An Old Hickory Odyssey
There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and that if you put an anarchist, a militant atheist, a left-wing nurse with a mobile petting zoo, and a devout Catholic father of 14 on an 80-foot houseboat, you’re going to need bail money or barbecue. Possibly both.
It was a furnace of a late July morning on Old Hickory Lake, the kind of day when the air feels like someone else’s breath. My wife Sarah—God bless that long-suffering woman—had packed us off with her usual combination of precision, pity, and quiet resignation. After 31 years of marriage, she’d long since not-quite accepted that I was part husband, part chaos agent.
“You and your misfit brigade better not die without bringing my Tupperware back,” she said as she kissed me on the cheek and handed me five coolers—three bursting with prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe, mini beef Wellingtons, bourbon-glazed salmon bites, deviled eggs with truffle oil, and desserts layered like international politics. The other two coolers sloshed with beer, bourbon, and enough mixers to open a bar in Belize.
We were headed out on The Floating Deficit, a Reagan-era 80-foot houseboat docked at Creekwood that belonged to a dentist friend who’d lost a poker game and part of his soul to me. In lieu of cash, he’d agreed to give me usage rights to this floating monument of questionable electrical wiring and faded leather upholstery. The microwave was bigger than most Nashville apartments and the stereo system could rattle your
