"CANOE LIVERY OWNER GOES WITH FLOW"
Published, in edited form, in the Indianapolis Star (StarSouth), Aug. 6, 2003 ©
Carol Carr pulls her metallic-blue kayak out of the shimmering water and onto the landing beach at Blue's Canoe Livery near Taylorsville, the corks that dangle from strings attached to her floppy hat bobbing around like pesky insects.
The Edinburgh woman is literally all smiles at the end of her leisurely three-hour trek down the Driftwood River. "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" she asks, without expecting an answer, as she lays a paddle and small cooler down on dry ground.
She is greeted by Jeff Blue, a tall man in blue shorts and gray T-shirt whose face, arms and legs have the deep red-clay coloring of someone who spends a lot of his summer days outdoors. He helps Carr pull her kayak ashore and start the process of storing it until the next time she wants to paddle down the meandering river.
Unlike most of Blue's customers, Carr, 59, owns her own kayak and makes traversing the Driftwood a frequent recreation. "Because it's as close as you can get to nature," she explains. "It's a beautiful river, and it's very relaxing."
The unusual-looking hat is just a practical novelty. "It started out as a joke," she says, with a laugh that swims out from under the cork-festooned headwear, "but it keeps the bugs off your neck."
The rest of the canoes, kayaks and rubber rafts that will appear around the bend in the jade-green river on this, one of the best days of a rain-plagued summer, are ones Blue has rented to casual paddlers out for a pleasant departure from whatever passes for routine.
"Most of them are just out for a scenic ride down the river," Blue suggests with a knowing smile that makes a small wave under his salt-and-pepper moustache.
In its way, Blue's life has been like that, a scenic ride down a waterway with a few uncharted turns that came ashore at the canoe livery and campgrounds he has operated just east of Camp Atterbury for the past 21 years.
Back on the sun porch of the cabin that serves as the office for his riverside business, Blue settles his 6-6 frame into a cushioned lounge chair, looking more like a former Boston Celtics' draft pick than the captain of an armada of more than 200 watercraft, a small fleet of old school buses painted bright blue and camping grounds for up to 200 campers.
The part about being a Celtics' draft choice actually is part of his resume. The Bainbridge native played on the Butler University team that went to the NCAA tournament in 1962, then, two years later, was drafted by the storied NBA team.
An ankle injury beached that career choice for Blue, so he turned to the insurance business. The river of his life then flowed smoothly into a position as a personnel director at Cummins Engine Co. in Columbus.
Then, in 1982, his lifeboat steered off into a new stream altogether. "Probably middle-age crazy," is how he describes the cause of his unexpected change of course, with a tall laugh. "I just decided I wanted to do something different.
"I just said, 'I don't think I want to do this the rest of my working career.'"
So, the former Eagle Scout left a good-paying job in industry in search of a new livelihood. "I just reached a point where I wanted a total career change," he relates, "something dealing with the public, something in the recreational or entertainment business."
He landed his career at an abandoned campground, the former home of Heflen's Camp, which was "mostly horseweed and some old rotting cabins" when he first set foot on it. He stocked it with 30 canoes and, with the help of his wife, Marlene, and their two children, Matt and Tahcia, along with a handy friend, Russ Cochran, set sail on the new business venture.
"I did this as a business, not because I was an avid canoer," says the lanky man with dark-brown hair that has been swiped on both sides with coats of gray. "I had done a lot of canoeing in the Scouting program, and I'm an outdoorsman, a horse owner and used to rodeo a little bit, so I decided, 'I think I'll do that.'"
The venture almost ran aground right away. "The first summer was very dry - they said the driest summer since 1936 - and I thought the river was just going to quit running," Blue recalls.
"I thought, 'My gosh, what have I done?'"
The new business stayed afloat, however, thanks in large part to the income of Blue's wife, a math teacher at Columbus North High School. "That was maybe the difference between survival and not surviving," he admits.
The initial rough waters eventually smoothed out. "It took four or five years, a typical small-business startup," Blue reports. "Little by little, we got bigger and bigger each year."
Now, from April to October, Blue and a crew of six drivers and two office workers keep running hourly busloads of customers up to boat ramps at Camp Atterbury and at Furnas Mill Dam to launch into their choice of 6-, 8- or 12-mile journeys down the tree-lined and wildlife-friendly river, as well as accommodating individual and group campers and storing watercraft for people like Carr.
Blue's wife still keeps the books, and son Matt oversees the campgrounds and even performs on weekends with the local band he is part of. Like the river lazing past the livery site, music runs through the Blue family, too, with the senior Blue also playing guitar and singing frequently at the nearby Little Nashville Opry.
But the biggest branch of Blue's life still flows alongside the stretch of river he oversees from the sun deck or an old picnic table behind the office that gives him a panoramic view of the Driftwood. He still canoes occasionally, and he and Cochran often head upstream in the livery's jon-boat to check on the canoers or clear debris from the river.
"I've got to say that I still look forward to going to work after 21 years," Blue says, smiling again. "I couldn't always say that when I was in industry.
"We get the bills paid, and it does OK, but this is not the kind of thing that makes you rich, except in your lifestyle maybe, but not in money."
That said, Blue bounds up from his chair and strides back down to the landing beach, where a rubber raft has come ashore, carrying Freddie Cox, a U.S. Marine from Greenwood, and his four daughters to the end of their river adventure. "It was beautiful," Cox, 37, says with a suntanned smile as he pulls his white football jersey back on.
"I never knew there was anything like this."
Blue smiles, too, as he helps Cox and his daughters get the blue raft out of the water. The smile is as clear as a trail marking in finding his answer to any suggestions that, at 61, he can consider retiring from the livery business and spending more time in Florida, where his daughter and three granddaughters now live.
"You know, I have no plans to retire," he says, the smile as strong as any undercurrent in the Driftwood River, "because what would I do, come out here and sit on the porch and be in everybody's hair, drive them nuts? That's probably what I'd do, so why retire?"
Why indeed.
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