I’ve written before about the idyllic summers I spent as a teenager on Coeur d’Alene Lake. And I’ve written about waterskiing. I recently found some old pictures of those days—pictures of my father, mother, brother, and me all waterskiing.
As I looked at these pictures, I remembered how each of us skied. We each had our own style, if “styles” we could be said to have.
My father looks the most professional as he skies. His form is straight. He leans way back. But notice that he isn’t doing anything. He just rides along behind the boat. That’s what he typically did, rarely venturing outside the wake.
My dad is on two skies in this photo, but he later learned to slalom. He liked double handles on the tow rope, so he could keep himself centered. He was the heaviest of us, so he took the longest to rise into a plane on the water.
My mother looks uncomfortable. And she was—she was not a natural athlete. She didn’t particularly like to ski, and would only do it after the Fourth of July when the snow-fed lake warmed up a tad. I think this is the only picture ever taken of her waterskiing.
She spent quite a bit of time getting set before she could ski, and when the boat started pulling, she often fell over on her face. She, too, sat behind the boat inside the wake, but wasn’t able to lean back into it. She let the boat pull her forward, and she never even tried to slalom. She liked a single-handled tow rope because there was one less thing to keep track of in the water.
My brother was the best skier of all of us, though this picture does not show him at his best, as he is still on two skis. A year or two later, he became quite proficient on a slalom ski, pulling far outside the wake, stopping almost motionless on the water, then careening across the wake to the other side. He favored a single-handled rope which he learned to move from hand to hand to give himself just a little extra pull as he crossed the wake.
My brother was still growing through his teens, and every year he had to learn a new center of gravity, falling several times at the beginning of the season as he did so. It only took him a few days each summer to find his balance, but he grumbled each year when he saw me—who hadn’t grown an inch—easily pop out of the water.
And that leads to my style. I wasn’t nearly as graceful as my brother on skis, though I, too, did learn to slalom. My learning process was painful—it took most of a summer for me to learn to ski on two skis, and another summer to learn to slalom. Here, I am outside the wake, but I have my feet set far apart for better balance, though it meant I couldn’t move as quickly in the water. And I used a double-handled tow rope so that I could move my arms far apart for balance as well.
To each his or her own. Our family’s boat had two tow ropes—one single-handled and the other double—and skis of various sizes. We squabbled about which were best, then just took our choice and did our thing.
But we were never really a family that waterskied together. By the time my younger sister and brother were old enough to ski, the brother pictured here and I were off to college. So my halcyon summers were not the same as my siblings’.
What memories do you have of summer sports?
That is one picturesque lake – beautiful. I had one brother who was an avid skier, both water and snow. Also, the same brother I played many tennis matches with throughout several 1970’s summers. We even took private lessons together. I was just a mediocre player, but he was a fanatic and won a couple city tournaments. But the best recollections I have are of all the Royals baseball games my father took us to over the years. Some of them took place in long gone Municipal Stadium. Great times.
Hi Cindy,
Coeur d’Alene Lake is still as beautiful as it was then, though more built up.
It’s nice to have those family memories to draw on, whether of skiing or tennis or baseball.
Cheers. Theresa
I learned to ski the first time up in high school, but no one told me what to do when I was ready to quit, so I just kept skiing for a half hour. I finally figured out how to let go, but by then I was fried to a crisp. Worst sunburn I ever had!
Later, my husband and I bought a pontoon boat and kept it at Truman Lake. We spend many weekends skiing when our younger kids were small.
Yes, the letting go was sometimes hard. Particularly in cold water. Then there was climbing back in the boat. It was easier to ski near a dock.