THE BLOB AT GREEN LAKE
Back in the 1990s, Honey and I made
many trips to our cabin at Green Lake in the Cariboo country of British
Columbia. Green Lake is just east of 70
Mile House, which is on Highway 97, heading north to Prince George. It’s a five hour drive from our home in Metro
Vancouver.
Scattered with fir and pine trees, it is a beautiful piece of lakefront
property and when the weather cooperates it’s an awesome place for having fun
in the water. We had a floating dock
that was rolled out into the lake each summer and was used by swimmers diving
into the water, or sunbathers trying to tan, or for mooring the canoe or the
rowboat.
Since we both like to recycle as many things as possible, often
unused items from home ended up being transported to our accommodating acreage
at the cabin. Add to that our combined
four children, who at that time ranged in age from their mid teens to early
twenties, and any new or unusual way for them to have fun would always be on
the agenda. Those were the reasons for The
Blob.
Shortly after Honey and I set up
house in 1994, friends who were downsizing gave us a king-size waterbed. We already had a king-size bed in our king-size
bedroom, so Honey set up the waterbed in the spare room.
Unfortunately, it filled the whole room leaving no space for any
other furnishings. When the project was
completed, my fifteen year old daughter, Sarah, asked if she could come live
with us instead of staying with her father.
After we agreed, her next question was, “Can you get rid of the
waterbed? There’s no room for any of my
stuff with that thing in there. I’ll
bring my own futon from Dad’s to sleep on.”
So Sarah drained the waterbed. Honey salvaged all the wood from the frame
for future use. “Do you think they’ll
take the mattress envelope at the dump?” he wanted to know two years later,
trying to reclaim storage space in his garage.
“Why don’t we take it up to the
cabin?” I asked. “We could fill it partially
with water, and the rest with air, and put it on the lake for the kids to jump
on. You know, like on that video we
watched from that summer camp where the kids swung out over the water on a rope
and let go so they could fall on a bouncy mattress?”
Honey raised his eyebrows at me like
I was nuts, but he dutifully hung onto it until our next trip to Green
Lake. On a Saturday morning in July it
was neatly folded and stored in the back of Honey’s big F250 pickup, along with
a dirt bike, coolers, boxes of food, and large plastic containers with clean
sheets and towels, suitcases, Honey’s ever present duct tape and Dremel tool,
and red cans of gasoline. All set for
adventure, Honey got behind the wheel with me beside him and Sarah and two cats
on the crowded rear bench seat. Honey’s
two sons, James and Patrick, were coming up in another vehicle.
By mid-afternoon we had all
completed the five hour journey from Langley to Green Lake and were unpacked
and ready to enjoy ourselves. After
helping Honey launch the dock, the boys took off on two dirt bikes. Sarah, now a languid seventeen year old, had
slung a hammock and was catching some rays.
I was sipping iced tea while I sat on the porch swing, looking out at
the lake. Honey was busy with his new
project. He had set the pump up in the
lake, attached a garden hose to it, and was filling The Blob, as we now called
the old waterbed mattress, with the required amount of water. The more water it ingested, the harder it was
for him to hang onto it. So he attached
some rope and tied it to a tree.
It was getting warm out, and by the
time the boys returned from terrorizing the cattle on the open range, all three
young people were ready to take a dip in the lake. After a beer or two and some reconfiguring of
rope, dock and Blob, they decided it was time to try out this new
adventure. Since there was no tree by
the lake with overhanging branches to swing from, the only solution was to run
down the incline toward the lake and jump from the two-meter beach cliff,
aiming to land on The Blob.
Patrick went first. A short, slim sixteen year old, he hurtled
down the incline with great speed and leapt into the air. He hit the mattress like a splattered bug on
the windshield and, unable to hold on, slid down into the water as The Blob shifted
its considerable weight and flipped over on top of him. Undaunted, he tried several more times with
the same result.
Eager to out-perform his younger
brother, twenty-two year old James volunteered next. James weighed in at two hundred pounds, so this
was a big gamble on his part. He took a
swig of beer, ran down the hill, and jumped off the edge. But instead of cushioning his fall like a
pillow, The Blob repelled him like a trampoline far out into the lake. He swam back and shook water from his
dazed-looking eyes. “What happened?” he
asked.
“You must have hit it at the wrong
angle.” Honey said. “Try again. I’ll hold it for you so it doesn’t move.”
With both of them fortified by more
beer, James ricocheted into the lake several more times, before Honey rethought
the original design. “I think it has too
much water in it. I’ll let some
out. And maybe we should pump some air
into it, too.”
With that much water in the
mattress, there was no way to siphon it out while it bobbed in the lake. The only solution was to drag The Blob up the
beach, high enough so gravity would allow them to drain some of the water. Energized again by more beer, Honey and the
boys laboured industriously to move the mattress with a ton of water in it up
the incline. It was hard work.
By the time they finished their task,
it was close to supper time. Clouds had
darkened the sky and nobody wanted to swim anymore. We all went into the cabin. After our meal, we could hear the wind lashing
the treetops. Coming back from the
outhouse, Honey confirmed that it was also raining. With a nice fire in the stove, we were mostly
content to stay indoors and play cards and board games. Except for Honey, that is. He disappeared without telling anybody where
he was going.
I thought he had gone to chop
firewood. His boys thought he was
visiting a neighbour. By ten o’clock , I was ready for bed and
starting to worry about him. We phoned
the neighbour’s cabin. They hadn’t seen
him. Armed with flashlights, the boys
checked outside our cabin and came back to tell me both the rowboat and The
Blob were missing. The Blob had been
tied to the tree, and the rowboat had been tied to the dock. It was impossible to see anything out on the
lake in the dark, or to hear anything with the wind gusting and the waves
breaking so loudly.
“Don’t worry,” Patrick said. “He can swim.” He and James laughed nervously.
After another hour, we heard steps
on the deck. Honey burst inside a few
moments later, soaking wet and shivering.
“You’ll never guess what
happened! That stupid Blob came loose
and started drifting down the lake in the wind.
I couldn’t just let it go. So I
got in the rowboat and went after it.
When I caught up to it, I tied it to the boat and started rowing back,
but do you know how much it weighs?
Maybe a ton! Do you have any idea
how hard I had to row against the wind, pulling that damned thing back up the
lake?”
“Why didn’t you just let it go?” I
asked, more concerned at losing Honey than losing The Blob.
“What? After you made me bring it up here so people
could jump on it? No way! I’d have had to row twice as far in the
morning to go looking for it, and besides, we have to try it out now with less
water in it,” he explained, as he popped the top off a beer and smiled
disarmingly.
The next day Honey couldn’t persuade
anyone to jump onto The Blob. But word
must have circulated, because vacationers from up and down the long lake came
by on the water in canoes, motor boats, Sea-Doos, pedal boats and rowboats to
look at The Blob and ask about it.
By afternoon, Sarah had found a new use for it. She took a book and sprawled on top of The
Blob in a skimpy bikini, sunbathing and waving at any young males who were
passing by. It was definitely the biggest
air mattress on the lake that year, and it was the first and last time The Blob
ever appeared at Green Lake. It now
rests in peace at the 70 Mile House garbage dump.
_______________________
By Lisa A. Hatton
