June 8, 2013 Lake Houston Meet
It was a great day for a meet at Lake Houston. See the photo Gallery at: http://www.texaschapteraomci.com/gallery/1814-2/ . John Platou, Jeff Workman and Adam Finn prepared a fine wet meet event for us all. We had a great turn out with 40+ people including 15 members, family and guest along with 12 member boats. Adam and Clinton Russell served up a tasty lunch of grilled jumbo hotdogs and Suzie Finn’s Excellent Chili. Fixin’s included chips, watermelon, cookies and drinks – a very good deal for the donation fare.
There was lots of runnin’ and funnin’ there. Members new and old made the scene. We picked up two new members, Claude Anello from Houston and Nick and Lena Dimaio from Louisiana. Nick has a great collection of primarily 3 hp motors across many names. The boy that was the winner of the “Kids Build A Boat” at Keels and Wheels came with his dad. Jeff Workman gave the boy a ride in his 8 ft Wild Child powered by an early 1950’s Johnson 10HP. 
Members I was able to recall included:
Adam and his buddy Clinton Russell brought the Grillin Fixins and Adam’s 1955 Deluxe Runabout Feather Craft with Mark 25.
Bob and Brenden Macaluso brought their Chris Craft inboard “Mahogany Mistress” and several motors to run.
Ed and Sheila Bachman brought their pristine Yellow Jacket fresh from Keels and Wheels as well as another very clean ’57 Johnson Javelin.
Ed Slominski brought his Thompson lapstrake with a nice 1959 Mark 58A.
John and Cindy Slator brought a truck load of nice motors to sell of which John Platou bought a clean Evinrude 15 HP and Evinrude 5-1/2 HP from the group of motors.
The whole Oncken clan was there including Tom, Mike, wives, kids and grandkids.
Joe McCauley, wife Cornelia and son Finn brought an ’86 bass boat with a 1986 3 cyl. Johnson 60 (at the propshaft, is the old 70 at the crank) rebuilt as 75 hp (Stinger powerhead) – per Joe’s TechSpeak.
Frank Simon brought his rig with the “Mark 29” and his cool custom center steering seat-kinda like riding a jet ski with an aluminum boat built all around it.
Jeff Workman recently purchased Jack Stevens’ Glen-L rig with the 1960 Johnson 40. Jeff also gave the small kids some rides in the Wild Child powered by an early ‘50s 10 hp Johnson.
David Coffey along with his dad, David Sr. brought a ’55 Feather Craft with a 12 hp Sea King.
Di and Suzie Johnson brought their ’48 Thompson/Speeditwin rig along with granddaughter Sadie.
Dan Peoples came with his inflatable dinghy powered by a late 1940’s Johnson 5HP.
Andrew Crispin showed up later in the afternoon and ran his great looking red and white 1962 Glastron rig with original 1962 Johnson 75 HP that he bought from Meatball at one of the past LBJ meets.
Faces in the crowd also included Dennis Schmidt and guest Don Driscoll, Bruce Bratton, Mark Betner, Mark Schmit and Gary Keeney.
John Platou and Alan Bischof set up a small motor wrench-bending clinic for the youngsters, which held some keen youthful interest.
We even had two guest outboarders from the Houston Police Lake Patrol bring their official patrol rig and join us for lunch. And…we all enjoyed some stress-free, ‘non-questioned’ classic boating from these guys.
The runs made before lunch were in calmer waters. After lunch the fleet launched for a guided (by John Platou) lake run. Mostly this went well except for Di Johnson’s Thompson. The 65 year-old boat didn’t much like the big cross waves, popped a below waterline seam and shipped some water on board. Then his trusty Speeditwin balked and backfired and set Di up for a tow back to port behind David Coffey Jr assisted further on by John Platou. Thanks guys!! Why does the electric aux bilge pump work ok on the trailer but not on the water? Also there was a post-run mini-workshop conducted by Frank Simon for Di explaining the reason for the backfiring Speeditwin. Waaaaay too much spark advance. Dang spark lever must have got away from him while yanking on the manual bilge pump.
