Notes From the Dockside: The chainsaw massacre

Talk about it

I believe that it is a requirement for anyone who owns lakeside property to have a canoe or old aluminum boat turned over on their lawn, a pontoon boat tied to their dock and a chainsaw.

I know this because while I am fishing it seems that every cottage, cabin or home on the lake has an old aluminum canoe or boat pulled up on its bank and turned over. Some of these aluminum boats are fifty years old and may have originally been there, overturned for most of the last half century. It would not surprise me to find that some of those boats do not even float anymore. Now they are just ornaments.

Also it seems from my observations while fishing that every dock has a pontoon boat tied to it. I guess that some people believe that if you have a dock there should be a pontoon boat to go with it. Otherwise why would you want a dock. This idea may have been perpetrated by the companies that make pontoon boats. It seems to have helped them sell a lot of pontoon boats.

Perhaps when you buy a lakeside cabin or home, part of the deal is to just throw in the old aluminum canoe or boat and the pontoon boat. Besides, who would want to own the place without those.

The chainsaw is a bit different. I think that the realtor who sells the property gives the new property owner a brand new chainsaw as a buyer’s gift. In today’s depressed housing market buying cabins or other lakeside property may have even hit new lows in relation to other house purchases so the realtor may throw in a weed eater or wood chipper in addition to the chainsaw.

Again I know this since it seems every day that I am fishing, one or more people are running their chainsaws. I think that there is someone watching the boat landings and as soon as they see my van and boat pull in, a call is placed to all the neighbors to see who is home so they can run outside and crank up their chainsaw. It is something like a neighborhood watch system.

Who wants to listen to the birds or the slap of waves against the side of the boat or the wind through the trees when you can listen to a chainsaw as you are floating along the bank? Why would you want peace and quiet when you are fishing when you can have the growling of a chainsaw in the air?

It is seldom that a day goes by when I am fishing that I do not hear a chainsaw sometime during the day. It has gotten to the point that on those few days when I do not hear a chainsaw I wonder what went wrong.

There have been times that I hear the first chainsaw snarling away as I pushed the boat off the trailer. I haven’t wet a line yet but the chainsaw is already going. The neighborhood watch system must have worked especially well that day.

Then there days that I am lulled into a false sense of security. I have been fishing for several hours so I am thinking that maybe today I will not hear a chainsaw. As soon as I start thinking that, it seems like magic: I begin hearing a chainsaw. It must have been a slow day and took the neighbor chainsaw watch dog a bit longer to get someone to get out and crank up his chainsaw.

It is particularly entertaining to have dueling chainsaws. Two chainsaws are roaring away from different spots on the lake at the same time.

With the amount of chainsaw activity that I hear while I am fishing it amazes me that there is any wood left standing around our lakes. I do understand that after a storm when tree limbs and trees themselves have been blown down that it is necessary to cut up the wood and drag off the brush. Some of the homes and cabins have fireplaces and that wood will be used on cool spring or fall evenings or perhaps during a summer campfire. There certainly is nothing wrong with that. But I have a tough time understanding cranking up the chainsaw when we haven’t had a storm in over a month.

This phenomenan with chainsaws is so well known by the people I fish with that I think that they have a pool going to see who can most accurately predict when we will hear the first chainsaw on any given day they are fishing with me.

A little while back my wife, The Bass Queen, and I were on a tour of Switzerland. We had just landed in Zurich after an all-night flight from the states. We got our luggage and piled into a bus that would take us to southern Switzerland where we would stay for the first half of our ten day visit. We were on the bus for a couple of hours when the bus stopped at an overlook above a large, picturesque Swiss lake.

There is a small chapel on the bank of the lake and a number of people hiked down there to see it. At the top where the bus was parked was a small café and others stayed there to use the restroom or get drinks. The Bass Queen and I looked down at the clear lake surrounded by mountains. I was taking some photos when I heard it. I turned to the Bass Queen and said “Do you hear that?”

She listened for a moment. “Oh my gosh,” she said. It was a chainsaw snarling away behind us. They had even followed me to Switzerland.

Tags: sports, outdoors, travel