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