Oh, the seventies growing up, so much to do and a teenager like me enjoying every moment of it. There were the bicycle rides to Lost Lake, a shallow pond within an oasis of trees, mostly Alder and Russian Olive. Not far from there was the old Tri-City Raceway, a quarter mile tri-oval track for wannabe stock car drivers. Outside Benton City was the POW camp, now just a dozen or so cement slabs where German prisoners of war were housed, and where me and my friends went to learn how to drink keggar beer, most likely Lucky Lager, and got sick.
And finally, the ultimate rite of teenage passage, the unboat race held this time of year on the Yakima River when the spring runoff made the river and the Horn Rapids Dam most enjoyable. Unboats are a category of floatation devices that aren’t watercraft. Everything else was fair game: innertubes aligned and tied together with ropes or twine, rubberized rafts, homemade rafts like Jim and Huck Finn used to go down the Mississippi, a bathtub, and anything else one’s imagination desires.
My first experience of this “race,” was when we came visiting Dad in 1971 before moving there permanently. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment that was above the Yakima River in West Richland. At that time that town had barely over a thousand residents. In five months, which will increase by five.
But anyway, the race that we were more curious about than devoted fans of. Like you, I had no idea because I’ve never heard of it. It was a local thing apparently and not really organized in any official capacity. Later on, I hypothesized with my equally inebriated friends that this race was probably given birth to and christened at a similar keggar at the POW camp where we were partying.
It fitted into a typical late sixties, early seventies great ideas that may have taken hold except the original organizers apparently sobered up by 1980 and that event never happened again. Considering the clear and obvious danger involved, not to mention most of these participants were probably feeling no pain when they launched their unboat craft from the boat launch just down river from the POW camp, down river and over Horn Rapids Dam. After that, the race itself was more of a party that amounted to shirtless young men or teenage boys frolicking on their tubes or rafts, teenaged girls wearing bikinis or bras with Daisy Duke shorts or halter tops. All had various long hair styles of the time. Beer and other alcoholic beverages passed freely amongst friends as well as those funny cigarettes.
Anyway, we watch this “race” appear by where Dad’s apartment was and we hooted and hollered with the crews on their Unboats. At least one or two of these participants mooned us with their white cheeks proudly displayed. Mom wasn’t fast enough to shield my seven-year-old-sister’s eyes from that. “Mom, he’s showing his butt,” she exclaimed between giggles. I saw a couple teenager girls pull their t-shirts up from another raft showing young and perky breasts that I had never seen before. Of course, Dad just winked at me and grinned.
The other night in between sleeps and fully awake I recalled that time and wondered if such an event still existed. Sadly, as I mentioned earlier, 1979 was the last year this Regala occurred not to be repeated ever again. I’m sure now that it’s been over fifty years since that first race, those original stoners at the POW camp are now retired, on walkers and gambling away their children’s inheritances at the local tribal casino if they aren’t already pushing daisies at the local cemetery.
Jerry Schellhammer 