Boating’s in His Blood: Man, 94, Still Floats Down Lake He’s Loved for Half a Century
By Dan Huntley, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Jun. 7–LAKE WYLIE — Ray King has had a love affair with boats since he was a boy growing up along the banks of the Tennessee River.
It led him to eight years in the Navy across five oceans and a half-dozen ski boats over the years on Lake Wylie, where he has kept a weekend cabin for more than a half-century.
It was no surprise to friends and his wife, Marjorie, this spring when the 94-year-old skipper bought his most recent craft — a 20-foot pontoon boat.
“I can’t not have a boat on the water,” King said last Wednesday as we pushed off from his dock near Big Allison Creek and took a cruise in his newest water chariot.
King, who ran a Western Auto store on York’s North Congress Street for more than 30 years, said boats have always been an object of fascination for him.
“When you grow up by a river, you see boats as a way to travel and see the world,” he said. “I know I wouldn’t be where I am today if I’d never gone aboard a boat.”
In the 1920s, King and a friend built his first boat, a flat-bottomed Jon boat made of caulked slabs.
“We had no idea where we were really going other than south,” he said of the 150-mile voyage that took him from Knoxville, Tenn., to near the Alabama state line west of Chattanooga. “The hardest part was not having any decent maps and not knowing where the closest grocery stores were. We caught a lot of catfish and lived off that corn we’d get from cornfields near the river and roast over fires at night.”
During the height of the Depression and seeking work in the 1930s, King joined the Navy. He worked on destroyers and personnel carriers as a master chief gunnery mate in the North Atlantic and South Pacific. One of the ships he served on, the USS Louisville, provided critical gun support in the battle for Guadalcanal. He was decorated with eight medals.
After World War II, King came to South Carolina to work for an uncle, hauling produce from South Florida.
In the late 1940s, King had a wooden-hulled boat with an inboard engine he’d anchor near Joe Jones’ fish camp at what his now River Hills.
In 1952, he got a Duke Power lease on about three acres of land on Lake Wylie near what is now the Catawba Nuclear Station. Before the creation of the lake in 1904-05, maps show that a ferry operated from King’s property to what is now the Tega Cay Marina. He says the ferry’s iron foundation is still visible under his dock, and the ferryman’s house is nearby.
In the mid-1950s, King recalls, there were few boats on Wylie — mostly small, flat-bottomed fishing skiffs and a few “speed” boats — and most were wood-hulled.
King says he became one of the first distributors on Wylie for fiberglass/epoxy kits, which allowed boaters to convert their wooden-hull boats, which require heavy maintenance, to fiberglass.
In the 1960s, King bought one of the first high-performance ski boats on the river, he said, often taking his son, Ray King Jr., for rides.
“It had a Hemi-Chrysler engine and, man, that thing could fly out there,” King said as he gazed across the lake, which was already beginning to fill with boaters on a weekday morning.
Part of King’s love of boats is a legacy that has been passed down to his son, who lives at Carolina Beach, N.C.
“Yes, that’s where I got my start in boats, at Lake Wylie in one of Dad’s ski boats,” said Ray King Jr., who was cruising recently aboard his sailboat at the Outer Banks.
Tell Us About Your Lake Stories
Today’s feature kicks off a series of stories about lake life that will appear occasionally in the Neighbors of Gaston & Lincoln section.
Have you got a good story to share or a cool idea for other lake lovers — a barefoot skier or one of the original river rats who has had a place on the river since the ’60s? Send ideas to gaston@charlotte observer.com. Include your name and a way to contact you in case we have a question.
Contact Dan Huntley: (803) 327-8508
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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