LENOIR CITY — Every Sunday since 1958, somebody at a small sailing club on Fort Loudoun Lake has written “Water: present” in the commodore’s log. For the last nine years that somebody has been Earl Pettus, 68, a retired appliance repairman, who walks down to the dock and looks before he writes anything.
Pettus gets there early because whoever reaches the clubhouse first ends up setting out the folding chairs. He takes his coffee along. The dock inspection can run twenty minutes if somebody is launching.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ll help with the chairs,” he said. “But Hal gets there and starts dragging them out while you’re still taking your coat off. We don’t need all those chairs anyhow. We had seven people Sunday.”
The log fills four notebooks. In 1984 a visiting sailor wrote “Water: present, nice,” and the commodore ruled a line through “nice” and initialed it. The line is still there. During the 2008 drought Pettus’s predecessor wrote “Water: present, lower,” which remains the club’s most detailed account of lake conditions. A former secretary once suggested adding the temperature, but nobody wanted to keep up with a thermometer. The notebooks also hold dues payments and the measurements for a replacement screen door.
Pettus checks from the same bench each week. He can see the water from the parking lot, but the bench has a back on it. He stays until somebody comes down to ask where the coffee filters are.