Dangers of the Cheat River

My Dad did everything he was supposed to do when he was thrown out of the whitewater raft.
He kept his cool, kept his feet pointed downstream and tried to keep his head above water.
The only problem was he came up under the raft while it was wedged against a rock.
Folks in my family usually take to the water pretty fearlessly.
When my Uncle Fred was a baby they knocked the bottom out of a crib and placed it half on the beach, half in the Pamlico River at my family’s cottage in the costal fringes of the state – allowing him to learn both land and sea equally.
There is no tide on the Pamlico.
Several years ago, on a narrower, faster river, we went whitewater rafting. My Dad, who was a varsity swimmer at Georgia Tech and was a state championship swimmer in high school, credits the experience as one of the few times he’s ever been scared on the water.
We were going down level V rapids (BIG) while West Virginia’s Cheat River was roaring in flood stage. We were wearing helmets and I was also wearing a new bracelet – you could buy gook luck bracelets or you could get a bad luck one for free.
Now the funniest thing about my dad nearly drowning is this: he had been sitting on my right. My Uncle Fred, who no longer lives in a crib, was behind me. When the raft jammed into the rock Fred was thrown into the position my Dad had just vacated.
The two men look pretty similar, so when I looked to see who had been tossed I was relieved to see my Dad was still there. It appeared my uncle was in big trouble, but hey, he didn’t have the car keys.
I would have felt really bad if my Dad had been killed while I was wearing my new bad luck bracelet.
Fortunately he made it out from under the raft and we enjoyed the rest of the trip. I have since been rafting other times and he continues to enjoy the water – albeit usually sailing a Sunfish on the 3 1/2 mile-wide Pamlico, where there are no rocks.