When we first bought the dock we lived at and continued to run the resort for a short time. That was pretty short-lived as there was just not enough time to do both. We then rented a couple cabins at Pontiac Lodge to live in. In 1966 we moved a mobile home into the park (where the gray storage building now sits by Just Jackie's). It was very convenient... just a short walk down the hill to work. The bad thing was, it was accessible to the public. During the summer months my brother Dan and I would sleep at the dock in the lounge area of the original office. Fishermen would come in all hours of the night and wake us up for gas or a pack of cigarettes or just for fun.
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| We had an ice machine and freezer in the shed outside for ice for sale. |
Jimmy Buffett always says he has a great summer job. Well, let me tell you, no one had a better summer job than Dan and I back in the late 60's. Everyone wanted to be a beach bum. With Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys knocking out No. 1 hits left and right such as "Help Me Rhonda," "I Get Around," "Good Vibrations," "Surf City," "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena," and "Dead Man's Curve," who wouldn't want to be a beach bum? We ran around all day in cut-offs, barefooted, and half the time without a shirt. Our biggest worry was who was going to get the best tan. And, of course, we were always comparing our hair to see who's hair had turned more bleach blonde from the sun. Our first summer at the dock I was 14 and Dan was 16.
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Old office with lounge area on left side.
Bubble Masters weighing in fish. |
Scuba diving was a big thing in those days, as it still is today. The Bubble Masters were around in the late 60's and were a big presence during the holiday weekends with their spearfishing tournaments. They would have their tournament on Saturday, clean the fish afterwards, and have a big fish fry that night. Dan and I both learned to dive from members of the club. Dan learned in 1965, and I learned in 1967.
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| Divers cleaning fish for fish fry. |
My true love of the water in those days revolved around water skiing. When we first bought the dock it came with a 16-foot Lone Star runabout type aluminum boat with a 30 H.P. Johnson. It was great for pulling a surfboard or a tube but not really enough to pull water skiers. Some time in 1965 or 1966 my dad traded for a 65 H.P. Mercury. Now we had something! Every day when we could get away and had somebody that would drive the boat or ski we were skiing. Dan skied with us some, but two of my best skiing buddies were Jim Kirkland from Gainesville and Skip Callahan from West Plains. Jim was in my brother's class in school and Skip's parents had a boat at the dock.
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| Skip on the left, me on the right. Sometimes we couldn't wait until summer. |
When there was a group of us one of our favorite places to go was Reaper's Island. It is only an island when the lake is really high. It is the point that sticks out straight across from Marker Bluff on the southeast side of the lake. The point was mostly small gravel and didn't really have a lot of brush growing down to the water's edge. One day we had a really big party planned on that point. We were taking our boat, Skip's boat and a lot of other people. Skip and I were going to ski our way out there, and my brother and his girlfriend and another couple were in our boat. They were making a big circle around us when they hit a log and flipped the boat over. No one was hurt badly, but it really put a damper on our party.
It wasn't all fun and games around the dock, though. For the first few years we owned the dock the lake level was good to us, as it ranged from a low elevation of 640 to a high of about 658. That was a good thing - moving the docks was a lot different back then. The docks were all held off the shore with stand pipes and held to the shore with cables. To move the docks out you had to first walk the shore line through all that brush and loosen the cables, then raise the pipes on each corner of the dock, push the dock out and then walk back around and tighten the cables back up. Moving in was a little easier as you could raise the pipes, pull the docks in and then tighten the cables as long as you didn't wait too long and let one of the pipes slip out of its brackets. Then you had a bigger job. To move all the docks would take the three of us most of the day.
In addition, we would carry customer's motors, help them with their gear and help them load and unload when they rented boats. Then on Sunday afternoon we had the arduous task of cleaning all the boats. We had a rack to store the boats on that had a winch on one end of it and a high-pressure gasoline powered pump to wash them out with. It was made much easier on the hot summer days when all you had to do is just dive in and swim around a little to cool off and then get back to work.
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New office. Old office/soon to be shop in the background.
Bubble Masters there again. |
By the end of the sixties, things were changing for us and around the world. Dan graduated from Gainesville High School in May of 1966. He joined the Navy in September and was sent to Vietnam in 1968. He returned when he was discharged in September of 1969. I graduated in 1967 and started college at Mizzou in the fall. I continued to work at the dock throughout my college days in the summers. In 1969 Dad built a new office (now known as the "Dive Shop"). He also took on Mercury Motors, brought in Phil Petars as our mechanic and added a scuba air station.
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| Even though we weren't fully involved at the time it was still "Joe Morgan & Sons" |
Many more stories to come about the marina. Stay tuned.
Written by Cap'n T. Morgan
