This is a love story about Tom, Arlene and involving a guy named Red along with a hunk of granite.
Once upon a time in Gohere Bay, a lovely princess was held captive by her uncaring father on a rocky island in a fishing camp, filled with old men who smelled of fish bait, whiskey, tobacco and lake water...
That's the way Arlene saw her two week stay at the Camp. Two weeks away from the trappings of her father's financial success in the fishing industry. He was successful, respected and well-liked by most in the business. This trip was essentially another business trip with a little recreation thrown in. Arlene had little use for fishing. What teen girl really wants to sit in a boat for hours, eat greasy fried fish on a rocky shoreline and get back in the boat for the afternoon? After dinner, Arlene would chat up Willard's teenage sons to take her out water-skiing behind one of the camp fishing boats, but until then, she was a princess stuck in a wooden castle with one of the biggest moats in north america.
One evening, after dinner, as she made her way to the docks, wearing a tank suit and sneakers, she ran into Tom. Tall and gangly, he was not necessarily Prince Charming, but compared to the rest of the campers, he seemed to fit the bill. She learned he liked to ski as well as fish.
So Prince Charming and the Lovely Princess began to spend their evenings together, waterskiing, exploring the island and, yes, even fishing. But our Princess Arlene still spent lonely days in her log castle or walking the shores, waiting for Prince Tom to return from the sea (lake). In her boredom, she began chipping away at a large boulder outside her lonely cabin. Eventually, the initials appeared A + T. She thought nothing of it. After dinner Tom and Arlene, prince and princess, continued to spend time together. Willard's sons noticed it, the guests noticed it, even the guides noticed it. Which is what prompted Red to take the next step.
It was Friday evening and the guests piled on the pontoon barge with lawnchairs and buckets of minnows for an evening of crappie fishing along the weedbeds at the end of Gohere Bay. The guides had the weekend free for change-over and several of them would head off early to visit family or the taverns in town. This week, not one guide left early. They were all sitting on the dock looking busy when the barge returned. The men worked to stifle chuckles while the guests unloaded the barge and headed to cabins, some lingering on the dock for a final few casts. Finally, they heard the scream they all knew was coming. The Princess had returned to her tower to find the boulder sitting in the middle of her bed. Red had somehow carried the huge slab of granite into the cabin and placed it on the bed whose springs now sagged nearly to the floor.
The guides burst out laughing while the guests and crew ran to see what the matter was. They all came out shaking their heads. Red had 'disappeared' for the evening and it took three of the guides to get the rock out of the bed so they could roll it out the cabin door and, eventually, to a spot near the dock.
Some say the boulder is still there and that the carved initials can be faintly seen, though weathered by the elements of Gohere Bay.
As for Tom and Arlene...they're known to be seen every once in a while at Paradise Island.
C
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