Don't Be Daft. It's a Raft.

Sometimes putting red lipstick on a pig really does work.

“Hey, look at this,” my little brother Larry said, pointing to something in the damp, tall, wild grass.

It was the summer of 1969, and I was out with a posse of brothers and sisters, and a pile of the Thompson kids, our summer lake friends. We had been walking barefoot in the woods behind our Detroit Lakes cottage.

We gathered around Larry to discover a section of plywood mostly hidden by long blades of green grass that laid across the wood. The wooden piece was further camouflaged by darting and dancing dollops of warm sunlight and cool shadows that filtered through the breezy canopy of deciduous trees surrounding us.

“Wow,” I said, peering closely. It was a 6-foot by 6-foot piece of plywood reinforced by three 6-foot lengths of 2x4s securely bolted across the top of the plywood. I swatted mindlessly yet victoriously at a gnat flying by my ear. “What do you think it is, and how did it get here?”

“There’s all kinds of stuff out here because my grandma has an old dump out here,” Mary Thompson said with a shrug.

“Doesn’t make sense that this is for the dump. The wood is new and hasn’t been here that long. And besides, Grandma’s dump is over in that direction,” Mary’s older sister Cathy replied, pointing outside the woods toward a grassy swamp. Cathy chewed intelligently on a blade of grass; she reminded me of a female Tom Sawyer.

“Yeah, we know about your grandma’s dump, and our grandma said we’re not supposed to go anywhere near it,” my little sister Connie bursted out.

“Yeah. Grandma said there may be quicksand in it,” I added apprehensively.

Grandma Stoa had cautioned us many times about the dangers of rivers, swamps, and quicksand.

My over-the-top worry of the waterways—funny, lakes were not scary—made me almost unable to watch old Tarzan movies because of the quicksand that Johnny Weissmuller either had to save himself or others from.

“What’s quicksand?” Mary asked.

“Grandma says it’s when water moves through sand and causes you to sink in it,” I said, horrifying myself. With wide eyes, I wordlessly envisioned a Tarzan foe sinking, struggling, sinking, until the only thing left was the poor guy’s pith helmet floating in the quicksand.

“And if water flows through mud, then it’s called quick mud,” gulped Connie in a hushed tone, breaking my trance. Obviously, Connie was a disciple of Grandma Stoa’s fluid phobia.

“Quicksand? Are you kidding?” Cathy said with a laugh, flinging her blade of grass like a cigarette to the ground. “There’s nothing down there, but mosquitos, and old tractors and junk.”

“That’s another reason why we can’t go near your grandma’s dump,” my older brother Danny said, stepping in to take the heat off Connie and me for slinging quick aspersions about their grandma’s swampy dump.

“My parents said we could step on a rusty nail and get lockjaw,” he continued.

“Well, that may be true,” Cathy said with a smile at Danny. They were the same age, and that summer were beginning to have a Leave it to Beaver Wally Cleaver and Mary Ellen Rogers style crush on each other.

“Hey last week I cut my foot open on something rusty,” Clifford offered, flashing a big dimpled, dirty smile.

“Oh my gosh, you should have seen the blood and mud running all over his foot,” Mary added excitedly with her own dimpled grin.

“Yeah, it was really neat. The blood was mixed with grass and rocks,” Clifford continued, nudging Larry with his shoulder. “Mom had to take me to the emergency room.”

“Really?” Larry asked in awe. His mouth hung open leaving his own dimples at half-mast. Same as his shorts.

“Yes, really. And because the little goof never wears shoes, the doctor said Clifford’s feet were tougher than leather. The doc had the worst time stitching Clifford’s cut up,” Cathy added, shaking her head.

Larry happily saw past Cathy’s disdain, but struggled to see through the grime on Clifford’s foot that buried Clifford’s treasured scar.

I did not attempt to inspect our summer friend’s filthy foot. My focus was on the wooden slab laying before my own grass-stained feet.

“This would make a neat fort,” I said. “Let’s carry it down to the cottage.”

“Don’t be a dope. You can’t make a fort with one wall,” Danny said, swinging his hand as if to dismiss me and my idea.

“Okay. Well then maybe it’s a raft,” Mary said.

“Yeah, that’s right! It’s a raft,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s a raft for sure,” Connie said. “Let’s get it home.”

Wally and Mary Ellen looked at each other and then shrugged their shoulders realizing they couldn’t ignore a pack of beavers chomping at the bit over a newly found slab of wood.

“Oh all right,” Danny said. “Everybody grab a side. Jon, you just watch and follow, okay?”

Our four-year-old, youngest brother Jon just grinned and did as he was told.

The piece of wood was surprisingly heavy, but our ragtag team lugged the riffraff raft through the woods toward our cottage.

After about 20 yards of trudging, my foot slipped into a grassy hole. I fell down and dropped my end of the wood, bringing the team to a sudden halt. A little embarrassed, I joined the group in laughing at my clumsiness. Danny was less amused. To him, I was delaying the work that he didn’t really believe in and wanted to be done with.

“Come on Judi. Get up so we can get going,” he ordered.

I did as he said and stood up. Immediately I heard buzzing around my head. The buzzing was much more strident sounding than that of a pesky gnat or hungry mosquito. Then everyone heard the intense buzzing around their heads.

I looked down where my butt had nestled moments before. In the mashed down grass, I spotted a gray ball-like mound with a big hole in it from which bumble bees were now escaping. I had sat in a beehive and hatched a swarm!

“Bees!” I yelled and swiped my hands around my head and Jon’s head.

“Bees?” others intoned questioningly. But almost immediately, the hot buzzing around them informed them that I had broken into a nest.

I grabbed Jon’s hand, and towing him behind me, I ran toward a trail to make a quicker exit from the area. Connie, Larry, Clifford, and Mary followed, but Danny and Cathy stood their ground and laughed at our histrionics.

Amazingly, all of us skedaddled out of the woods without a sting, except for poor dawdling Danny who was needled numerous times. That afternoon when he swelled up, threw up, and temped up, Mom took him into the same Detroit Lakes emergency room in which Clifford had stepped his filthy foot in the week before.

The next afternoon, Connie, Larry, Monica, and I furtively made our way back to the spot in the woods where we had dropped our slab of wood, next to the vacated, bombed-out beehive. We picked up the wood and hauled it the rest of the way to our lake shore.

At our urging, Grandpa and Grandma Stoa came out to look over our new raft. Our oldest brother Teddy joined Danny in coming down too, even though still stinging from his previous day’s mistake, Danny made it clear he wanted nothing to do with that stupid hunk of wood.

“This is not a seaworthy craft,” Grandpa chuckled. “My guess is that some carpenter discarded it as an unusable scrap of wood.”

Grandma watched the smiles and enthusiasm drain from our faces.

“Oh Ted, don’t you remember being a kid at the lake?” she asked my grandpa in a chastising tone. “Of course, it’s a raft. They just can’t take it out any farther than the end of the dock. Now kids, go get an oar from our boathouse.”

We scampered to the boathouse to do as she said. Grandma shot a glare that muted her husband’s dubious look. Ever the artist, she added confidently, “And you know, it will look more like a raft if you give it a good coat of paint. Kids, while you’re in the boathouse, grab the can of red paint and a paintbrush.”

“Yeah, Grandma yeah,” Connie, Larry, Monica and I whooped, before reappearing in the doorway carrying an old rowboat oar and a gallon can partially filled with red marine paint.

Grandpa knew when he was outnumbered. He turned to his lieutenants in command.

“Come on sonnies,” he said to Teddy and Danny. “We men have more important and reasonable things to do. Let’s go up to the cottage and listen to the Twins game on the radio.”

Grandpa and the boys marched back up to the cottage, while Grandma’s little army stood at attention around her, waiting for further orders.

“Now, carefully lean the raft against the boathouse. Judi and Connie, you two have the honors of painting it. Remember how I’ve taught you to hold the paintbrush and dip it in the can. Be careful not to get paint on yourselves, your brothers and sisters or the boathouse. The rest of you watch and learn because there will be other projects where you will get a chance to paint,” Grandma instructed.

After Connie and I finished painting under Grandma’s tutelage, she said, “Alright dearies. That’s a fine job. Now, all of you, go up to the cottage and clean yourself up before dinner. We’ll give this a chance to dry overnight.”

“Grandma, can we just try it out now?” I asked.

“Pleazzze,” Larry implored.

“Please?” Monica asked sweetly.

“Yeah,” Angie said.

“Yeah,” Jon repeated.

Connie said nothing as she was trying to clean her fingers, but only managed to smear more red paint on her hands.

“Hold your horses. Now I just said your raft has to dry overnight,” Grandma said. “Your mom and I don’t want to be scrubbing red paint off the bottoms of 12 feet.”

“Probably 16 feet if you count a couple of Thompsons,” I said with a grin.

“Well, their mother or grandmother can clean their feet. But in any case, nobody is stepping foot on that raft until tomorrow. Now high tail it up to the cottage. I have to help your mother make dinner,” Grandma said and swished the air with her long arms as if to push us all in the direction of the cottage.

The next morning, I awoke early and heard old and young snores throughout the cottage so I was quiet as I swapped out my jammies for my swim suit.

“Connie,” I whispered. “Get up. Let’s try out the raft.”

“Mmmmhhaa,” she grumbled and rubbed her eyes.

“Can I go too?” Monica asked.

“Sure,” I said. I knew I needed help dragging the raft from the side of the boathouse into the water.

“Judi, put a shirt on. Your sunburn will get worse if you start out this early in just your swimsuit,” Mom whispered as I walked by Mom and Dad asleep in the front room.

(Asleep in the front room? It was Grand Central Station in our two-bedroom cottage with eight kids and a set of grandparents; Mom and Dad were relegated to an old couch trundle bed in the front room each night. Didn’t you spill out at the seams when your family stayed at the lake?)

“Yes, Mom,” I said and slinked back into the bedroom. I grabbed my favorite red and white hand-me-down shirt I had gotten from my cousins’ Paul and Randy. It would match our raft perfectly.

Mary Thompson ran down the hill to join us. It seemed she awoke early every day and just waited outside our cottage for one or more of us to emerge.

We dragged the raft to the shore.

“I’ll go first to test it,” I said authoritatively as the oldest in the group.

“Remember, Grandma said not to go past the end of the dock,” Connie warned.

“I know, I know.”

I placed one foot on the raft and pushed off from the shore with my other foot, using the oar to push as well.

An inch of water rolled across the top of the raft, but I stayed afloat if I stood in the middle of the raft.

“It floats,” Monica exclaimed.

“Sure it does. I knew it would,” I said watching the water lap over my toes.

“Okay, our turn to get on,” Connie said and all three climbed aboard.

Their edge of the slab of wood promptly sunk to the bottom of the lake. I curled my toes onto a 2x4 to keep from falling into the water.

“Whoa. I guess it’s a one-person raft,” I said, expecting the others to agree and disembark, leaving me to float around.

“Or maybe it’s a bench that we can sit on in the water,” Mary offered.

“Yeah, that’s it. It’s a bench for the water,” Connie agreed.

“Jeez,” I said. “I think it’s a one-person raft.”

“Not right now,” Connie said with a laugh and refused to get off.

Seeing I was out voted, I used the oar to keep my balance on my end of the slab, fort, raft, bench.

Soon other Stoas awoke and jumped on our bandwagon. It quickly became clear it was no longer a raft or a bench. We had invented a new wooden underwater dance floor.

And our oar made a dandy guitar.

My life lesson from those magical summer days?

For a fun life, be creative. Be open to change. And if you ever sit in a hive, be fast.