The Prairie Schooners

The 42-ft. cabin cruiser had enough electronic equipment to fit out a small space satellite: hifi, stereo, TV, RDF, ship-to-shore radio, as well as refrigerator, push-button electric anchor, three-ton central air-conditioning unit, and separate power plant. Bored by the waste of time involved in troll fishing, its skipper located fishing holes with his electronic depth gauge, then sportingly set out bait and hook. Sleek and awesome as a jet fighter, as it nosed through the same waters, was a 16-ft. home-built craft powered by a 450-h.p. sports-car engine. "I wanted a hot boat,'' said its owner. "This engine was souped up until it can't be no more without blowing up." Near by cruised a soft, inboard on whose stern was mounted a mink-lined doghouse, home for the pink toy poodle of its master's pink-haired wife.

These three assorted craft patrolling the waters of Lake Texoma last week belonged to the Texas navy, fastest-growing sport fleet in the country. A late starter in the nationwide boating boom, Texas is now intent on becoming the top boating state in the U.S. Though national marine sales are down 14% from last year, boat sales in Texas are up 42%, outboard motor sales 55%. One out of every eight Texas families now owns a boating rig (national average: one family out of twelve).

Improbably Popular. Cashing in on the boating boom, Texas developers last week formally opened a huge fresh water marina on Lake Texoma, a 95-mile-long finger-shaped artificial lake north of Dallas that has 1,250 miles of shoreline. The all-steel, $1,600,000 Eisenhower Marina now has 400 slips finished, will soon have 200 more available. Monthly slip rental is $1.25 per boat foot. The developers look to a total of 2,000 slips in the marina, a conservative figure since the lake already has 8,400 boats registered, with another 8,000 hauled in on trailers every weekend. Each slip has a fresh-water tap and a metered electrical outlet for the air-conditioning units that most of the bigger boats carry.

Boating is so popular in Texas because it is so improbable. Although Gulf Coast residents have long had access to water, most other Texans until fairly recently have not been able to find enough water to skip a stone. But in the past 20 years, government dams and flood-control projects have created scores of man-made lakes that dot Texas' parched and sweltering flatlands (there are only about half a dozen natural lakes in Texas). Because of Texas' excellent, uncrowded highways, distance is no object. One industrialist trailed his cabin cruiser behind his car on a 1,000-mile business trip so that he could get in a day's fishing on the Gulf; Abilene sailors think nothing of trundling their Snipes 180 miles to a regatta in Dallas. Asked to explain his booming sales, a boat dealer in the wastelands of west Texas replied: "We've got very good water near by. It's only 90 miles away in the north and 125 miles in the southwest."

Plugs & Hooks. Experienced boatmen, however, tend to view the Texas mariner sourly. "He's a damned cowboy, that's what he is," says one. "He's got a beer can in one hand, the throttle in the other, and he doesn't know the rules of the road." Hot-rodding across the water, many young boatmen have towed water skiers into stumps or other boats; one small lake near San Antonio noted one death per week last summer. At Lake Lavon, near Dallas, speed demons and water skiers thundered down on so many defenseless fishermen that a virtual state of war existed. Shaken, splashed and enraged, the fishermen took to throwing heavy plugs and razored hooks at the water skiers; driven beyond restraint, one fisherman stood in his boat with a shotgun and threatened to blow the next boat that rushed him right out of the water.

But other Texas boatmen are never threatened by such violence. So enticing is marina living that they never leave the slip all weekend long, as they sun on the boat deck, swim off the stern, and cook in the galley. To add to their comfort. Lake Texoma port authorities have come up with a novel, congenial, and undemanding way of fishing: the "Fisharena." This is a huge building built out over the lake, with a circular hole cut into the floor so that 500 anglers can fish the waters below at one time. In true Texas style, the Fisharena is heated in the winter, air-conditioned in the summer.

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