Originally submitted to Motor Boating in the summer of 1944 while the author was a private in the U.S. Army stationed at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, this manuscript was rejected at the time due to paper rationing restricting available pages in issues of wartime magazines.

Though I plan in the bright future to take many a dreamt of cruise in the boat I hope to own, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the cruise in an eleven foot rowboat that my pal Bud French and I took some summers ago. We loaded a conglomerate assembly of duffle that young boys deem necessary and with adventure in our hearts, started rowing our little boat up the broad sun dimpled Fox River.

Our plans, carefully conceived during school study hall hours, were to follow up the Fox River about 25 miles north and explore the large chain of lakes shown there on the map. Our home port was my family’s summer home on the Fox River near the little Bohemian town of Fox River Grove in northern Illinois.

Our boat, the Stubby, was a stout little 11’ punt with lines to steal the heart of any riverman. She was designed by my dad on our kitchen table and built by him in the basement during the long winter evenings. We had a small 4’ x 4’ square sail for her but depended on her two-oar power to get where we planned to go. It turned out that this little sail almost carried us through the whole trip because of favorable winds.

So leaving our parents waving on the pier, we pushed off that bright morning, our boat loaded to the gunnels with tent, bedding, food and all kinds of equipment like telescope. hatchet and the road map (this was our chart) which showed the Fox River as a well defined crinkly blue line. The morning breeze caught our little sail and we were on our way with Bud sitting on the stern seat handling the rudder (an oar) and I comfortably ensconced on the duffle, amidships, eating an orange, watching the cool green shoreline slip by and lulled by the lapping gurgle of our bow wave. This was wonderful. I don’t think any millionaire sipping cocktails on the after deck of his yacht ever felt happier.

Five miles on our way we sighted Basswood Island which is about an acre of solid ground encrusted with basswood trees and surrounded by miles of swamps and bayous. This place has always intrigued me. It’s lonely, uninhabited, yet it has a soothing peaceful beauty about it. Here the swamp creatures live undisturbed and only the rustle of the wind caressing the long grasses and songs of the winged ones break the silence. We had our first meal on the island’s beach. Somehow I was elected cook, but because most of our food came out of cans we managed to stay healthy.

Back into the boat with stomachs full of warm beans and viciously strong coffee, we found the wind now against us so it was row, row, row. We rowed together but the reeded banks crept past too slowly and the wind mischievously blew spray over our flat bow. Bud pulled hard and I pulled harder. The boat went in circles.

“Cut it out!” I yelled.

“You’re doing it yourself,” snapped Bud.

So we took turns rowing until, rounding the next bend we once again had the wind behind us. This was the only time during the trip except on the lakes that we couldn’t use our sail.

We approached Rawson’s bridge (I have always remembered the grass growing on it), and a mile on we came to Jacoby’s. We stopped here for supplies, canned beef and potato salad (a staple on our cruise) and soda pop, also consumed in great quantities. We took leave of this interesting place, hoisted our bedsheet sail and resumed our voyage. The river became narrower and we knew the McHenry dam lay ahead.

Around four o’clock in the afternoon we heard the roar of the waters as they tumbled over the dam that maintained the level of the big lakes many miles beyond. Here was a bone of contention between the lake people and the river people. During the dry summer months the lake people wanted flash boards put on, making it higher to keep the level of their lakes up. Then the river people complained of the resulting shallow river. Many meetings of associations were held over this issue but that is all gone and past now as the state of Illinois has erected a modern concrete dam there which pleases everybody.

Construction on this dam was going on as we approached and it was here that our hearts sank. The boat locks of the old dam on which we were depending to get Stubby through to the lakes were not in operation and a nightmare vision of spending the rest of our trip below the dam struck. The bustling activity and chugging of the steam shovel did not seem to leave any place for two boys and their boat. We thought how easy it would be for the big crane to pick up Stubby and swing her over.

We reconnoitered the situation and then, as the son was low in the west, we made a landing by some willows below the dam, pitched our umbrella tent at the edge of a cornfield and ate supper in silence. If anybody would have looked in that evening, they would have seen two sweating boys feverishly chopping logs from the willows, for we had decided on how to get past the dam. We hoped to use the logs for rollers and roll our boat up the big hill around the dam to the lakes beyond.

That night we slept deeply and the next morning bright and early we carted our cargo around the dam and started our task. We placed roller by roller under Stubby and slowly dragged her along. It was slow work, for although only a small boat, she was built wide and stout and a was good match for two young boys, but in about an hour she was floating in the quiet waters above the dam. We felt pleased that we had overcome this obstacle on our own.

A few miles ahead lay McHenry, and as a morning breeze pushed us on steadily, on the second day of our cruise, we felt pretty good. Bud relaxed, I relaxed, then zoooom, Stubby leapt like a bronco, Bud nearly fell out of the boat and I jerked around to see a speed boat scudding away. This was our first taste of what we could expect from here on as it seems almost everybody from McHenry near the lake runs an inboard runabout.

At noon the big white Bridge of McHenry let us know that we were approaching the first town on our trip (we’ll always recall these towns by their bridges). Feeling elated at making our first port, we docked Stubby at the wharf of the Bunter Boat Company and hurried ashore like sailors long at sea. Only instead of wine and women it was proud postcards sent home to our folks and a restaurant meal. We swaggered around this peaceful little town for a while, then back again in our little craft we unfurled the sail and headed north toward the lakes.

The sun flamed in the sky like a molten ball of brass, the surface of the river lay shiny and still and our makeshift of a sail hung useless so into the locks went the oars and resignedly we prepared to row. Then flitting up the river after us, its dainty footprints ruffling the water came our breeze as it had lost us and seemed glad to catch up again. You can bet we were glad too.

Comfortable again up forward, I leant against the gunnel half asleep when I noticed the span of the Johnsburg bridge moving toward us. We slipped into its cool shadow and passed under when a thunderous roar knocked us out of our stupor, and mud and water showered the boat. For a moment we sat stunned, then looked to see what happened. At one of the bridge bastions near the shore, some construction work was going on and it just happened that as we came by they had set off a charge of dynamite.

We had just recovered our composure from this incident when we lost it again. Two speedboats roaring at us from opposite directions seemed bound to hit us. My mind raced over the rules of the right away. We had it but didn’t feel like claiming it just then so we crouched fearfully in our boat waiting as Stubby was loaded deep. The boat coming up on our stern swept past safely, but the one coming toward us from ahead driven by a girl, started us to thinking of jumping and as she passed by we weren’t ashamed of our thoughts as the spray from her bow wave showered us.

Things were quiet after that until I got an idea. Knowing our thin blankets were no match for the hard ground and noticing a hayfield to port, I decided that here was material for our beds. Much to Bud’s disgust, we pulled in and loaded Stubby with armloads of the dusty dry grass. We looked like a floating hay mow, and Bud began to give vent to his feelings on the subject as the crickets and other insects we’d picked up with the hay began exploring their new mode of transportation and its crew.

Our spirits were lifted when, with a suddenness that thrilled, the lakes spread wide before us and we slipped out of the mouth of the Fox River into Pistakee Lake, the first of the big chain. We felt like Columbus. We rowed now but that didn’t bother as there were too many interesting things to notice. A long double row or buoys led across the lake marking the channel for most of the boat traffic and an almost steady hum of powerful motors came from it as motor boats foamed back and forth. Here all the people on the lake received their mail by water delivery. Mailboxes of the country type where perched on piers and a power launch was the mailman’s transportation. Oh what a joy to be a mailman here.

We perceived on our trusty road map that on the shores of the next lake, Nippersink, the state had built a public camping park, so thinking it would be an ideal place to spend the night we headed across Pistakee Lake toward the narrow channel into Nippersink. Over this channel, which was about a half block long and 25’ wide, passed highway and railroad bridges. Around it clustered boat sales agencies and repair docks. Here were wharfs from which brightly colored excursion launches chugged in and out carrying passengers to view the lotus beds of Grass Lake, the next lake on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a busier spot then this hub of the lakes region. Hotels were everywhere and if anything was going like motor boat races or letting loose of Oscar, the tagged pickerel (the lucky angler who caught him on presenting the tag would get $500 in cash and that much in fishing equipment), it was staged here.

Coming into Nippersink Lake, we pulled over to where supposedly the park was located, but it turned out to be just one of those things on a map, because all we found was a swampy shore of reeds where even a frog would have a hard time of it. This left us in a quandary, perched on top of our hay stack and perturbed by the light rain that had started to fall. We searched the shores with our trusty telescope in vain to find a place to sleep. We never reckoned that such places would be few and far between in an area that had been Chicago’s playground for so many years.

In desperation we rowed towards the junction of Nippersink, Fox and Grassy Lakes. Here we were rewarded by spotting a grassy plot of trees by a swamp and happily headed towards it. As we approached, I jumped out as the water became only ankle deep and started wading towards shore. That was a mistake for after taking a few steps I plunged up to my waist in a deep hole. Bud helped me out and we laughed about it. It wasn’t until later that we were told that two men had been lost on these shores, never to be heard of again for the land was of a boggy and treacherous nature.

We made camp and I spent the rest of the evening in shorts as my clothes dried. Leaning over a can of beans on the fire that evening while Bud was in the tent, I felt a presence of someone behind me and looking around started at seeing someone in this out of the way place. The man and I stared at each other for some seconds, he with a sober expression and in surprise. It seems that we were camped in a private park entered only by fee at the gate. We showed him our boat and told him our story and he turned out to be a pretty good fellow and let us stay there for nothing. We figured he must have made camping trips too when a boy.

Sleeping well that night we awoke to a bright day, but as staying in a resort park was not appealing to us, we set off again to find a better place. While rowing around the lakes, we visited the town of Fox Lake, sent more postcards home and filled up on more ice cream sodas. It was that noon when we came upon the place we had been hoping for. By now back in the first lake again, Pistakee, where a fair sized stream called Nippersink Creek flowed in to it, we found it. On one side of the creek’s mouth was a picnic grove, on the wild side a huge hill lifted its acre wide back to the sky and was completely covered with big oak and chestnut trees. Being almost an island with a swamp cutting it off from the mainland, it was uninhabited save for a few discreet cows, so like long lost sailors, we lugged our duffle up the steep bank to a grassy knoll, pitched the tent, and being so happy about our good fortune, we were afraid it was too good to be true. We found out it was, for a while anyway.

Going to the picnic grounds across the way in quest of an armload of hay from the stack the owner had, provided the information that shook up of our spirits. The proprietor who had just found out one of his cabin guests was a gangster when the police caught up to the criminal, had also been shocked by the fact that two other boys who had been staying in one of his tourist cabins were runaways from Chicago, naturally looked upon us with suspicion. He warned us against staying where we were as the owner who lived right nearby probably wouldn’t like it. This was all frightening to us, we left very much perturbed. Here again, just as we found the spot we’d thought ideal, we were stymied. After exhausting all alternative ideas on where to go, we hit upon the thought, “why not go see this person who ate up little boys?”

So, on finding out that he was a farmer who lived a mile up the creek, we leapt into the Stubby and began churning the waters in our anxiety to get his approval. After climbing endless hills to the farmhouse we came upon him just returning from threshing. We told him our story and almost collapsed with relief when he duly gave his consent. He allowed as he almost forgotten about the place, and his only admonishment was, “Don’t cut down any of the trees.” We unheedingly rushed down to the Stubby in wild elation which proved to be the undoing of the seat of my pants on a barbed wire fence. That night at the fire with the night sounds tip-toeing around us and the frogs singing in the rushes, we finally felt at home.

We spent all of the next day just loafing, making trips across the take to a little store where we stocked up on comic books, bottles of soda pop and a souvenir pennant with ‘Fox Lake’ sewn on in big white letters. That night our complacency was torn apart. Being ignorant about camping lore, we had pitched our tent on the bare knob of the hill. A monster storm came streaking down from the north about 2am and we awoke to find the tent half over, and by the light of our flashlight noticed the rain didn’t even bother to stop at the walls of the tent but seemed to come night through one and out the other. We shivered in pools of water until the gray light of morning dawned and tried to dry our clothes over a feeble fire, resulting in the burning of my socks.

We figured it was high time to head for home, so throwing our duffle into the Stubby, we pushed off and headed out onto Pistakee Lake. The whitecaps pitched and tossed our little boat and we set sail with the grey clouds scudding low over us. Wham! Crack! The wind caught the pathetic square of canvas and snapped the mast at the step. Working quickly, recovered the broken part, set it lower in the step and with human stays in the form of me bracing myself on the boat and leaning back on a line about the upper mast, the Stubby leapt forward like a goaded horse and sped across the lake towards the mouth of Fox River. Swept grandly along at the speed of a small outboard we kept it up until we again hit McHenry.

A warm lunch fixed us up and we were off again. The roar of the water over the dam ahead started us thinking about what method we’d adopt to circumvent it. Naturally this started an argument. As it was only a 4’ drop. Bud wanted to slide the Stubby over, but I being more cautious, hesitated. Finally about after a half hour of mulling around I saw the light and gave in, We unloaded the Stubby, and standing in our bare feet below the dam, gently eased her over We spent the night again in the cornfield, the only mishap being that some butter we’d wrapped and immersed in an empty beer can in the river to keep cool had been pirated by fish.

The next morning we started our last day on the river. The weather was fitting and with the north wind behind us, a bright sun over us and home ahead of us, we were in high spirits. We read the ship’s library of comic books, nibbled piecemeal from the ship’s stores, and our hearts leaped higher and higher as we passed each familiar farm and bridge. It was early afternoon, and as the excursion launch from a resort near our home passed by us, our chests puffed out as the kids on it we knew, pointed us out. Home we came on the last mile of the river past every familiar place with our ‘Fox Lake’ pennant flying proudly at our mast (we hoped everyone was looking!). At five o’clock in the afternoon, seven days after we had left that early morning, the Stubby glided up to her own pier and nuzzled her broad flat nose against the mossy pilings. We were home.