We lost interest in war with our neighbors when the Garrets and several other local guys, Tommy Tracy and Peter Oats, started a rock band. We were lucky nobody ever got hurt really bad. Those skirmishes eventually evolved into battles with BB guns. “Making war” from elevated forts in the trees was fun something exciting for boys to do. In turn, they lobbed pretty sizable rocks in our direction. We couldn’t even see their fort but we could certainly hear when our apples struck home. Dave came up with a big piece of tire inner tube and rigged a huge slingshot on top of our fort, and we were landing big green apples about a hundred yards over the trees to smack against the (much smaller) tree fort of our neighbors. We were kind of looked upon as “outsiders” because we moved around a lot. Those were several local guys of about the same age as us. We used that fort to make war with our next door neighbors of the time (the greatly-feared Garrett brothers). A bunch of us pitched in to help with that project. He built this fantastic, large 2-story tree fort back when he was in the 5th grade. All the way back to the third grade, Dave was building them underground when we did not have access to trees. Dave was a heck of a good fisherman during those early years, and I never met anyone who could spear fish better underwater.ĭuring the times we lived away from the water, Dave’s adventures were all about building forts. He never found the wreak but until this day, I’ll bet nobody has covered more of the bottom of Long Island Sound off of Waterford, Connecticut. Dave and one of his friends used that sled day-in and day-out, searching for a sunken wreak that was supposed to be located near where we lived in Waterford, Connecticut. I remember he built this tow-sled to drag behind one of his motor boats, which allowed him to get dragged around with the ability to control his depth so he could search the bottom for signs of wreckage or anything else interesting. He got himself SCUBA qualified when he was 15, and most of his adventures after that revolved around being underwater. Saving his money for something more substantial, Dave built his first motor boat in a friend’s garage the following winter – which vastly expended his reach out on the water. The following summer, he used that boat to start a lobster-trapping business in Long Island Sound. He devoted a winter to building his first row boat in the family’s living room when he was about 13 year’s old (we didn’t have a garage). When we lived near the water, Dave’s adventures nearly always revolved around boats. Our dad was a submarine commander during the cold war, so we were moving somewhere else every two years or so. During our growing-up years, Dave was “my younger brother.” Adventure has been Dave’s calling since his earliest days. That’s because I was born two years ahead of him. Many of the original pictures are included here.īrain: I have known my brother, Dave Mack, for his entire lifetime. My brother Brian presented the pictorial presentation to me as a Christmas present in 1989. Note: This story was originally formatted as a pictorial-diary to document and memorialize one of the greatest adventures in my life.
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