Something in the water
“Hey Syd.”
“What, Dad?”
“We’re in Kentucky.”
Pause.
“Hey Syd.”
“What, Dad?”
“We’re in Tennessee.”
New, freshly paved sable streets have opened, local mom and pop businesses with hand-painted signs have sprung up along the way, and nature has progressively claimed the tarnished guard rails that make up the road’s periphery. The route has changed a lot over the course of the 16 years we’ve driven it, but the dialogue always remains the same.
It wasn’t just the state line we were crossing. It was the border between the two predominant worlds of my childhood. On one side was Walton, Kentucky: populated by family, friends, and familiarity, easily accessible via Exit 171 and Dad’s faded tan 1992 Ford Ranger. The other was a destination with a conversely exotic allure, with which only a fortuitous few of our closest contacts would have the chance to become intimate. It was a place that could only be experienced in the entirety of its grandeur from behind the bow of a boat: Dale Hollow Lake.
The three-and-a-half-hour drive ends at [redacted] Road, and Dad always somehow times it perfectly so that the Judds’ Greatest Hits CD cycles through “I Know Where I’m Going” right as we pull in. Ours is the second house on the left, a little cabin on the hillside with a dark wooden exterior. The green tinted shingles and matching shutters nearly blend into the forest backdrop that surrounds the perimeter of the yard. The driveway is lined with gravel and red Tennessee clay, which has persistently stained innumerable pairs of shoes over the years, no matter how careful of steps taken.
Before we bought the TennesseeInn (as Dad had inscribed on a little wooden plaque adjacent to the front door), we used to rent cabins a little further down the road, in Star Point Village. They had direct access to the marina, meaning the docks would quickly become my personal playground.
We used to keep a tiny fishing rod stowed on the boat that I had been given by my great-grandfather. I knew nothing about fishing when I was a little kid, and neither did Dad, but his determination assured me we would be reeling in our very own Moby Dick from the docks of Star Point. We didn’t have any bait except for a few fake, plastic neon green worms and some old, worn jigs, neither of which were particularly effective on the indifferent bluegill that floated lazily around the dock. Dad’s solution was to find our own bait.
We spent two hours turning over every single log in the Star Point campsites and digging through the mud around the water’s edge in search of earthworms. All we managed to find was two snails and a slug, but Dad convinced me they were gold (and persuaded me to be the one to carry them back to the dock).
If the bluegill were uninterested in the fake bait, they were blatantly avoiding the poor snails that we had speared onto the hook. We gave up and decided to just eat lunch at the dock instead, a ham sandwich with mustayo (a combination of mustard and mayonnaise that we concocted to save space in the cooler) for Dad and a hot dog for me. We discarded the crumbs into the water, and to our surprise the bluegill came swarming.
The fishing rod had already been disassembled and stored away beneath one of the seats, so the next closest thing at our immediate disposal was a butterfly net. Dad tossed more “bait” into the water and within minutes we had scooped up a little gray-green spiky finned fish. I watched with awe as it flipped every which way, tangling itself further in the net as Dad reached in to set it free. We spent the rest of the day establishing ourselves the best hot-dog-ham-sandwich-butterfly-net-bluegill fishermen on the entire lake, possibly the entire world. It is a title I still proudly claim.
Some of the best weekends, however, were the ones spent entirely out on the water. Dad and I would take out our beautiful royal blue Bayliner just as the sun began to set, putting out from the marina with all the fishermen making their nightly rounds to check lines. Tucked away in a cove called Jolly Creek, which came to be our favorite little niche, we would throw anchor and kill the engine. And just like that, our campsite was complete.
Once the roar from the engine died down, we were left listening to the gentle splash of ripples lapping against the hull of the boat, with the indistinct white noise of distant insects to lull us to sleep. Every now and then a foreign sound generated from some entity within the surrounding woods resonated into the mix.
“What’s that, Dad?”
“A coyote.”
“Can it get us?”
“No, it’s on land, we’re in the water.”
Pause.
“What’s that, Dad?”
“A bullfrog.”
“Can it get us?”
Dad can’t resist telling the story anytime we take visiting friends out on a night ride, embellishing it with dramatic impressions of six-year-old me. He’s an exceptional storyteller, despite that he always conveniently leaves out the part when he got scared, startled awake in the middle of the night by my sleepwalking self.
Dad has always said stars never look brighter than out on the boat in the middle of Dale Hollow. Out on the main part of the lake with not a single soul around to disrupt the gentle, glassy water, which seems to extend for miles all around, it is easy to feel significantly smaller. It is not, however, a feeling of isolation. The massive sanctuary of stars is closer than ever, surrounding the boat not only from above, but also in the inky water’s mirroring of the night sky.
Dad’s eyes are naturally all sorts of different colors, with a base of a simple green and tiny flecks of amber, ochre, and azure all throughout. They have a natural warmth to them, but on those nights they glow. I can never tell if it is from the reflection of the stars or if it’s simply his sheer, unrestrained bliss shining through. Either way, all of Dale Hollow is illuminated.
The sky and the lake are in constant tandem, but it is not always with such serenity as on a cloudless night. When everything above turns gray, alive with the frantic and tumultuous energy of a summer storm, the response of the water below is parallel.
Every seasoned boater has a storm story or two, but mine and Dad’s had taken place far before we had much experience out on the waves. In our first few years of boat ownership, we were cautious explorers, venturing out hesitantly at first, then more confidently once we became more familiar with the lay of the lake. We slowly began to establish a routine of favorite coves and regular routes. On this day in particular we had made a daring decision to explore one of the furthest corners and most notable landmarks of the lake: the Dale Hollow Dam.
Clocking in at about an hour’s journey from Star Point, a trip to the dam is a commitment. It means crossing what we have since dubbed “the Ocean,” which is the absolute widest part of the lake. It is the Grand Central Station of Dale Hollow, where massive yachts and houseboats languidly cross to return to their respective marinas, bold skiers brave the surf behind sporty runabouts, and jet skis paint the lake water with streams of silvery spray in their zigzagging wake. All of the disturbance from the passing boats does not compare, however, to the white-capped waves we encountered on the return trip that day.
Dad always describes rain on the lake as “the Wall.” First the wind whirls through the thick beeches and pin oaks that surround nearly the entire lake on all sides, picking up debris and scattering it across the water, which gets continually choppier as the storm approaches. The world is washed in a filter of moody slate, and the lake’s usual gentle green becomes an angry gray.
We’ve spent countless days since that first storm watching the progression of the rolling rainclouds from the safety of Star Point, so I know all too well how to determine when “the Wall” is approaching. It looks like a white sheet in the distance, slowing engulfing everything behind it up to that point and then lunging forward to devour even more, insatiable. When “the Wall” hits, it is immediate and unforgiving, in an instant cancelling out any other sound as it reverberates against the tin roofs of the boat slips. Unfortunately, during that first storm, there was no marina in between to protect us from the cascade as “the Wall” advanced.
Every drop of rain was a missile on my skin, a violent torrent from above that matched the velocity of our boat, speeding through “the Ocean” in pursuit of shelter. I remember crawling down and curling up in one of the built in storage areas underneath the glove compartment, bracing myself against the wall with the emergency fire extinguishers. I couldn’t see any of my surroundings from down below, but I could feel the boat oscillating around, tossed by the waves, sometimes nearly vertical, it felt.
“How’s my First Mate?”
“Just f-fine, Dad.”
“Have you battened down the hatches?”
Pause.
“H-h-hatches battened down.”
All I could see was Dad across from me, braving the deluge in the driver’s seat, daring to poke his head up above the protection of the windshield to navigate. Dad is 6’2”, which is considerably gargantuan from the perspective of any six-year-old, but especially one who is frightened and hiding directly adjacent. I swear in that moment he seemed taller than ever.
Just as the storm seemed more intense and awe-inspiring on the lake, so did the rainbow that appeared afterward once we reached the safety and shelter of the dock. It started at one end of the marina, and the other end disappeared into the water across from us: the first time I’d ever seen a rainbow’s end. It was the perfect apology from Dale Hollow for the turmoil we’d been through. And of course, we could never stay mad at the lake, so it was one we readily accepted.
We had weathered the storm, and we would continue to weather many more in the years to come. Though there have been countless stories for Dad to embellish and recount for the benefit of first-time visitors over the years, it is the recurring routine that stands out in my mind.
“Hey Syd.”
“What, Dad?”
“We’re in Kentucky.”
Pause.
“Hey Syd.”
“What, Dad?”
“We’re in Tennessee.”
