Where did you grow up?

Grew up in the Little Timber Creek, a tributary of the Delaware River in the small town of Brooklawn, NJ across from Phila, PA. Nearly every day until age 16 ended somewhere around "the crick".

Started in Baltimore, have been growing up in 50 or so other places up to now. The growing up isn't over yet, and it looks like the places to grow up isn't over yet either.

Vancouver Island, BC. 100 acre farm with waterfront and a mountain behind.
If not at the beach, in a boat, on a raft or an "outrigger" made from drift logs
then it was the fields or mountain with a gun (oops, did I say a bad word?).

Ted

Born and raised in Santa Monica, California. My dad and I fished (small aluminum boat with oars) in a marsh south of town in the mid to late 1950s. The marsh later was dedicated in the mid 1960s as Marina Del Rey. By that time we were fishing offshore Santa Monica and north to Malibu. Those were good times; the population of California was "only" 11 million! The population is now about 38 million and growing.

Wifey B: I'm just amazed at the near unanimity of TF'ers living on the water or very close from a young age. Plus you have to sort of dismiss my hubby and me as we're not true trawler owners and I like to go fast. For the trawler owner, however you define it, there sure is a consistent pattern from childhood.

Durban, South Africa.

Born and raised in Southeaster Mass, Taunton, spent my summers, weekends on the water. My father's passion was harpoon sword fishing. Started when I was six. Went everywhere with him even the local bars. Learned to sail a Beetle Cat, and run an outboard skiff. Always had a boat, got my Master ticket in 1980,still have. My Dad and me built a great relationship on the water. He taught me about boats and fishing and some about living.


John

Finger Lakes area of New York.

dhays, I have a sailing Minto!

Kansas, my brothers and friends all swam and fished in creeks, ponds around home and on vacations the Missouri ozarks. When I got older I discovered the county state lakes and corp lakes within a few hours drive for fishing and swimming. After getting married we built a house on a private lake in a rural area and about every weekend I'ld be out in a jon boat fishing. Our 1st family boat was a 21' StarCraft day cruiser we trailered. We then bought a 2455 Bayliner express cruiser and rented a slip at the a 12,000 acre Corp lake, we spent every weekend on that Bayliner and loved it. That is how my addiction started.


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BandB said:

Wifey B: I'm just amazed at the near unanimity of TF'ers living on the water or very close from a young age. Plus you have to sort of dismiss my hubby and me as we're not true trawler owners and I like to go fast. For the trawler owner, however you define it, there sure is a consistent pattern from childhood.

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I think many here are not "true" trawler owners ("trawler" in this case meaning a promotional gimmick-name that romanticizes pleasure boating to the boat-buying public; expressly applied by advertisers to displacement-hull pleasure cruisers). But, rather like you and me... I see many planing hulls on TF that can get up on top of the water and gain speed way beyond hull speed. Some faster than others... but... all able to well exceed displacement style "hull speed"

MOF - I don't know of one "true" trawler (i.e., an outfitted commercial fishing boat) that is on this site.

Our Tollycraft is a "pleasure cruiser"... from its birth to its death.

To follow this thread's intent: I was born in Freeport LI, NY; on the water often. Family moved to Pittsburg for short period. Came back on LI to Woodmere. Moved to N. Merrick; on the water more than often. Spent time in and out of NY City and Queens/Kew-Gardens with family members. In Maine by my 17th year; Camden on Penobscot Bay. The rest is still evolving history!

Never plan to grow up!

For me it was the Pacific Northwest. My dad built us a 30 foot power boat (they called them cabin cruisers back then) when I was about 9 years old. We would leave the day school let out for the summer, and return just in time to buy new school cloths for the coming year. My grandparents also had a boat and we would cruise together, the San Juan Islands and BC. We had the mail transferred to Friday Harbor so depending on how long the ice lasted in the ice box, dictated when we went to town.
At about age 12, I made a deal with mom and dad that if I made enough money to buy a outboard, they would pay for a boat. So dad and I built a 14 foot ski boat and I bought a used 25 hp.outboard. We towed that all over the place and met lots of girls.
Mom and my sister played the accordion and I played the drums, so we often would start playing on the dock after dinner. ( snare drum only) Soon everyone from the dock was singing along. We didn't have a very fancy boat (home made), it wasn't very fast (flathead Ford car engine), not very well equipped( we had a compass and a lead line) and not very many amenities( I don't even think it had a shower) but we had the best time ever. Sometimes you don't realize how lucky you are.

Eastern Montana - I was an adult before I saw a large boat up close. Horses from that country don't know how to step over a trickle of water ( no joke ) they jump or bunch up & go to buck'n. I was on sailboat 3 years ago. Bought Cool Water after 27 yrs in the Army. I still do a lot of cowboy'g.

Northern Spy said:

Finger Lakes area of New York.

dhays, I have a sailing Minto!

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Post a pick when you can. I have heard that a builder in Olympia has acquired the molds and is starting to make them. I was 5 years old when my folks bought it. It was one of the 300 or so boats that Ed Hoppen built at the EDDON boat works in Gig Harbor until he sold the molds to Ranger Boats sometime in the 60s I think. The EDDON Boats Mintos were not as uniform in construction as the Ranger versions, but were highly sought after.

The Minto was all the boat they could afford. It was a used dinghy from a larger boat purchased from a next door neighbor. They only were able to buy a larger sailing dinghy when that same neighbor convinced him to take over the Tacoma area dealership for a startup boat company in Kent, WA, the Clark Boat Company.

Russell Clifton said:

For me it was the Pacific Northwest. My dad built us a 30 foot power boat (they called them cabin cruisers back then) when I was about 9 years old. We would leave the day school let out for the summer, and return just in time to buy new school cloths for the coming year. My grandparents also had a boat and we would cruise together, the San Juan Islands and BC. We had the mail transferred to Friday Harbor so depending on how long the ice lasted in the ice box, dictated when we went to town.
At about age 12, I made a deal with mom and dad that if I made enough money to buy a outboard, they would pay for a boat. So dad and I built a 14 foot ski boat and I bought a used 25 hp.outboard. We towed that all over the place and met lots of girls.
Mom and my sister played the accordion and I played the drums, so we often would start playing on the dock after dinner. ( snare drum only) Soon everyone from the dock was singing along. We didn't have a very fancy boat (home made), it wasn't very fast (flathead Ford car engine), not very well equipped( we had a compass and a lead line) and not very many amenities( I don't even think it had a shower) but we had the best time ever. Sometimes you don't realize how lucky you are.

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You've got that straight!

Our boats were nothing fancy when I was young, I too purchased my 1st O/B; money $aved during my 4th and 5th grades from doing lawns and tying on Christmas trees. It was a 1.7 hp Neptune Mighty Mite. Put it on our little biddy 6'6" Pixie dink. Next I bought 1962 13'3" Boston Whaler with 18 horse Johnson. I soon replaced the 18 for a 40 hp Johnson. That was a real chick magnet for a mid to late teens football playing, Greco Wrestling boy! Yummy!!

Like you said: Sometimes you don't realize how lucky you are... Now I do, I do!!

Just for S&G:

Art said:

I think many here are not "true" trawler owners

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Wifey B: We're just a little less true although our loop boat is sort of like a trawler in fancy clothes.

Geez

I'm a hillbilly from the Missouri Ozarks.

When they wrote the definition of the term "Ozark Hillbilly" they were describing my family (kin folk).

We were as far as we can tell some of the first non native people in the Ozarks, first in Arkansas before recorded history then some settling the Missouri side around 1810.

The movie "next of Kin" could easily been about my family

Raised in dry country in Southern Idaho. Drove to Seattle after graduating HS, discovered salt water on a ferry ride to Friday Harbor, never left.

Born in Tennessee, grew up on Watts Bar lake and Norris Lake. Later in life moved to Ohio, on the sloppy shores of Lake Erie.
From there Texas and Lake Lavon, then to South Carolina, Lake Wylie. In a week I will be moving to Charleston. Always around the water, and have always loved boats. Couldn't see myself not living near water of some sort. Just ain't happenin'

I grew up racing home built boats. My brother bought a 21 foot Chris Craft kit from Sears which I put together for him during my high school years. He powered it with a 70 hp tower of power. That old boat survives to this day. I learned to fly at at an early age and thought I would be a commercial pilot but a stint in the Navy in the 60s got all of that out of my blood. At this age we have downsized our boating and hope the good Lord grants us a few more years to enjoy the waters of Southeast Alaska.

Born in Chicoutimi Quebec but moved to Kitimat, BC when I was four. I now live about 30 houses away from the house I grew up in.

Kitimat was a new community back then (the Haisla First Nation have been here for thousands of years) built to house the people working in Alcan's aluminum smelter.

There was one tv station (and no computer games) so we played outside all the time, and as we got older we started roaming around the forests, creeks, river, and mountains around town. At about 12 years old my parents started letting me go on weekend hikes by myself, even in winter.

I love this place. When driving back from Vancouver or Alberta holidays my pulse starts to quicken as the highway drops into the Skeena River watershed, where the forest starts to become a familiar mix of hemlock, cedar, balsam & spruce, and the Coast Mountains start to come into view.

Sea kayaking, then boating came later as a means to access more remote areas to hike and photograph.

ksanders said:

Geez

I'm a hillbilly from the Missouri Ozarks.

When they wrote the definition of the term "Ozark Hillbilly" they were describing my family (kin folk).

We were as far as we can tell some of the first non native people in the Ozarks, first in Arkansas before recorded history then some settling the Missouri side around 1810.

The movie "next of Kin" could easily been about my family

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Wifey B: Not quite the same as Arkansas kissin' cousins but a Ray Stevens song I like:

Many, many years ago when I was twenty-three
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red
My father fell in love with her and soon they too were wed

This made my dad my son-in-law and really changed my life
For now my daughter was my mother, 'cause she was my father's wife
And to complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to dad
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad
For if he were my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grownup daughter, who was of course my step-mother

Father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son
My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue
Because although she is my wife, she's my grandmother too

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild
'Cause now I have become the strangest 'case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa

I'm my own grandpa, I'm my own grandpa
It sounds funny, I know but it really is so
I'm my own grandpa

Grew up in Florida, moved a lot at first but always had a house on the water with various boats. My dad loved messin' around in boats. So much so that when I was 14, he and my mom built a marina in Cortez, FL. I was adept at boat handling by then, but from working at the marina I learned how to trailer a boat, scrape barnacles off a boat, build a seawall, sink dock pilings and more. I caught fish every day that my family ate. I boated up and down the west coast of Florida before I went to college.

What is odd to me is that I am the only one of four siblings who inherited our dad's love of being on the water. It is life-sustaining for me.

First 5 yrs in northern New Jersey, next 25 in the midwest - Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. On the way to Vietnam I discovered the SF Bay area, and was lucky enough to be relocated there 5 yrs after I returned to "the world". Relocated again to Utah, where I've lived for 36 years now.

Early boating with my fishing buddy: rented aluminum rowboats, on muddy SW Ohio lakes. Our technical innovation was a wooden tiller that we c-clamped onto the transom. Straightened our course quite a bit until we learned to row better.

Discovered cruising in the 70's by joining a group who chartered a sailboat in the Abacos every spring. Wow! But work kept me too busy to pursue it further with our own boat.

Finally figured out that a trailer boat (C-Dory 22) could make cruising possible for us, even living 800 miles from the ocean in Utah, and having only 2-3 weeks to work with each summer. Been trailer boat cruising since 1991, whole summers on the Inside Passage most of the time since retirement.

Ted; said:

Vancouver Island, BC. 100 acre farm with waterfront...If not at the beach, in a boat, on a raft or an "outrigger" made from drift logs
then it was the fields or mountain with a gun...

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Ted, if you had a big old black Lab as well, our life as kids would be incredibly matched. Maybe even crossed paths. Out of my 72 years, only 5 have been spent where I couldn't at least see the chuck or walk a block to it. Abbotsford '66-'71, hated it.

I left home 2 weeks after I graduated HS.
Prior to that, my growing years can be segmented into 8-5-5.

Age 0 to 8 I lived in a coastal, railroad logging camp that grew rapidly during and right after the war. I have chronicled that life in several other threads here and it was probably one of the most in-depth learning periods. I saw more about life, death and human behavior in those first 8 years than at any other time.

The deserted "Jap Town" with all the personal possessions left by the interned Japanese sawmill workers, was one of our playgrounds.

The morning routine of hand feeding uneaten pancakes to bears out back of the cookhouse; cutting a flat car loose to watch it sail right off the end of the tracks into the bay; the scrambling of people and boats in the middle of the night to evacuate Harbledown, an island camp cleaned to the dirt by a forest fire.

Through it all, the water was as much a part of us as the air and huckleberries. So, so many laughs...so many tragedies.

---------------

8 to 13 were the pure fun, innocent years on the settled homestead in Powell River. Like Ted, water, bush, rafts, beachcombing, a 22 and a row boat created another world away from camp. Oddly, as many times as I fell in the drink in camp, I never learned to swim. That came in about the first week of beach life at Myrtle Point.

I had two best friends; Dixie, the fattest black Lab ever created, a better swimmer and diver than any of us and Frank, my step grandfather who was born in Minnesota on the Oregon Trail westward from New Brunswick. Frank left school in grade 3 but was the most learned man I have ever known. He lived by the sea, worked it but never learned to swim either. Taught me all the good things about life that a 10 year old doesn't grasp until decades later, if ever.

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From the innocent years of 8 to 13 came the morphing of tadpole to toad; 13 to 18.

For as long as I can remember, beach fires were a nightly ritual. Hot dogs burned hard and covered in ash, corn cobs and clams boiled in sea water. Beach fire blankets, where so many secrets were left when the fires flickered out...city girls visited for weeks in summer...at 14, well, you've all been there, right? Man, I hope you have...Hooo aaah!!!

All sea life was so plentiful, mom would not only tell us to go get a fish for dinner, but what kind and how big.

Though I had been on many old boats around camp, this was the first period of family boats. A variety that culminated with me "building" a kit boat as my grade 11 project. I was the only kid whose project was not at school. Shop teacher would visit every week or two for a look see and a few beers with the old man.

At 18, life vomited on my boots...

Cumberland River in Nashville. We had anything from small cabin cruisers to a 40' houseboat. My brother still has our old 12' Alumacraft we used to run trot lines with. I recall going out at night on the river with only a flashlight navigating by the silhouettes of the trees to find the stump where we had the line tied off.

Tom

Miz Trom said:

Grew up in Florida, moved a lot at first but always had a house on the water with various boats. My dad loved messin' around in boats. So much so that when I was 14, he and my mom built a marina in Cortez, FL. I was adept at boat handling by then, but from working at the marina I learned how to trailer a boat, scrape barnacles off a boat, build a seawall, sink dock pilings and more. I caught fish every day that my family ate. I boated up and down the west coast of Florida before I went to college.

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Winner.


Southern Maryland for me. Chesapeake.

Adirondack Mountains of NYS for me.

dimer2 said:

Durban, South Africa.

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A true African American
Born and raised 1/4 mile from the Cane River in the oldest settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, Natchitoches. Always doing something with a boat. Now live an hour away from my boat on the Gulf.

I grew up an Army Brat, all over the world...a new post every 2-3 years. People tell me how hard it must have been to grow up that way...No, it wasn't. I was 10 years old before I met kids my same age who'd lived in the same house since they were born ...and I was flabbergasted...and I felt sorry for them 'cuz they'd never been anywhere. I'd already spent a year in Korea--would have been longer but all dependents were evacuated as the Korean Conflict erupted--and was headed for Austria for 3 years as soon as school was out for the year...and half a dozen states by the time I graduated from high school.

My dad grew up in West Palm Beach FL and never lost his love of boats, which he passed on to me. Bought my own first boat when I was about 30...the rest is history....