A Gain and a Loss

In 1983 after a couple seasons as our water patrol, Norman was going to be transferred to Smithville Lake just outside of Kansas City. It was not exactly what he was hoping for. He came to me and asked for a job. He said, "I'll do anything for little or nothing... just so I don't have to go to Smithville." So, I hired him. Norman was my first full-time employee.

Later that year Dad became very ill. He had been battling a blood disorder for some time and had to have multiple blood transfusions. In September his doctor made arrangements for him to be sent to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He spent the last few weeks of his life there. Mom was there the entire time. Dan and I spent the last three weeks there. At one point an infection in his right hand got so bad they amputated it. He said, "I guess I will have to learn how to eat left-handed." He lost his battle on October 21, 1983, just 10 days before his 70th birthday. Thankfully, before he got sick he was able to enjoy a few years of retirement.

Joe Morgan

I remember one of the few (if not the only) vacation Mom and Dad took.  It was right after Johnna and I had moved home to Pontiac. They took a driving trip out east. While they were gone there was a bad storm, and we had considerable damage to the docks. We all agreed that we could handle it and make the repairs and decided to not tell them so they could enjoy their well-deserved time off.  When they returned home they said they knew something was fishy, as every time they called the dock all of us were there working!

After Mom and Dad retired I spent the first five years as owner/manager trying to convince people they did not need to talk to Joe when they had a problem. They could talk to me. After all, I was in charge now. (Ha.) I was having a hard time getting the respect I thought I deserved. I learned a valuable lesson from Dad. Respect is not something you inherit, can pass down, or can buy. You have to earn it. I think about Dad often... about his work ethic, his good nature, his belief that the customer was always right, and that he knew the difference between right and wrong. He most certainly had my respect. I think he would be pleased if he could see that his granddaughter is in charge now. She probably spent her first five years here trying to convince customers they did not need to talk to me when they had a problem. After all, she is in charge now, and she has most certainly has earned my respect.

Jabet at the 2012 St. Louis Boat & Sport Show

Written by Cap'n T Morgan

Jet Powered

Wet Bikes, Surf Jets and WaveRrunners. We've tried them all. In 1983 we had 26 rental boats and 12 motors, which included a ski boat and one or two pontoons. Jet powered personal watercraft were becoming a rage on the lake so I jumped on the bandwagon. We started with two Wet Bikes. They were the coolest thing to ride. It was like riding a motorcycle on the water. The big problem was that you had to idle all the way out to the no wake buoys, and they were kind of like riding a barrel until you got going fast. Most people would fall off a few times before clearing the no wake zone. And, quite often they would have them flooded with water before they ever took off. But, man, would they rent. And at $10 per hour they paid themselves off in less than two seasons.

After a couple years of wrestling the bikes, we sold them and bought what I thought would be much less maintenance... Surf Jets. Manual start and you could hardly flood them - and they were fun to ride as well.

Norman Eubank was the most skilled on the new Surf Jets. He could stand on his head while riding along. I'm sure I had a picture to prove it, but I think the only one is on the bar at just Jackie's.

One of the biggest issues when renting these toys was whenever we rented two at once, they would invariably run into each other. A classic example... brother Dan and I had been working on a waterline project, and when we finished I said, "I know how we can cool off. Let's take out the Surf Jets and knock the ticks off." Well, I was lying down on one, making a sharp turn. The water was splashing me in the face, and I did not see that Dan's had died and he was trying to start it. When I leveled out and could see it was too late; he was right in front of me. I hit him broadside. When I came up my leg felt like I had broken it. He said he was okay, but the throttle tether was torn off of his, so we climbed on, and I towed him in. On the way in he asked, "What are we doing out here?" I sped on in. He and I both ended up going to the emergency room. He had a concussion, and I just had a bad bruise. We didn't have any ticks on us though. Mom and Dad were sitting at the boat ramp watching us when it happened.

We next tried Wave Runners. They were probably the most successful. Very easy to ride and held up well except when you run into one another.

We get calls all the time from folks looking for JetSki and wave runner rentals. Unfortunately, I don't see any jet powered personal watercraft rentals in our future, as insurance is almost impossible to find. However, I'm guessing the fourth generation will catch us in a weak moment some day soon and we will have one again. But only one.

Written by Cap'n T. Morgan

The Breakwater

With the docks turned perpendicular to the shoreline, it was much easier to maintain the docks, but the ones on the outside were left very vulnerable to the wind. We had tried building an uncovered pontoon dock with sheets of steel hanging from the side as a breakwater dock, but the waves were continually causing structural problems with the dock. There were some exotic and very expensive concrete ones going in at Lake of the Ozarks, but we couldn't afford one of those. I contacted the Corps of Engineers, and they sent me some information on a study done by Goodyear on floating tire breakwaters... all pretty much built from salvage materials.

Phil Petars, our mechanic, was like the "King of Salvage" in the area. He started saving scrap tires. Whenever he was by a tire shop and saw a pile of old tires he would pick them up. Quite often they would pay him to haul them off. He piled tires along the driveway into his house until there was no room left. I got some used short pieces of cable from my Springfield connection and a bunch of used cable clamps, and we were in business.

We built the breakwater in 8-foot wide by 30-foot long sections on Phil's big homemade flat bed trailer. Phil,  Dad and I worked all winter weaving together eight rows of tires with 5/8" cable, and by the spring of 1982 we had completed a 300-foot long breakwater!

The remaining floating tire breakwater.

Of course, anything put together with steel cable and placed in the water is not going to last forever. We have had to rebuild the breakwater twice since that original one was built. What a labor intensive project that is. The last time we rebuilt it we used stainless steel cable--hoping that would last longer--but no one told us, including the dock builders, that you can't use galvanized clamps on stainless cable. Those two metals don't do well together when placed in the water. We have since replaced all the bad clamps, and in 2012 we removed a portion of the tire breakwater that was bad and replaced it with the first phase of the future breakwater: a floating steel breakwater dock.

The breakwater dock; aka the "600 dock."

The 600 dock is currently used for nightly dock rentals so as the demand for additional nightly slips increases we will extend the dock to replace more tire sections.

Written by Cap'n T. Morgan

The Early Dock Hands

In the beginning we didn't have the money to hire much help, so I worked most of the hours myself. We were open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. in those days. My dad would spell me occasionally. Some of the early dock hands included Dan Schultz, Larry Schultz--or "Fish," as we called him--and the first third-generation Morgan dock employee, Brad, my nephew and Dan's oldest son.

On October 24, 1979, the first addition to our family (and soon-to-be dock hand) came along; Jabet was born. She was named after one of Johnna's sorority sisters at Mizzou, who Johnna still stays in touch with today.

Jabet Lee at age 5 months.

We decided Pontiac Boat Dock needed a logo. We scratched our heads for an idea, and Guy Resch, owner of the Galley at the time, came up with a good one:

Without much help, I found moving the docks to be nearly impossible. With Dad and Dan's help, it would take all day. With no help it would take me several days. I was forced to come up with a better idea. I found a salvage dealer in Springfield that had used elevator cable for sale. One day he called me and said he might have something I would be interested in. He had gotten in a bunch of old window washer scaffold winches. I bought a few and tried them out. I ended up buying all he had for about $25 each. Those winches are still in use and doing a great job on all the wooden docks. I took the older one-sided docks and put them back-to-back and anchored them with 55-gallon drums of concrete and those winches. The dock moving went from taking several days to just a few hours. It was a good thing and good timing, because the lake went as high as 680 in the summer of 1979.

The dock on the far left was made up of two one-sided docks that I put back-to-back. One was the old breakwater dock and the other had been situated across the cove below one of the old sets of abandoned steps. The dock on the far right was also made up of two of the original one-sided docks that used to run along the shore.

One of the many winches used to anchor the docks still today.

On April 8, 1981, Norman Eubank showed up in Pontiac as our new Missouri Water Patrol. Our current water patrol, Mike Cochran, told me he had asked for a little help, so they sent Norman. The reason I remember the date so well was that our second child, Caldwell, was born that day.

Does this guy look old enough to be a water patrol? :)

Timothy Caldwell at age 4 months.

Our lunches at the boat dock were about the best ever back then... for Norman and me, anyway. There was always a big school of crappie hanging around the fish cleaning table, so Norman would take a few minnows and catch what we needed for lunch. Since he was in uniform, I would clean them. We had a "Fry Daddy" behind the counter that we'd use to fry them up for lunch. There's nothing better than very fresh Crappie fried for lunch. Sometimes when it was all gone, we'd look at each other and say, "Yeah, I could eat a couple more." So, we'd repeat the process until we got full or busy. Note to current dock hands: Don't get any ideas. :)

Written by Cap'n T. Morgan