| My Dad had a sand and gravel wash plant. It was
a fun place to grow up for a boy- lots of big equipment and the biggest
sand pile you could imagine. My Uncle Mickey was partners with my dad in
the sand and gravel plant. Uncle Mickey was usually at the sand pit, and
when I was there, he would always take me on deliveries with him; and that
meant stopping for a hot dog, but that’s another story.
Uncle Mickey had a 1932 Chris Craft 18 foot speedboat, with a Crown "C" Chrysler engine. He had named the boat, “Mi Girl”*, after his three daughters. Later the name was changed to “My Girl.” He originally kept it at Greenwood Lake, NY, but later moved it to Ocean Gate, NJ, and gave it to my brother. We had a summer house in Ocean Gate and I spent my summers
there growing up. The sand pit was closed on weekends and my father and
brother Frank would drive to Ocean Gate on Friday nights. On Saturday
mornings my brother would often take us out on the boat, swimming and water
skiing. Frank had made an aquaplane for me, painted bright red, which I
loved to ride.
The Chris Craft had a 6 cylinder, flathead engine with 6 volt system. The engine was old, but had been rebuilt, and the boat could fly, 36 miles per hour, amazing in the early 1950’s. When I sat in the back seat, a spray of water would hit me in the face. It was great fun. The 6 volt system often made it hard to start. Having access to very large 6 volt batteries from the bulldozer and shovel at the sand plant, my brother would bring down a fully charged battery and put it in the boat on Saturday morning before we went out. Now these batteries were huge and very heavy. Watching my brother carry the battery from the car to the dock and then stepping from the dock into the boat, I was always amazed neither he nor the battery ended up in the water!
Foster Reed was the boy in the other 12 foot boat who had picked me up. He stayed with me that day and helped me get the boat up on the beach and the engine back to my house. We washed out the engine with fresh water and after a lot of cranking finally got it started and running again. Now I had to tell my dad when he came down on Friday night. Foster and I became fast friends from that day on. We would go out in our boats together; some days I would ride with him, and some days he would ride with me. Foster and I were never much for rules, and never wore life jackets. In fact most times we just took a floatable seat cushion. One day, for reasons that Foster and I to this day never figured out, we decided to put on the real life jackets; the orange kapok ones that were bulky, took both oars, an anchor, and even got a fire extinguisher from Foster’s uncle's boat. The gods were smiling down on us that day and as it happened the Coast Guard was patrolling. We got pulled over for a courtesy inspection. The Guardsman was so impressed that he wrote in big letter across the top of the report, “no violations found”. And on the bottom he wrote, “Excellent seamanship”. He gave us a copy and we were off, just waiting long enough for us to be out of range to burst out laughing. That Friday night I showed the report to my dad. He was so impressed, he had it laminated. I never had the heart to tell him the truth that Foster and I were just being silly that day and any one of a hundred other days we would have come home with a bunch of violations.
During the winter months, we kept the Christ Craft in the “4 car garage” behind 241 Merritt Ave. There was also a large cherry tree there with a branch positioned just right to have a hoist and pull engines out of cars. And so, I backed the boat under the tree and out the engine and transmission came. I then put the boat back in the garage; I had a lot of work to do. My plan was to get a small, modern, 12 volt, V8 and convert it to marine use, and put it in the boat. Lehman Marine Manufacturing, which made kits and directions to convert and install v8 engines in boats, had a show room in Linden, NJ. I drove down, looked everything over, and came home with a set of directions, no parts, just directions. I would have to work every hour I could at Warren Spiel’s Esso** station to save enough for the exhaust headers, water pump, manifold, and transmission that would be needed, not to mention the actual engine. As was usually the case with me, I never asked nor discussed my idea; I just started working on it. One day when I went to the boat to get some measurements, the garage door was open and my dad was looking down into the boat where the engine should have been. He just turned and looked at me. I showed him my plans, the directions I had gotten, and the brochures for the conversions parts. He looked up at me and simply said, “Borg Warner is a good transmission,” and walked away. I had expected Dad to shake his head and tell me I was crazy. Later, I walked home, still expecting to get a lecture from my dad, but he wasn’t there. As the time passed, and I waited for my dad to come home, I kept thinking I should just go back and put the original engine back. After all, it really wasn’t mine. About two hours later, Dad returned. “Go out and unload the pick up,” he barked at me. I had no clue. “Unload what?” Dad just looked at me. Ok, Ok, so I grabbed the keys to the pickup and went out side. In the back of the pick up was a 283 Chevy V8 short block
on a skid, and a pair of heads for it.
I spent the rest of the winter putting together the engine with the conversion parts and modifying the main stringers in the boat to install the new motor mounts. When it came time to put the engine in, my dad came over and gave me a hand. In went the new engine with little problems. We hooked up a garden hose to the inlet side of the water pump and started her up. The engine came to life with a roar. The exhaust headers and exhaust were water cooled and the water also muffled some of the sound of the engine, but when we first fired it up, the headers and exhaust were dry, letting the full sound of the V8 out. It had all come together. I spend the next few weeks hooking up the shift and power controls, mounting the accessories and installing new gauges in the dash. Now just to wait for the summer and the yacht club to open so we could put the boat in the water and give her a run! The week finally came; Dad and I drove down the shore with the boat to launch her. We put her in the water and parked the trailer. The new engine started right up and for only the second time in my life, I saw my father get in a boat. I cast off the line and eased her into forward. The transmission was smooth, very smooth, and the engine just purred. Except for one small problem; we were going backwards instead of forward. Oh darn, had I put the control cable in backwards? I opened the hatch and checked; nope, controls were correct. But backwards was forward and forward was backwards. Then my father looked at me and smiled. You know, one of those I know something you don’t smiles. “The engine rotates opposite the old one, so the propeller is wrong,” he said. After a few minutes I realized he was right. It meant the prop was the wrong direction for this motor. I would need a new propeller. We took it out for a short spin, in reverse, and then I drove the boat to the Yacht club where I put her in the slip for the night. The next day I got a new propeller and I was off to a good summer, or was I? After letting the engine break in for a period, it was time to open her up and see what she could do. The boat moved out smartly and we were flying. Then it happened; the engine temperature started climbing and I had to shut her down. As the boat came to idle, the engine immediately came back to normal operating temperature range. Hrm. So I gave it another try, with the same results happening. Maybe the water intake in the bottom of the boat was partially blocked with seaweed or something. So I turned off the engine and over the side I went. There was nothing blocking the intake. I climbed back on board and tried once more; same results. I could run about three-quarters throttle but that was all. Now as it happened, my brother, who was now living in Illinois, was back visiting and he decided to come see the boat and go for a ride with me. While we were out, I told him about my overheating problem. He opened the engine hatches and told me to open it up full throttle. After a minute or so, the engine started getting hot and he told me to shut it down. After looking around for a while and letting the engine cool down, he told me to try it again. This time Frank stuck his head over the side. I had no idea what he was doing. He waved at me to shut it down. Then came the smile, you know, that same one my dad had when he knew something I didn’t. “The boat is coming up higher in the water than it did before, and you are lifting the water pick up out of the water at full speed,” he told me. Relocating the water pickup farther back would solve the problem. So now I was off to a fun summer (or not). I had undertaken the new engine because I was tired and embarrassed of getting towed back in. I had made my self a promise never to be towed back again. With that promise in mind, one day I was cruising down the bay when it happened, the engine just quit. It would not restart. I opened the hatch; all was normal. It had to be something else. I checked for spark and there was none. Upon pulling the distributor cap off, I saw the problem. The contact tip on the breaker points had come off. This boat wasn’t going anywhere under its own power with broken points. I sat and sulked for a while. Now I like sulking, it gives you time to think. I was NOT going to get towed back in. I threw out the anchor, left the boat and swam ashore. I was a strong swimmer and the half mile to the dock was not difficult for me. I walked down town to the local gas station and they had a set of points. I wrapped the points in some saran wrap, put them in my pocket and swam back to the boat. I installed the points, just got them close enough for the engine to start, pulled up the anchor, and drove the boat home. And so began the second life of “My Girl”.
Years later there would be a “My Girl Too” named after her. It was
also a Chris Craft, which my children and I would simply call “The Chris”.
~Joseph DiMaggio
Mar. 24, 2012 • The original name was always a little doubtful to me. My father, my brother and Uncle Mickey all told me different stories about the name. To my memory Uncle Mickey had named it after his three daughters.
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