Backsies Is What There Is Not: If At First You Don't Succeed

My dad owned a farm supply store for over 30 years. While probably 90% of the inventory was farm supplies of one kind or another (everything from clothing to electrical and plumbing supplies to baler twine), the other 10% was Ace Hardware. He attended monthly meetings with other Ace Hardware store owners in the four-state area in which we live, with the meeting locations rotating between all the stores. When my dad's turn to host the meeting came up, he thought it would be a terrific idea to host it at their lake house on Lake Taneycomo.

My mother did NOT think this was a terrific idea, but she was always a good (although sometimes a little disgruntled) sport about most things, and she and my dad began getting the house ready for their guests. As my mom cleaned the inside of the house, my dad hauled out the power washer to clean the outside furniture. He busily moved all the outdoor chairs from the deck to the back yard and power washed them, then began removing the chairs and round table from the screened-in porch at the back corner of the house.

It's dining room table-sized, for the record

A few minutes later, my dad called into the house that he needed my mom's help outside.

"I'll be right there as soon as I put my shoes on," she called back to him.

"Better get your life jacket, too," he replied, and she jammed her feet into her shoes and hurried out.

My dad was standing in the yard, looking down the sloping yard towards the lake. The table legs that had once been attached to the table from the screened-in porch were scattered across the yard, and floating just below the surface of the water was the table top.

"I told you you'd need a life jacket," he said.

"What happened?!" my mom asked, and my dad told her when he rolled the table out the screen door, it got away from him, rolled down the yard, picking up speed as the table legs fell off one at a time, and launched itself into the lake.

I'm not sure exactly how they managed it, but once they stopped laughing, the rescue mission for the table top involved my dad backing their pontoon boat out from the dock and my mom standing on the shore, holding a rope attached to the boat, and by using a long piece of conduit, they got the table out of the water.

(You may be wondering why one of them didn't just get in the water and retrieve the table, but that wasn't an option as the bank was rocky and slippery and the water temperature of Lake Taneycomo runs about 45 degrees year round. There are more reasons, but those are the major ones. It is also important that you know that we no longer own a boat.)

Once the legs were retrieved and returned to their rightful positions, the table was hardly worse for wear. After getting a second bath with (only with the power washer this time), the only damage it suffered was a two-inch, half moon-shaped notch out of the edge. Of course, my parents had a terrific time re-telling the story of the runaway table at the Ace Hardware meeting, and afterwards, the table was returned without further incident to the screened-in porch.

That was well over 20 years ago.

Two years ago, the screened-in porch was doubled in size, and this summer, I found a wooden dining table at a thrift store for $5 that I sanded and painted a sunny yellow and placed on the screened-in porch (you can see before and after photos here), and the plastic table with the notch in it, which had served us well all these years, was going to be relocated to the back patio and be used by my husband when he grilled.

My Person came to Branson last weekend from Nashville for a visit, and I decided the time was nigh to go ahead and move Notch the Table to the patio, especially since we had just gotten two new wicker chairs (with ottomans - yeah, baby!) and a small table to go between them, and even with the additional space, there was no room (or need) for the old table.

I opened the screen door, tipped Notch on his side, gently rolling him out the door and down two concrete steps, when I'll be damned if the little fucker didn't TAKE OFF and roll across the lawn, legs flying off as he barreled through the grass and onto the bank, went airborne as if he were going off a ski jump, and SPLASH, landed in the lake. I stood there in horror, my hands clapped over my mouth, before I burst into laughter, went into the house where my dad and husband were, and announced that there had been a little oopsie.

"What kind of oopsie?" my husband asked.

"Oh, just a little oopsie. The table is gone."

"What do you mean 'gone'?!"

I pointed out the window where you could see a trail of table legs disappearing over the bank.

"I was moving it to the patio and it kind of got away from me and then it started picking up speed and next thing I knew it was gone!"

My dad howled with laughter. He knew.

The table was visible, lurking just below the surface of the water, from the dock only. My husband was trying to figure out how we could fish the table out of the water with the same piece of conduit from his first escape and how one of us (he meant me) would have to go down the SLIPPERY, STEEP bank and pull it while the other one (guess who) would push it with the conduit. I vetoed this immediately. "But I was going to use it when I grilled!" he said, to which I replied, "I'LL BUY YOU ANOTHER TABLE BUT WE ARE NOT TRYING TO GET THIS ONE OUT OF THE WATER!"

Looking up from dock to porch.

In the meantime, Notch was slowly making his way along the bank as we returned to the house. I checked on him a short time later, and he was GONE. My husband joined me, and we walked along the bank at the edge of the empty lot next door and didn't see him, but once we reached the far edge of the lot, I spotted Notch meandering along the bank. He had gone under the gangway of the dock next door and was on his way to backstroking under the next one.

Photo is deceiving. Bank is STEEP.

"Maybe we could get on that next dock and use that conduit to..." my husband began, and I interrupted him to say, "to do WHAT? You're going to lift it out of the water? With a piece of conduit?"

"I guess not," he said, followed by, "This would have been a good time to still have that boat."

We trudged back to our house.

"At least it didn't have our name on it or anything," I said. "No one will know where it came from. They'll just look at it and say, 'Now THERE'S a story!'"

"You don't think the legs on the bank might be a clue?" he asked.

Oopsie....