Tides

My wife has a friend who tells this amazing story. If I was not there and had not heard it with my own ears, I would have doubted the veracity of this tale. But I swear to you, this is how he told the tale.

This fellow, we’ll call him “Dale,” had an antique outboard motor for sale. He put the ad on Ebay and pretty soon, he had a buyer for the motor. Discussing the transaction with the potential buyer who was from Iowa, Dale said he would put the engine on a boat and run it around to make certain it was ready to operate when delivered.

The guy from Iowa, we’ll call him “Jack,” said all of that was not necessary. Dale said he would package the engine and freight it on to Iowa. Jack said, “No need, my wife and I have never seen the ocean and always wanted to visit Florida. This will be the perfect excuse to drive down.”

“Okay,” Dale said. “I will go ahead and put it on a boat to run so that when you arrive, you can at least see it run.”

The couple finally arrives from Iowa and Dale and his wife accompany them to the marina where the motor is still mounted on a skiff. They run it around the harbor and the man from Iowa is pleased. He had been looking for this particular model of outboard engine for quite some time.

As they motor back to the dock, Jack looks at the pilings and notices the high tide mark. As it was low tide, there was quite a distance between the high tide mark and the water. To this, Jack says, “It looks like you are in a pretty serious drought down here in Florida.”

“Naw, not really,” Dale replied.

“What do you mean? Look at that mark where the water used to be,” said Jack.

“That?” Dale responded while looking at the high tide mark. “That’s just the tide.”

“Tide? What’s that?” Jack asked.

Dale stopped and looked it Jack. “You don’t know what the tide is?”

“Never heard of it before,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“You’re kidding me,” Dale answered.

“What is a tide?”

“It is a rising and falling of the water. Happens every day, a couple of times a day.”

To this, Jack looked Dale square in the eyes and exclaims, “No! You don’t say!”

By now, they were back ashore and Jack had explained to his wife this phenomenon of the tide. She looked over the pier and also witnessed the high tide mark and she asked more about it. “What causes it to go up and down so often?”

“The moon,” Dale’s wife explained.

Jack and his wife looked at each other with somewhat disbelieving looks. There was probably a moment of private telepathic communication between the two.

Then Jack said, “Look, we may be from Iowa, but we weren’t born yesterday. How can the moon possibly make the water go up and down like that?”

There was a quick exchange of money, the outboard motor carefully packaged into the back of their pickup truck. Then the people from Iowa decided they had had enough of Florida and those crazy Floridians who believed the moon could move water.

They were quickly on their way back to Iowa where the moon left the water alone.

-30-

© 2010 J. Clark

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4 Responses to Tides

  1. Great story! And your last line is hilarious.

  2. flyinggma says:

    Love this story Joe. We get similar looks from people when they come to Minnesota and we tell them about ice fishing. They just don’t understand the concept of standing on frozen water drilling holes through the ice to fish. Many think we are filling them full of stories to make them look foolish like the Iowians thought regarding the tide. I don’t know where they think the fish go during the winter. Perhaps they think they are frozen in the ice and thaw each spring with the lake.

  3. Pingback: Moon over Minnesota « Blog Archive « MineEyesHaveSeen

  4. David Hipschman says:

    Very nice! But I first heard this yarn with it involving North Dakota Norwegian bachelor farmer brothers who came to Florida for the motor.

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