Saturday, August 8, 1998

Unpretentious charmer's craft recognized

By Rheta Grimsley Johnson

Every now and then in this business you meet someone and know it won't be the last time you'll hear about him.

Dale Calhoun, an unpretentious charmer who builds boats (and portable storage sheds) at Reelfoot Lake, Tenn., just won one of the prestigious National Heritage Awards and the $10,000 that goes with it. When I read about his good fortune in the newspaper, I had to call and congratulate him.

"So you'll get to work on your boats full time for a while?" I asked. When I interviewed him five years ago he was working a security job at a Tennessee prison, as well as building boats and sheds. Each boat takes about 40 hours, which didn't leave Dale much fishing time.

"Well, I reckon so," he answered in his modest way. He was more interested in talking about his upcoming 10 days in Washington, about the balls and parties and fancy dinners. Right now he is suffering from the shingles and desperately wants to get well before the trip.

"With shingles, you don't feel bad, except for the hurting," he says, a typical Dale explanation.

Dale's father and grandfather before him built the cypress, oak-ribbed boats. If you love small boats like I do, it's a boat you'll notice -- and never forget.

They are peculiar and functional, with flat bottoms and bow-facing oars. Pointed like a canoe, designed to jump the stumps of Reelfoot Lake, the design is especially good for fishing or hunting ducks.

But the practical boat with the inboard, lawn mower-style motor is now considered folk art. The same boats Dale first built at age 14 that sold for $200 in the 1950s are important now, for heaven's sake.

It amazes Calhoun that the Reelfoot Stump-Jumper has become a collectors' item, the subject of several TV documentaries and a World's Fair exhibition. He has customers as far away as Lake Tahoe and Cuba; there is a Dale Calhoun boat in the Smithsonian.

And there are thousands of the stump-jumpers plying the shallow waters of Reelfoot, a lake created by earthquakes in 1811-12 and teeming with life. Some of the boats are 50 years old. They don't rot. It's not hard to figure why the Calhouns use cypress when you consider that hollowed cypress logs were used to make New Orleans' first water lines.

"You have to be 2 years old to operate one of the boats," Dale says. The inboard is attached with a shaft to the propeller. The rudder, joined by a long wire to a tiller, tilts when it hits a stump. To steer left, you push the tiller forward; to go right push back. There is no transmission, no idle or reverse.

"You better have the boat pointed where you want it to go once you start the engine," Dale saUnpretentious charmer's craft recognizedys.

I am proud of my Georgia canoe from Winder, and my friend Mike Martin once built me a perfect red skiff that remains dear. But I have to say, the Reelfoot Stump-Jumper is the most interesting boat I've ever seen, give or take a funky Louisiana houseboat or two.

Dale doesn't have to measure his cuts or look at a blueprint, which never existed. His grandfather Boone, a blacksmith, learned the design from a man named Milligan, who got it from a 19th-century innovator, Herman B. Young.

You can see one of Dale's stump-jumpers at the Chattanooga aquarium, or, if you have more time, at his Reelfoot shop. It's across the road from the lake, and right next door to a no-frills fish house and travel court called Boyette's.

If you're in the mood for fine art, step next door to the boat shed. Sometimes those things next door we take for granted are great.

King Features Syndicate