LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - The boat was a second-hand Beachcomber, 24 feet of pontoon and deck, stripped bare to become a floating dock.
The riding mower was a tired John Deere with an even more exhausted engine.
The two weren’t meant to marry, until the day they did.
“I just kind of come up with stuff,” said Ben Fitzwater, captain of the PonDeer. “I just dreamt it up one day.”
The Beatrice native and his wife, Anna, had always liked to camp and canoe. When they started building a home near Branched Oak Lake, they realized they needed a boat, too.
But he didn’t want to spend too much.
“I decided I’m only going to use things I have at the house,” he told the Lincoln Journal Star. “I just kind of hunted around and found odds and ends that would work.”
Like the Beachcomber, obviously, and then the not-so-obvious: the John Deere; and an old Heileman beer keg (and future gas tank); and a water pump and nozzle rescued from an old Hickman Volunteer Fire pumper.
He got to work last spring, gutting the tractor - shedding the tires and motor - and mounting it to the deck. He rigged the boat’s steering system, connecting a Yamaha 40-horse outboard to the tractor’s steering wheel.
He mounted the throttle, added a stereo and turned the pump and nozzle into a water cannon, capable of shooting a 70-foot stream.
A friend set him up with an old roll tarp from a silage truck, which he mounted on 2-by-4s as a canopy.
A few months and about $3,000 later, with Ben Fitzwater in the tractor’s seat, the PonDeer slid into the water, where it became an instant hit, judging by the number of thumbs up it received.
“We don’t get to hear what a lot of people say because it’s out on the water,” said Anna Fitzwater. “But we see shocked faces and lots and lots of waves.”
She wasn’t surprised her husband built the PonDeer instead of searching for a conventional boat.
“Ben is just a very talented guy and very handy. He builds and fixes a lot of things. He has really creative ideas.”
By day, he installs automatic-guidance and steering systems - “precision GPS stuff” - on tractors and combines.
“I dream up a lot of stuff at work,” he said. “It’s kind of the nature of my job.”
During his time off, he built, and is still building, their “Modern Little House on the Prairie” near Valparaiso. Half of it resembles a single-wide trailer, and they could pick it up and take it with them if they move, he said.
The other half has a basement, main floor and loft, accessible by a handcrafted spiral staircase. He’s finishing it in old barn wood, and used irrigation pipe for the heating and air-conditioning ductwork.
But they take time to relax, cruising Branched Oak Lake at least every two weeks, waving to strangers, shooting the water cannon on request.
“I have a lot of wives who are mad at me,” he said. “Because I put ideas in their husbands’ heads.”
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