Boat sails from past

If you are my older brother Steve, do not read this column. It contains a birthday surprise.

Okay, everybody else, I can let you in on the secret.

More decades ago than I'd like to admit, back when I was about 7 years old, maybe younger, my brother got a toy sailboat.

I have no idea where it came from, but I can assure you that it was - to a 7-year-old kid brother - just about the coolest thing ever.

It was a model of a small fishing boat. It was made of wood and had a single mast with two sails, one of which was attached to a boom that moved when wind caught the sails. Its hull was painted red, with a thin white stripe, then green near the top, closer to the deck.

The surface of the deck had been painted so that it looked like individual planks, and near the mast there was a small, carved lifeboat.

Clearly, it was a model more than a toy. But - in theory at least - it could also be floated on a small pond.

I don't know that Steve ever attempted to sail it. My guess is that it would have capsized pretty quickly.

Mostly, the boat sat on a shelf in the bedroom we shared on Pleasant Street growing up. There, I could stare at it and imagine all sorts of adventures on the high seas. Storms could shake the sails, but my hand would be steady on the tiller as the waves crashed around me.

I could imagine sneaking the model boat out of the house and sailing it myself on some pond or puddle, though it was not mine.

Part of its appeal, in fact, may have been that it was not mine. It was Steve's, and its attraction may have been my childhood introduction to covetousness. It is certainly true that I coveted it.

Kids grow up, and back about 1959 Steve went off to college.

He left the boat behind, and it continued to occupy space in the room we shared.

A few years later, he graduated from college, got married, and moved away to start a family of his own.

The sailboat was left behind. Before long, it was in one of those boxes of childhood stuff that parents never quite know what to do with.

Not too much later, I was moving out on my own as well, leaving behind boxes of my own forgotten childhood detritus to take up space in a closet at my parents' home.

Years passed, but at some point during one of their moves my folks decided it was time for Jack and Steve's junk to find a new home.

A box of my stuff was dropped off during a family visit, and in it - mixed in with things that were undeniably mine - was the boat.

Maybe because I had coveted it so much as a kid, I was uncomfortable with having it. So the box got shunted aside, tucked into a corner of the attic over our garage.

And there it stayed until last week.

We've been working on the garage this summer, after convincing ourselves that with enough organizing and housecleaning we can actually get a car into it this year.

And in the process, I came across Steve's old model sailboat.

It was a little worse for wear. Years of grime covered its deck. The sails looked as if they'd been dipped in tea. The string that was the rigging was falling apart.

But you'd be amazed at what a little dish soap and warm water and elbow grease can do. My plan is to retie the rigging as much as possible. It's a work in progress, but it looks pretty good.

Last week, only a day after I'd cleaned it up, Steve's grandchildren happened to pass through Jay County for a visit.

They got a look at Grandpa's long lost treasure, and I told them that my plan is to send it to Minneapolis in August for Steve's birthday.

After all, he'll be 69, and what 69-year-old wouldn't like a sailboat?[[In-content Ad]]