CATEGORY: UNIVERSITY YEARS

My first date with Bob after I moved back to Eugene was the White Water Parade.  This is an annual event consisting of a six hour float down the McKenzie River from Blue River to Leaburg Lake just east of Eugene.  It was always the Sunday before the opening of fishing season during the first week of April.  Bob had a two man rubber raft for which he had made a wooden frame that fitted over the top of the raft,  It had oarlocks for the oars.  He came to Eugene the day before, and we drove up the McKenzie to Martins Rapids, the biggest rapids we would encounter, so he could walk along the shore and decide exactly how we would go through them.  He was perfectly confident.  I felt I was in good hands.

We started out early on White Water Sunday.  I was wearing my ski pants over long wool underwear, a T shirt, a long sleeved wool undershirt and a long sleeved hooded wool top that came over my hips and fastened at the crotch like baby rompers.  It was lucky I chose wool.

When we got to Blue River it was snowing.  Did that stop us?  NEVER!

Even at such an early hour, a huge crowd of people were waiting to put their boats in the water.  Many of them had McKenzie River Boats.  These were small lap-strake boats with lots of shear that had been designed especially for this river.  They looked like fat bananas on the water.  Most of those waiting were buffering themselves against the cold with hefty amounts of alcohol.  Not us!  We didn’t need any liquid re-enforcement!  Bob Anderson didn’t look like a Norseman, and I wasn’t a tall blonde Knudsen, for nothing!

I had thought I could keep dry by sitting up on the wood frame.  Fat chance! I was wet through two minutes after we got in the water.  So I gave up that idea and sat in the bottom where it was easier to bail.  The water was snow melt right off the Cascade Mountains.  That is where the wool proved its worth.  I was cold but not too cold.  We had brought thermoses of hot chocolate and chicken bouillon.

People who owned homes along the shore had built fires so that boaters could stop and get warm.  One of my school mates, Dan Wriggle, was in another boat with some other architecture students.  We met him at one of the fires.  He was so cold his teeth were chattering.  The promoters of the parade had also provided portable toilets by many of the fires.  These came in handy for people who had been drinking beer.  It also came in handy for people who had been drinking hot chocolate and chicken bouillon.

The further we got down stream the more people we saw who were outrageously drunk.  We passed a young man lying on his back upside-down on the steeply sloped bank with a whiskey bottle in his hand screaming, “I’M DYING!  I’M DYING!!!”  Some people were coming from a house to help him.

No one has ever died in the White Water Parade.  We didn’t either!  We went through the big rapids just the way Bob had planned.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  I was to-the-core impressed!  He was already in love with me.  I think that was when I fell in love with him.