ONE DAY WHEN BOREDOM overcame my friend and me, we decided to buy (or maybe we found) a handball. If you’ve played the game you know what I’m talking about, but in truth, handball isn’t a very popular game. Racquetball is (or was) much more popular. Today, it’s pickleball that captures the imaginations of activity-oriented folks. But in 1968, we found a handball.

My friend and I, in our early twenties and mostly foolish, couldn’t afford anything fancy, so all we needed, in addition to the ball, was a wall. Four walls and a ceiling would have been proper, but that was out of reach for us. So we used the brick wall on the alley side of a Walgreens building in downtown Greeley, Colorado. The alley was cupped to handle the runoff when it rained, so anticipating the ball’s bounce on the concave surface was an additional challenge. Like kids learning baseball on a weedy field, the imperfect surface brought lots of laughs, if not exactly improving our skills.

I remembered these early handball skills years later when I was asked to join the Greeley Rotary Club, where the city’s business leaders would gather each Wednesday for rather eccentric singing, eating, camaraderie and an occasional speech by an invited guest. As the editor of the local newspaper, I was considered business material and thereby tolerated by the city’s leaders. One day I sat next to a good-looking, well-dressed man a few years older and far more successful than myself. Ed was a banker at one of the city’s largest banks. He was easy to talk to, kind, good-humored, and, it turned out, a lot of fun. He mentioned handball one day, and I offered that I had played the game, but I didn’t offer any details. He said we should get together at the local recreation center and try a few games. So I bought proper handball gloves, a couple of brand new balls, and headed to the court for what was the first of many Saturday morning games.

I was terrible, but Ed graciously played on, encouraging me gently. Frankly, I didn’t like losing, and I tried hard to improve. Eventually I did get better and then one day actually won a game, hard fought and competitive. I was very proud of myself.

For years we continued to play each Saturday morning, and then have a cup of coffee at that very same Walgreens store with the cupped alley in back. Ed, one of the most creative people I’ve ever known, ultimately presented me with a trophy he’d made from a handball glove soaked in some stiffening material, shaped in the form of an obscene gesture, and carefully mounted on a walnut board with a brass tag saying something about me being handball champion. It was very funny, and I wish I still had it, but it got lost in one of my many moves.

But it’s not handball I wanted to discuss in this essay; it’s the sailboat we bought. I don’t know how the topic of sailing came up, but when it did, Ed quickly followed up with news that he’d located a Lightning-class boat that was fairly low cost but needed some repairs. So one weekend we drove to a nearby town, paid $900 for a boat with trailer, and headed home.

We found a building (one belonging to a customer-friend of Ed’s) and parked the boat inside. As the winter months rolled in, we began the repairs. We sanded, and shaped, bought and fitted replacement parts, until the Lightning was looking good. The teak and mahogany were sanded and oiled. We selected a marine paint and set to work covering it with a deep British racing green. The Lightning looked damn good.

“We need to name it,” Ed said.

I really hadn’t even thought about naming it, but he was exactly right; the boat needed a name. I came up with a few ideas, but Ed shook his head.

“The Sleuth,” he said. “You know, the Hardy Boys’ boat.”

Actually, I didn’t know, not having been a Hardy Boys reader in my boyhood days. But Ed insisted, and his enthusiasm was irresistible.

“Great,” I said. “We can get some stencils and put it on nice and neat on the stern.”

“Oh no,” Ed said. “We’ll have your kids paint it on.”

My kids? Sarah was 11 or something and Tim was 8 or 9. How could they do a good job?

“That’s the point,” Ed said. It’s a kids’ boat. Aren’t we just a couple of kids?”

Well, he had me there. So one day we got some bright white paint, wrote out the word “sleuth” on a piece of paper, and instructed them to go to work. I can’t recall if we purposely made the “e” backwards or whether the kids did that themselves. They of course didn’t get the word centered very well, and although the “S” was good sized, the “uth” had to be small in order to fit on the stern. Of course, the white paint, applied excessively by their young hands, ran toward the ground.

“All the better,” Ed said.

So, we went to the lake with our beautiful green boat called “Sleuth.” I wish I had a picture. It was the most beautiful boat you ever saw with main and spinnaker flying. Maybe it was the name, or maybe it was the clever way it was painted on, but everyone loved the Sleuth.