Ogden’s Old Swift Building - A Few Boat Shop Memories
It was 1975, I think, I was a little kid and it was a perfect summer night out with the family. Little sister Shell, Mom, Dad at the wheel and me just outside Ogden on old Highway 89. Suddenly my dad lets loose with some colorful and determined words and our old boat-of-a-car is flipping around. “Cuss-cussing thieves….” I was too young to recognize the color but put it together that the people we were chasing had stolen a jon boat or two from my dad’s boat shop and he was going to get these cussing yea-whos. We didn’t. Boat-cars with kids in the back are not nearly as fast as red-neck built pick-em-up trucks. Shortly after this my dad’s boat shop got two new fixtures, Killer and Wolf. The boat shop was located in Ogden’s old Swift Building complex and protecting it simply required doberman pinscher-level security. Each night at lockup the two dogs were turned loose within the property—they loved it, the freedom and their job. It was then I noticed that dogs smile.
The boat shop was not around that long, I think 1974 through 1980. The economic recession of the late ‘70s combined with the lengthy 24th Street viaduct replacement were not kind to boat sales. But while brief, it was a thrill a minute and full of characters. It birthed a brilliantly competitive region of APBA Comp Jet boat teams and drives, and was the well from which two B.A.S.S. bass clubs would spring. It was also the beginnings of my love for speed, loud sounds, entertainment and intensely interesting people. Up until hanging around my dad’s buddies I really couldn’t have been bothered with people. But the likes of Dan Miller (the last of the real mountain men in the Ogden Hole), Earl and Annie Heninger, Adrian Cooper, Mike and Mary Robinson, John Dunkley, Sherlen “Sherl” Dicky (who built the revolutionary Rutan experimental composite airplane in his garage, I think it is still in service even today) and many others. These were very driven and dense personalities. There was also this punk kid outlier, my future waterski coach/buddy Mark Parker; too young to be part of the circle but obsessed with boats and “walking on water.”
My dad has always been driven. We didn’t see him much during this time, likely one of the reasons why my sister Shell and I loved race weekends and fishing tournaments—the fishing were the less intense but no less competitive. The few weeks before a race we really didn’t see our dad, not even for dinner, not unless mom would take us down to the boat shop to get a glimpse. I vividly remember one night right before we were headed to the nationals in California, seeing the motors completely disassembled and spread across the work benches, motor-builder and fellow racer Sherl confidently and resolutely focused on not just getting them back together but in making them better and faster. It seemed to me like an impossible task, just to get them back together at all let alone overnight and winning races.
[Boat shop photos to be posted later, I need to round them up from my dad and sister. Photos that follow are the last days before demolition began. This first photo, the waterski tournament flier was the last thing left from the old boat shop.]
