers were ecstatic to learn that we had all survived.  They had found children’s clothes, my wallet, keys,  FBI Credentials and revolver.  With the wrecked boat and gear scattered along a half-mile of shoreline; they believed we were probably drowned.

The boat was badly damaged.  The hull was repairable but the railing, console, engines and electronics were destroyed.

The Officers were great and could not do enough.  They retrieved the boat from the Coast Guard, which was already towing it away.  Several of them waded along the shore with me and helped salvage our scattered gear.  We recovered very nearly everything.

They towed the boat back to Quantico; where we could fill out the accident reports.  John was waiting at the Harbor Master’s office.  It took about an hour to finish the reports.  I thought John was going to get sick when I told the Officer that I had no casualty insurance on the boat.

When we were finished, the Officer volunteered to tow the boat around the point, to the boat ramp, where my pickup was parked.  Diana had returned with some dry clothes for me.  John and Diana drove my truck and boat trailer to the ramp.

I rode in the boat, to steer it back to the ramp.  It was full of water and riding low.  I found myself relishing a cool, calm evening.  The sunset was beautiful and the world was at peace.  I couldn’t believe we had survived.

Neither Terry nor I slept that night.  We held onto the boys and each other for weeks; giving thanks for our survival.

To this day, we still savor the little things, the family things; that are so easily taken for granted.

“Technology” is the word of our era.  We rarely read a newspaper, magazine or watch a newscast without being bombarded with the word.  Future academics will probably refer to this period of earth’s development as the ‘Technologic Epoch.’  It will be identified by archaeologists as a thick band of plastic and other toxic waste clearly visible in the strata of the earth.

The philosophical controversy as to whether technology betters or worsens the human condition, intrigues me.  There are any number of causes that favor a simple existence.  Many of them are indicted, quite ignorantly, in the press as anti-technology.

It is not uncommon to hear the assertion that much of humanity is technophobic.  Just because a culture embraces certain technologies and rejects others does not mean they prefer to live without technology.

The Amish come to mind.  The height of modern technology, for them, is focused in the agrarian era.  Despite their resistance to “English,” ways, their hand tools, buggies, and construction techniques are the acme of pre-industrial technology.  They have even improved their technologies with modern materials.  We outsiders ignorantly label them technophobes; they have simply embraced a level of technology that suits them, and might well enable them to survive the rest of us.

Then there is the fringe.  Take the example of Theodore Kaczynsky, a.k.a. the “Unibomber.”  He railed against industrialism, modern technology, and God knows who and what else.  Yet he embraced the highly technological manual typewriter to write his manifesto.  He also developed his own sophisticated technology for making improvised anti-personnel explosive devices. Technological serial homicide in defiance of technology.  He was a psychopath camouflaged as a technophobe.

Most of humanity craves the luxuries technology provides.  Safe, fresh food; clean water; shelter; health care and medicine; efficient transportation; and entertainment.  What’s not to like?  None the less, we go too far in our expectations and applications of technology.  Two of humanity’s primary attributes are addiction and excess.

Mankind developed an appetite for technology with the stone age.  We define rudimentary intelligence as the ability to identify problems and make tools to solve those problems.  The fact that new technologies often manifest themselves as weapons has added an evolutionary imperative to the equation.  Cultures who embrace cutting edge technologies often use them first to make weapons.  Stone slings, bronze and iron swords eventually evolved into nuclear weapons.

A healthy skepticism of technology is a good thing.  We have all come to learn that there is a lot of ‘bad science’ asserted to sell us stuff or beliefs.  Pure research is almost a thing of the past, if it ever existed.  Universities depend on grants to fund research.  We are bombarded with conflicting research conclusions.  The health benefits of caffeine and coffee are a case in point.  The coffee drinking public has developed whiplash trying to keep up with the latest academic verdict as to whether coffee is harmful or not.  The public is not stupid.  We have learned to ascertain who funded the study.

Big Pharma invested billions in cholesterol reducing drugs.  After they found drugs to do the trick, they funded studies that concluded previously established cholesterol levels were too high.  What was a normal level for an adult in the 1980’s is now considered at risk of death or stroke if we do not medicate ourselves to levels unattainable without drugs.

What about the controversy over healthy food?  Vitamins?  Obesity?  There are privately funded university studies that support damn near anything, as long as the money is there.  How much money did the tobacco industry spend in the 20th century trying to convince us that smoking was not harmful?

Technology is not a deity, though we tend to regard it as such.  It is a human endeavor and is subject to all of the fallibilities of human behavior.  We should assess it with healthy level of skepticism as we embrace our personal computers, tablets, and smart phones.

I love pickup trucks.  They have personality, attitude and are a hell of a lot more loyal than a horse!  Most vehicles convey the personality of their owner; pickups also have their own individual nature.  I’ve never met one that I didn’t like.  Trucks I thought I didn’t like, were actually a reflection of my regard for their owner.

You learn a lot about a guy, or gal, when you look at their pickup; beginning with the fact that they actually drive one.  Some people baby their trucks and lavish them with gifts.  Others neglect them, never clean them or change the oil, beat them up; and are rewarded with loyalty they do not deserve.

I’m not much for bumper stickers but one of my favorites says “Silly Boys, trucks are for girls.”  When I met my wife, she had an old rusted-out International Harvester that she took away from her dad.  We sold it for almost nothing when we moved from California to Tennessee.  She still pines for “Old Red.”

I learned to drive at age 9, on my Dad’s 1954 Willys Pickup.  It was a 4 cylinder, 4WD with a three speed stick-shift.  It was worn out when he bought it circa1961 and was not reliable.  It never left us stranded but we limped in on baling wire more than once.  If duct tape had been around then we probably would have kept it running a couple of years longer.  I have missed it every day since Dad got rid of it.

My first pickup was a 1952 International Harvester long bed.  It had a flat six and a four speed transmission.  I bought it in 1976 from my childhood neighbor, George Kirov; he was too old to drive and it had not been driven for a long time.  He probably bought it surplus from the Forest Service in the mid ’50’s.  It was brush-painted Forest Service Green.  I put in a new 6 volt battery and away it went.  Had to replace all the belts, hoses and tires before I took it out of town.  It was a great truck.  Top speed was about 50 and the windows were so sand pitted that you could barely see when the sun was wrong.  The brakes were good, as long as you had a ton or less of cargo, usually firewood.  The engine and transmission were bullet-proof.  In a moment of weakness, I gave it to my brother David.  He PROVED it was bullet-proof and I never forgave him for it.  That’s another story for another day.

Some people accessorize and pamper their trucks like rich men pamper their daughters.  Others never change the oil and drive them into the ground.  I guess I am somewhere in the mid-range.  My sons would say that I am a bit obsessive with maintenance.  Tires are my biggest concern; then general cleanliness.  My truck doesn’t have to be spotless but it needs to be reasonably clean.  They aren’t waste baskets or storage units.

I had a new tire, on a new vehicle, blow out at a very in-opportune time.  Left front tire was a 2 ply nylon rated at 4ply.  Had about 400 miles on the tire when it blew.  I spun through the median and three lanes of heavy traffic without hitting anything or rolling.  Pucker factor 9.  I have driven steel belted radials, preferably Michelin, since.  I replace them about 5000 miles before they are technically worn out.  No re-caps.  Haven’t had a tire problem, other than road hazards, since.

No single truck-bed configuration is optimal.  Ladder racks, caps, campers, headache racks, tonneau covers or stock; they all have their advantages and limitations as to what you can do. I would lean to a “swiss army” configuration if I could.  However, I have to consider how it looks to the neighbors and my wife.

Outfitting is critical.  A basic set of tools, a good jack, tow chain, tire chains, shovel and ice scraper are the minimum.  I generally add another 800 lbs. of supplemental gear as dictated by my destination.  I rarely need the stuff, but when shit happens… I’m ready.  When I really get serious, I add a chain saw and a torch to the kit; along with three days food and water.

The simple pleasures of life are the sweetest.  One of my favorite things is to load up the truck on an early morning with the dog, grand-dog, and my wife; we go to McDonalds for coffee and sausage biscuits.