Tag Archives: canoe

Archer

dictionary with letter A

Archer: (n) a person who shoots with a bow and arrows, especially at a target for sport.

When I was growing up, the pursuit of sports in my home was very seasonal–not in the sense of baseball in the summer and football in the fall, but rather, attention span.

My father and brothers developed interests in activities, and always would find a “good deal” on equipment relating to this endeavor, which they would purchase, only to discover that the materials were inferior, which made it impossible to adequately perform the task.

  • We bought a canoe that leaked.
  • We had some water skis that were cracked and fell apart the first time someone got on them in the water.
  • We had a basketball hoop that was supposed to be easy to set up in your driveway which never got higher than four feet.

Likewise, while watching Robin Hood one day on the television set, my older brother wanted to purchase a bow and arrows. My father thought it was “a champion idea.”

So with no understanding whatsoever of archery, they set out to the local hardware store, where the proprietor sold them one of his old bows and six arrows for “a really good deal.”

Without exaggerating, I will tell you that it took them two weeks to learn how to string the bow. The amount of energy it took to bend the bow for stringing nearly crippled their comprehension. The power required to pull the bow back, to shoot the arrow even two feet, was also extraordinarily daunting.

But after a couple of months, they convinced themselves they were experts on the subject and took me out to the woods to try my hand at shooting at a target.

I hated it immediately.

It took too much energy to pull the string, and because the bow was bent from the numerous attempts to manipulate it to our will, the arrows flew crooked, more resembling boomerangs.

After about the sixth attempt, they were ready to have a competition, to see who could hit the target the most often.

My dad stood ten feet to the side, away from the target, so he could give instruction to my brother and myself to make the competition more interesting.

I pulled back the bow and was ready to shoot it when my dad piped up and said, “No, Jonathan! Use more of your thumb!”

Not understanding what he said, I turned towards him in order to be respectful to his instruction, and as I did I slipped and released the arrow, which flew through the air, knocking his hat off.

It was William Tell without the apple.

My dad never said anything about it, but we quickly packed up the gear and it was stored from that point on, in the garage … next to the half-water ski.

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Anchor

dictionary with letter A

Anchor: (n) a heavy object attached to a rope or chain and used to moor a vessel to the bottom.

It was made of aluminum, about twelve feet long, with three wooden, bench seats inside, one of the perches broken.

It was my dad’s boat.

It more resembled a canoe with a thyroid problem.

But whenever my dad launched his vessel onto the great and mighty waters of Hoover Lake, he suddenly transformed into some sort of John Paul Jones, which to me as a boy, appeared as a nautical monster.

He began using the lingo of the sea and was perpetually angry with his crew–embodied solely in myself.

He explained that the best way to fish was to find a quiet, deep lagoon and drop your anchor so your boat wouldn’t move, and you would be present with your bait, to lure in the schools of fish. (Often we often must have arrived during some sort of fish holiday–because the schools were usually out.)

Nevertheless, he yelled at me to drop anchor, which was a forty pound cube of cement block, which he had put together by pouring it into a plastic bucket and then destroying the bucket to free the cement once it had hardened. Attached to this heavy clump was a rope.

Now, you must realize–we only had twenty-five feet of rope on our anchor–which is fine is you happen to be perched in twenty-three feet of water. But as I lifted the huge mass over the side of the boat and dropped it into the water, I was never sure if it actually hit the bottom.

So after an hour or so, my dad would look up from his fishing pole, where he had frozen his eyes intently, and realize that we had floated far from our desired spot.

This initiated a whole new tirade of “captain-to-deck-swab” complaints. I tried to defend myself by explaining that we did not have enough rope to reach the bottom of the lake, but he never seemed to quite comprehend that if the anchor doesn’t land on the bottom, it really doesn’t keep you in place.

What great symbolism.

After all, if our anchor is floating along with society’s ideas and standards instead of landing firmly on solid ground, we, too, tend to drift from our preferred placement.

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Amphitheater

dictionary with letter A

Amphitheater: (n.) a round location for performing events, surrounded by tiers for seating.

I don’t know if the Greeks intended for their amphitheaters to be outside or not, but every amphitheater I’ve ever performed in was ala natural.

And here is the problem: there is nothing creatively hatched, artistically structured, musically composed or theatrically staged which is better when exposed to the mosquitoes.

The only people who actually like having their entertainment performed outside are cruel promoters and idealistic committees who think it would be “really neat.”

Such an event happened to me in Detroit, Michigan, when I was working a supper club and having great fun sharing music and a bit of hilarity with the audience over dried-up pot roast and light green chicken.

It suddenly occurred to the owner of this supper club that it might be a real public relations boost if we did one of the shows outside in the parking lot, creating our own amphitheater of chairs and signage, advertising the establishment for those passing by or willing to come and sit in folding chairs to listen to music that they could hear at home in their recliners.

Not only was there a dearth of attendance but we got a late start, and the dampness of the early evening created humidity in our speakers, so the sound, as we went along, became more and more muffled.

Perhaps the most aggravating part of this little “amphitheater adventure” of our promotional argonaut was when he came up, feeling the need to justify himself, and proclaimed with an unnerving jubilance, “It wasn’t that bad.”

Yes. That’s what every artist wants to hear–of the disasters available, you ended up with a broken paddle in a canoe on the Niagara River instead of bottom bunk on the Titanic.

Did I mention to you that I don’t particularly care for amphitheaters?

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Adams (John)

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Adams, John (1735-1826): the 2nd President of the U.S. from 1797-1801. A Massachusetts Federalist, he was a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774-78 and helped draft the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He negotiated the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution in 1783.

John Adams was a wild card.

Wild cards are fun. Wild cards are specific units from a deck which can be anything we need them to be in order to complete a winning hand.

In an era which included the very secular Benjamin Franklin, along with the religious and often belligerent Patrick Henry, who were crashing together to attempt a common purpose, there was a need for a wild card who could converse, argue, fuss and negotiate with both parties freely and act as a wild card for independence.

Thus, John Adams.

It is rather doubtful that the anti-slave members of the Continental Congress and the Virginia slave owners could ever have gotten together had it not been for Mr. Adams:

He made them talk instead of just stomp out of the room in anger.

He provided a reason for a stuffy Puritan from Massachusetts to at least attempt to understand a tobacco-growing country boy from North Carolina.

He made freedom the issue instead of bogging us down in continual useless conversations over preferences.

Into every generation a John Adams must be birthed. Otherwise the extremes stand at a distance and hurl rocks at one another.

Behold: the problem we see in our political system today.

We have plenty of Benjamin Franklins in our Democratic Party and an abundance of Patrick Henrys in the Republicans and Tea Parties, who are both adept at spitting across the creek at each other, finding no common canoe or even a bridge where ideas could cross back and forth.

We need a John Adams. John Adams wasn’t flamboyant or even interesting. He had a calming effect. He found a way to argue without frustration, disagree minus splitting apart, and eventually found a way to come to terms without sacrificing principles.

Although he had deep convictions, he also had a political savvy which permitted him to be a buffer between those who eat Quaker Oats and them that prefer grits.

Never forget the value of a John Adams to our Declaration of Independence.

He found a way to be friends with Thomas Jefferson even when they were bitter political enemies.

We probably do not need to be on the hunt for a better leader for our country, or even for Congress to have more acceptable members. Our generation requires a John Adams–or a plethora of them–to come in and find the means for discussion … instead of the elements of argument.