Chapter 14: Rethink

Saturday arrived and the pontoon boats arrived and when Dallas arrived, he nearly exploded, so wild was his excitement and enthusiasm for my purchases. The pontoon boats are ideal for his purpose. Perfect components to create twenty foot wide floating dock systems to moor to the concrete pilings recently constructed on the upstream and downstream sides of the upside down cement boat. They’re quickly ready to tie floating homes to. Just need to cut access doors in the sides of the cement boat. It will enable tying up at least four houseboats or craft the size of mine and Gail’s, one either side of a pontoon dock. Enter the inverted cement boat center pier from the pontooned docks and emerge on shore. I can see it.

I’m glad he likes it, and humbly accept credit for the idea, even though it never before crossed my mind until now. I filled in Dallas on my more immediate intention of getting the six horse trailer across to our side of the river, using the pontoons to raft it across. Dallas offers himself and all his resources, including the strong backs and arms of his Mexican ranch hands to assist in my project.

Right away, Dallas began offering helpful suggestions. Instead of a Tarzan like swing across the river, fetching ashore an inconvenient width of the river distance downstream, why not run a slide cable stretched across the river. Hook the pontoon boats, Dallas called them pulleys, to blocks threaded on the cable. Use a steering oar or rudder to angle the pontoon boats in the current. Using the lift provided by the current, slip across the river either direction. Controlling velocity, to stop or slow down, just angle the pontoons directly into the current or slightly back toward the other side. Dallas claims this is how the old cable ferries worked, before ferries had engines and propellers. How does he know? He researched it, and considered using the technique for traveling between his ranch and Elaine’s farm. If they were positioned directly across the river from each other, he would have set it up. Since they’re not, it’s more convenient and simpler just to paddle up and downstream, back and forth across in his kayak.

He’d also considered bridging the river with a cable suspension foot bridge for walking between their two places. Okay, an interesting concept to Dallas I suppose, but not very applicable to my project. Ungraciously, I confessed that opinion and disinterest. Dallas laughed. He had been so entranced with the notion, he actually bought the cable already. It was very cheap because it’s used elevator cable and caked with grease.

Well used too, at the point of being nearly worn out, I can imagine and said so. Not at all, Dallas assures me. Passenger elevators in skyscrapers have an hours of use limitation in their cable regulations. After so many hours of operation, they must change the cables and long before they’re showing any wear, as a government mandated safety regulation. Dallas has a thousand foot reel of 5/8 inch non-twisting grease coated elevator cable on a huge wooden spool, and he suggests we stretch it across the river as the slide wire. He has my rapt attention and interest. Yeah, now I can see it in my mind’s eye.

Easier and quicker said than done. A lot of heavy equipment and personnel has to be deployed to both sides of the river. It’s a half hours drive between the two properties via highway and bridge. This was what I was trying to avoid, by floating directly across the river.

“Dallas? Dallas! Stop. I appreciate all this effort but wouldn’t it be simpler to put a used axle and tires under that trailer, hook up to it with a truck, and simply tow it around?”

“You’re right, Joey. Let’s go get a mobile home axle and wheels from that trailer scrapping joint we borrowed the trailer frame from, to move the cement boat. You’re welcome to join us Gail? We’ll stop and eat a huge lumberjack breakfast on the way. Suddenly, I’m hungry. All I had was coffee this morning. Okay, everybody, thanks for your help. Back to the ranch’s regular routine chores. Change of plans. Thanks anyway. Okay, let’s go. How much do you want for the pontoon boats, Joey? I’ll reimburse you for time and expense.”

Three grand I said, without thinking. Dallas accepted without hesitation and with a happy grin. Only afterwards, I recalled, three grand was what I paid for everything, including the five hundred dollar horse trailer. The pontoons only set me back twenty five hundred. Should I confess and rebate Dallas the five hundred? Or let it go? My time’s worth something. Dallas said my time and expense.

“You can have the pontoons for twenty five hundred, Dallas. Three grand was stuck in my head as my total out of pocket, and I just remembered, it included five hundred I paid for the horse trailer.”

You don’t screw friends or family. It’s a good way to lose them.

“I was happy with three G’s, Joey. I’m even happier now. With you! Damned straight of you, my friend. I’m glad to have such a pal.”

Gail kissed me and both smiled at me. I feel good, really good about myself, and suddenly have a hungry appetite for a late breakfast.

After stuffing ourselves on breakfasts filling serving platters large enough to carve roasted turkeys on, we arrive at the trailer scrappers.

Parked in front on the shoulder, with a “For Sale” sign, is a new looking shiny waffled stainless steel clad food cart. It’s built on a much shortened mobile home frame, eight and a half feet wide, twenty four feet long, dual axles and fully equipped as a commercial kitchen. Even has a compact toilet room in the rear. Apparently, the scrappers are branching into reconstruction, innovation, and sales.

Twelve grand is the asking price. I’m not interested in buying this one, but I am interested in a custom sized unit equipped to my own specifications. They have catalogs of commercial kitchen appliances.

A sixteen footer, all stainless everything, counters, cupboards, interior walls, a heating curd vat, and several dedicated washing sink stations, plus polyethylene gray water holding tanks, an on demand water heater but no toilet, can be created for me for a tidy nine grand. Just the stainless lined sixteen foot shell, no fixtures or appliances, costs five grand. Something to consider. Maybe have them clad my horse trailer with stainless?

We did get a goose-neck ball hitch installed in the bed of Dallas’ dually one ton truck. The scrappers sell and install hitches now too. We get a pair of eight and a half foot cutdown axles with springs and a set of used tires mounted on rims, enough and more for spares, and then head to Elaine’s place.

To save time, we’re fast running out of day, Dallas called Elaine’s cousin with the wrecker to lift the horse trailer while Elaine welds the axle spring connections to the trailer frame. Elaine apparently has all the necessary farmer’s homestead skills. We finally parked the horse trailer at the riverside end of Dallas’s private recently dozed road, just as the sun was setting. Dallas and Elaine waved to us from across the river, congratulating our safe arrival home. Gail drove Dallas’ truck to tow the trailer back.