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83 sounds right....... early 80s anyway. Maybe 80-81. We used to build rafts and compete...... man,... thats was some fun. If i remember right, Florence city was afraid of lawsuits..... from participants getting hurt. That was one reason it got canned. The guy that was kind of over it ran a graphics business. The TD had a story back in the summer about his house/woodworking project.... i cant remember his name. Its one of those things if i heard it i'd say "yeah thats it." Styrofoam was king when building our rafts.... the tricky part was making it over the dam..... and sometimes you had to pick your raft up lol...... the water does get shallow in spots.
ECM had a HUGE raft in 84 in it,we used tractor tubes tied them together and then tied a huge canvas to the tubes,around 30 of us camped down at the creek the night before working on getting that monster put together,i think we ended up with 80ish people on it,and yup i was on it,sitting right up front! that day was a blast! i still have the newspaper photos from it!
Yeah, I remember those giant pieces of styrofoam. We would go camping at Riverton Rose Trail and take the remains of our raft. There are many pictures of me floating on a hunk of styrofoam spray-painted camoflague. In retrospect, the styrofoam and other debris probably wasn't good for the creek. Where did those big pieces of styrofoam come from, anyway?
The day of the race in '79 I got up,read about it, called my best friend and we went to work. All we had was a 4 x 8 plywood, a tractor tube, 1 lawn chair, 1 small Rebel flag and a cooler of brew. After 3 holes were drilled, a cord was tied on each end and the flag mounted, the cruiser was christened.
I think we were 107 out of 119 or so, but who cared.
One of the most memorable times of my life!
quote:
Originally posted by Eye-gor:
LOL! There were five of us kids and my parents took us to Opryland and made us all where Cypress Creek Raft Race T-shirts so they could keep up with us. Didn't they have a watermelon seed spitting contest there, too? I think my little brother may have won that one time.


Yes they did and it was a blast itself!
And I wore my yellow tee (with man,dog,raft & flag on it- I think) until it tore to shreds...
My dad was in the first race which had 14 rafts, which he thinks started in 75 or 76, him and his 3 buddies came in 13th place just ahead of a group of sorority girls from a college in Mississippi.He thinks the organizers name might have been Ronald Wade. He was in one more race a couple of years after that one.In probably the last race Myself and about 16 of my buddies raced one year on 4 truck inner tubes and two pieces of plywood, only one tube was still inflated at the end with most of us swimming and walking way before we reached the waterloo road bridge. I was about 14 at the time. My dad said the race was canceled because the city built the weir dam (without proper permission), which made it difficult to pass. I remember almost drowning when we got to the dam as all the rafts behind us stated piling up and if you went into the water there wasn't much room for you to come back up.
quote:
Originally posted by DeepFat:
Wouldn't it be cool if people just sorta...... showed up..... with rafts........ oh, say on July 4th or something.... at Cypress Creek........

Not that it would be organized or anything. No.


Just a... coincidence.


Yeah, that's it. A coincidence. That's the ticket.


DF


LOL! Do they have that dam near the water treatment place blocked off now? We went over that in a canoe and came upon a snake dangling from a branch that nearly fell in our canoe.
There've been several drownings at that spot.
The Raft Race was organized by the Wade Family. They owned a business on south Wood Avenue named Graphic Communications. The organizers were Gerald (father) and Robin (son). Gerald passed away a few years ago. As far as I know Robin is still here in the area. They quit having the raft race because of the impossible cost of liability insurance. It's really a shame because it was great fun and a teriffic event for the area. Their dog was named Coober Peedy after some little village in Australia. Anyway, the first dog to finish every year won the Coober Peedy Memorial Award. I was able to participate several times and it was a blast every time. The best I ever finished was 5th. It's a shame they stopped having it

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