The Oppenheimer Report 8/23/09

Always a few steps behind the general public, I recently joined Facebook. I am now officially a face. Having been faceless all these many years, it’s good to finally have an identity … you know, something for some criminal cyberweenie to steal. A few years ago, I joined MySpace, for no other reason than that Shauna was doing it and she signed me up as well. I still have a profile somewhere in that labyrinth of MySpace profiles, along with demos of four of my songs, but I don’t think I’ve changed anything on that site since we first put it up. I now understand that MySpace is “so yesterday’s news”. Desperate to free myself from the fetters of complete anonymity, I have therefore joined Facebook, and in so doing have boldly proclaimed: I AM NOT NOBODY! However boldly I proclaim this, it is the subject of some debate.

So now I’m a face, and my anemic profile is out there for all to see. It’s just a picture of me, and no birth date, no special likes and dislikes, no favorite television shows; not even a favorite color. I prefer to cultivate the mystery of my non-existent life … keep ‘em guessing. Do I like Cheerios or Fruit Loops … or neither? I did not realize that so many people I know are also faces, but every day I am greeted by at least three or four new old faces who request that we be “friends”. The odd part about that is that I thought we already were … that is, before I lost touch with just about everybody I knew. Here they all are, coming out of the virtual woodwork to get re-acquainted in cyberspace. I have opened up Pandora’s Email Box. In theory, I am all for sites which promote any kind of non-criminal social interaction, and it’s honestly good to once again make contact with some of these people. On the other hand, it’s just a little spooky how many people, through whatever search engine or networking tool is incorporated by Facebook, have “found” me. I now have a wall, and messages from people with whom I have not spoken in thirty years. It’s a little like the high school reunion I recently attended, absent the angst or the necessity to respond.

What I was not expecting was the immediacy of current information. No longer do I wonder “what
ever happened to so-and-so”, because whatever happened to him or her is spelled out, in detail, by the hour. By joining Facebook, I have become privy to a whole slew of current (albeit brief) posts I might never have seen otherwise. Apparently, e-mail is a thing of the past, or in any event, not as likely to reach the entire network (read my two or three friends). Somehow, my being friends with a few people has opened me up to the social airwaves of just about everyone I know. One friend is indignant about the recently proposed health care plan, another reports that her husband is having an affair. There’s a photo of my niece holding her sister-in-law’s baby girl. Naturally, I posted a rude and off-color comment. People like me probably shouldn’t be allowed to post comments on Facebook; I suspect the Face Police will soon be on my cyber tail.

Up until a few years ago, my dad was class agent for his Cornell Class ‘32. Recently, when I was sorting through his papers, I came across just about every correspondence he’d had in the past ten years with his classmates. Most were in the form of letters, but some of those codgers were using email. The correspondences were, for the most part, eloquent, well thought out missives, and the stories they told were often entertaining and interesting. I still maintain that there is something more satisfying about receiving a good old-fashioned, carefully written, page-long letter. Facebook is even faster food than email. I haven’t yet become a “twit” or whatever Twitter users are called, but I understand that that is the state-of-the-art medium for brevity and immediacy. I look forward to someday becoming even less communicative, while reporting my every move in an effort to “tell all”. I am sure that, several years after it is out of fashion to do so, I will embrace my inner twit. There is a reason why the phrase “Too much information” has become so overused. Some information is in fact not really information..

I could spend months, maybe years, getting caught up, but the sad fact is, I HAVE lost touch with many of these folks and they have lost touch with me. As much as I would love to keep up with everyone I’ve ever known and liked, the older I get, the shorter has become the list of those I feel are really interested in my life. Likely, many want to know if I disgrace my family and friends by getting caught fooling around with someone named Bambi, who really is a deer, or if my pulpy remains are recovered after I fall into a hotdog making machine, or should I suddenly be rocketed to notoriety when I am viewed on the internet interviewing Bin Bombin’. Short of that, I doubt many but my closest friends really give a flying Walenda about my day to day. Regrettably, I’m just not all that interesting. That said, anyone so bored that he or she wants to spend the next month catching up on my life full of unevents need look no further than The Oppenheimer Report … it’s a real page turner, and available at a blog site near you.

1:11 PM Gone Fishin’. J.W.O. Jr.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/17/09

I have loved powerboats since I was about three years old. When I was a toddler my aunt bought me a toy which was a small scale model of a wooden runabout with little battery-powered outboard motor. I used to play with it in the bathtub all the time. Many of the boats around our summer cottage on Lake Erie were kept in boat lifts when they weren’t being used. I made a lift for my toy boat out of an upside down foot stool with string tied across the legs for slings. My very first “real” boat was a little red wooden craft made by a local carpenter, perhaps four and one half feet long, and I passed many a hot summer day floating around in that little boat in Lake Erie. I think I was about five or six when my parents bought me a used 10’ Feathercraft aluminum boat, the boat which later became the legendary “Raging African Queen,” and therein began my serious boating career. I have had many boats since, but that Feathercraft aluminum dinghy was the boat I loved the most.

Funny how some memories stick with you. I remember the day they bought it used, from a man on the next bay. The details are sketchy, but I remember seeing it floating in the water, and I remember the excitement I felt. I now owned a boat, which I could row and in which I could carry several other passengers. I loved that little dinghy. Over the next thirty years, that boat would have five very different outboard motors. The first motor my father came home with was a small outboard that one of his friends had given him. It was an Italian motor called a Girelli, and it was probably one of the first jet-propelled outboards. The friend had bought it for duck hunting, because he thought that, being prop-less, it would be good in the weeds. It was not, and it was an entirely unsatisfactory motor on all counts. It was heavy, hard to start, loud, slow, and every so often let out a backfire that shot flames though the end of its pistol grip. I was afraid of that motor and it did not last long. The next motor was my favourite. It was a 1961(+-) Johnson 5 1/2HP and I owned that motor through most of my youth. It always started with one or two pulls, and with that motor I travelled hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles, through some very rough seas. Regrettably, it was stolen one summer many years ago. The next two motors were about as bad as that first Girelli. One, I bought on a whim from a used outboard shop. It was a 1953 5HP Scott Atwater “Bail-O-Matic” (see above photo) and it was a noisy bucket of bolts that spit oil, took about fifty pulls to start, if it started at all, and was loud enough to wake the dead. My friends all made fun of me, but I suppose that motor paid for itself in the amusing stories it generated. We nicknamed it “Bobo” which was an allusion to a joke about sodomy. My antique outboard phase was short-lived. The next outboard was a 1980s Evinrude 4HP which was an awful motor, had a poorly designed throttle lever, and a pull cord that periodically broke. I beat the crap out of that motor, sold it, then bought the motor I’ve had for the past fifteen years, a very reliable Yamaha 3hp.

Finally, the story of how the “Raging African Queen” came to be named. Over the years, the Feathercraft went by several names. When I was a boy, I named it “Wasp” after the aircraft carrier. It then became the “Asp”. Years later, and shortly before Bobo met its untimely demise (I did keep the engine cover which I now use for a unique lampshade), one of my artist friends, who happens to be gay, decided that he would paint a new name on the transom, in yellow Rust-o-leum. We’d been joking about renaming it “The African Queen”, and someone (not me) decided that “The Raging African Queen” was an even better name. Before I knew it, there was my artist friend Peter, painting that name on the back of the boat. Rust-o-leum is forever. The name, like the paint, stuck, and from then on, this legendary aluminium boat, which I’d now owned for over thirty years, and which was still providing us with hours of boating fun, became affectionately referred to as “the Queen”. A while ago, it too was stolen off our beach, and I was crestfallen. The idea that someone would steal a boat with that name painted on the transom is unbelievable to me, but someone did. We did some pretty silly things with and in that boat. I distinctly remember one night, with several other passengers aboard, probably somewhat intoxicated, driving that boat around half full of water. At one point, I had to jump out of the boat in waist deep water and rescue the motor before the ship went down. One of my favorite boat photos is a rear shot of the Queen, pulled up on shore, Bobo mounted on the transom, covered in seaweed, tar, and other lake grime. Boating with attitude. I keep hoping that someday the Queen will resurface, but now, these many years later, I think the prospects are slim. Funny, the things we hold dear in life.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheiimer Report 8/12/09

A week later, I’m still buzzing from the WNY Poker Run. I can still hear all of those high performance V-8’s roaring as fifty-one powerboats took off from Erie Basin Marina. I have not done all that much boating over the past fifteen years, but that event brought back some fond memories. Ever since I was a little boy, with my first outboard-powered dinghy, I’ve loved going out in a boat when the water was rough. I used to take that little dinghy out in all kinds of weather. The trick was getting out past the initial breakers without sinking the boat. After that, the sky was the limit. I think my friend Bob and I missed our calling, because we both love to go out on boats when the water is rough. Perhaps we would have made good offshore racers – it’s in our blood. Even in this last poker run, there were probably fifteen or twenty boats in our group which were faster and perhaps even more seaworthy than we were, but on the last leg of the run, when we headed out into the open lake towards Angola, I believe we passed all of those boats. And it wasn’t even that choppy on the lake.

When Bob and I were kids, he had a red 16’ fibreglass Starcraft with a 60 HP outboard, and I had a 13’ Boston Whaler powered by a 40HP outboard. I think Starcraft and Boston Whaler should have hired us to market their boats, because we definitely beat the living daylights out of those two boats over a series of summers. We would go out on Lake Erie when small craft warnings were in effect and jump waves. From time to time, we’d chase lake freighters to jump their wakes. Lake freighters are surprisingly fast when they get up to full speed, and they’re not easy to catch. That was an adrenaline rush because, once you’ve committed to a freighter wake jump, there’s no turning back. I remember several jumps wherein I knew I’d made a huge error in judgment, and it a strong testimonial to the seaworthiness of the Boston Whaler that I am alive and in one piece today. I should have been wearing a kill switch. I never got a photograph of my boat leaving the water, but I can tell you what it looked like seeing Bob’s boat jump. There were several occasions when the bottom of his outboard was several feet out of the water.

Over the years, we upgraded our boats, but our love of rough water remained about the same. We’ve toned it down a lot, because we now wish to avoid back problems. The perfect jumping weather was right after the wind had died down, and the rollers were a specific distance apart. I suppose it was a little like finding the perfect wave for a surfer. On that rare occasion when the wave patterns were perfect, one could, if one was a skilful driver, leap from wave to wave, get incredible air, and land softly in a trough. It was a little like flying. Of course, more often than not, conditions weren’t perfect, and the landings were bone-jarring. During my Boston Whaler days, I had many an unsatisfactory landing, and more than a few passengers still complain to this day about their uncomfortable rides in that boat.

I gave up jumping as a driver a long time ago, but still love the rough water. I now own a very seaworthy 20’ Hydra-Sport, but it’s not designed for “getting air”. Bob has had much better boats for that, and he has had many. The 27 foot Magnum he now owns is a great boat in rough water, but my favorite remains his 18 foot Donzi. Bang for your buck that boat was crazy fun in the rough water, and I remember more than one exhilarating ride off Point Abino, near my parents beach house on Lake Erie..

This Poker Run, albeit a relatively tame ride in comparison to some I’ve had, conjured up all the memories of the fun we’ve had over the years in our many boats. I miss the Raging African Queen. More about that in another report.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/4/09

Last Saturday morning, bright and early, my pal Bob picked me up at my parent’s house in Buffalo and we drove over to his boat house at Rich Marine on the Niagara River. There we picked up his classic, 27 foot 1972 Magnum Marine sedan powerboat and headed up the river to the Erie Basin Marina for the annual Western New York Offshore Powerboat Association Poker Run. For anyone not familiar with the event, poker run is not a race, but rather a course with a series of checkpoints. In the run I attended, there were five checkpoints, and the participants picked up a playing card at each checkpoint. At the end of the run, the drivers handed in their cards – they’re not allowed to look at those cards until they've handed them in -- and the driver with the best poker hand won a cash prize. Really, the event is an excuse for people with really big boats to enjoy them, in the company of other like-minded boaters. Bob has invited me to this event at least ten times, but circumstances always precluded my attendance. I’m so glad I was able to make it this year.

Thankfully, we had the best possible weather of the summer for boating. Sixty-five MPH in the rain is not a whole lot of fun on a boat, but Saturday was uncharacteristically (for this summer) sunny and warm. After we’d signed in at the marina and were clear on our course, it was back to our boats to head out to our first destination, down the river to Grand Island. There is nothing quite like to sound of fifty-one offshore power boats firing up their high performance V-8 engines all at the same time. The roar was music to my ears. We were divided into two groups, the under and the over 65MPH boats, and each group had a pace boat. Bob’s boat was in the slower group and our pace boat was named “Deeply Disturbed”. How appropriate for Bob and me! The fast boats left first, and it was a rush to watch those high powered floating rockets take off. Some of the boats in this club are capable of top speeds in the range of 140 MPH. Of course, with high performance V-8’s come high performance problems, and often one or more of these boats will experience some kind of engine problems. One of the guys in the club gets ribbed a lot because his enormous catamaran seems to have an inordinate amount of engine problems. The other guys in the club nicknamed him “Peace Bridge Joe” (Joe’s not his name) because his boat never seems to make it past the Peace Bridge and out into the open lake without experiencing some kind of engine problem. I think he was trouble free for this poker run. I’ve attended several offshore powerboat races wherein we were on a boat, moored and watching the race from a fair distance. This poker run was much more satisfying, because we were actually running along side a lot of these big boats, at least before they took off and left us in their wakes. For a powerboat enthusiast such as me, this was nirvana; I had an inside look at some very exotic offshore boats, and not just on a trailer in a boat show.

The run officially ended at a beach bar down in Angola, N.Y. on the south side of Lake Erie, where we all moored, had a bite to eat, and enjoyed the rest of the day before cruising back to Buffalo. The cruise back was excellent, with just enough lake chop to make the ride interesting, but not bone-jarring. After the run, the power boat club hosted a barbecue back at the Erie Basin Marina, wherein the winners were awarded their cash prizes. In keeping with the good vibes of the day, all cash prizes were donated to a favorite charity of the boat club, which enables disabled people to enjoy various boating events. Some people, mostly the idle rich, trail their big boats all over the country to attend these poker runs, and that certainly would be fun. I was in my glory just to have been a passenger on one of the handsome old Don Aronow classics. I had great fun tooling along at 50-65 MPH, watching the big boys blasting around much faster in their $500,000 Apaches, Fountains, and Cigarettes, while churning up the water on the open lake. Thank goodness I didn’t have to pay for the gas! Three days later I’m still buzzing from the adrenaline rush. Thank you Bob for including me in this outstanding event.
–Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.