My father had a major midlife crisis when I was 10. Where most men would buy a sports car, my father bought a sailboat. A small one, but one with a bedroom inside, and at the back, a kitchen which transformed into another bedroom at night. It even had a toilet, but not a shower or a bathtub.

My mother, went ballistic. She had an early menopause and needed a hysterectomy, which sent her for years in a depression cycle. That's when the sailboat was bought.

"Jake, we are in a suburb in Ohio, where do you think we will use that fricking sailboat? There is no lake, no ocean, no water", my mother would often ask, unsatisfied by the answers.

But each time, he would reply the same two answers. Either "It's why it was so cheap", or "The Ohio River"

We then lived in Dixonville, Ohio, a shithole near Pennsylvania. It's not far from East Liverpool, where there is a small marina where our boat was parked.

Why did we live in such a shithole? Because that's where my father's parents lived. Well, they lived in Beechwood, but it's just next to Dixonville. Seriously, I could ride my bike to my grandparent's house in like, 4 minutes despite being in another town.

And I often would, my grandpa was a veteran and always had great stories to tell while my grandma filled me with home baked cookies.

It certainly beat my parents fighting or my sister being a bitch.

My mother was a nurse at the East Liverpool City Hospital, driving her 4-year-old Mercury car with the bottom of the door already rusted, while my father was a travelling heavy industry salesman working for a company based in Pittsburgh. He sold machines for factory floors.

Now, we were about 40 miles away from Pittsburgh, which about an hour of driving, so why settle in such a remote area?

Well, first, my father was always on the road in a company supplied car, and rarely went into the office. Second, like I said, my grandparents.

We made enough money to live, but my father spent it almost as fast as he made it. The sailboat was one example, putting a heat pump on the house, redoing the kitchen, buying expensive suits "for work" or taking us to the best restaurants just because he missed us.

That, increased my mother's depression.

The next summer, when I was 11, raised my spirit. Normally, my summers are semi-boring. I did have friends I could see, but not every day. My town, and those around, have nothing to offer to tweens. Sure, there are baseball fields, but if you don't play baseball, what do you do?

When my father, however, had two weeks of vacation, he proposed that we spend it on our sailboat, riding the Ohio River.

We packed food, and while my sister was neutral to the idea, my mother hated it, but didn't want to be left alone, or leave her useless husband in charge of her two kids.

The plan, was to ride for six days down the stream, spend a day on location, wherever we were, and then, ride back up for seven days, against the current.

"What a waste of time", thought my mother.

There were several marinas on the way, but there were nights where we would just anchor on the side of the river.

The first day was exciting, for everyone. We were gently riding down the river, but the winds were not cooperating, we were going west, when the winds came from the west.

We had brought board games, and played some, my mother, my sister and me, but my dad had to man the boat. All day, every day.

Often, he would wake early in the morning to raise the anchor or leave the marina, and we would sail down the river until later at night, leaving him only a few hours of sleep.

It's on the second day already, that my sister was bored. Now, if you notice, I don't say older or younger sister, and that's because we are the same age. She was born 3 months after me.

How is that possible? Easy, she was adopted. Her parents died in a car crash, and my parents knew them. We had babysat her when she was a toddler, and I was sometimes babysat at their place.

We were 5 when she came to live with us, but always sort of resented that her parents died. It's like she never came over it. She went into a Goth phase later, which turned into an Emo phase. She rebelled, and was caught shoplifting when she was 16. This was the kick in the ass she needed, as the judge gave her community service, which she did at the legion, with our grandfather guiding her. He was very active as a veteran.

She is better today, but mostly burned all bridges with my mother and me and decided to get closer to her birth family, which lived further away. It's her choice.

Anyway, by the 3rd day, my mother was bored. By the 4th, she was pissed, and that night, my father went to bed even later, perhaps to avoid her wrath, perhaps to get to whichever destination he had in mind sooner.

Still, he anchored the boat when he was too tired to keep going, and went to sleep.

The next morning changed my life. Literally. I was at an impressionable age, at the early start of puberty, but also in a moment when I felt like I needed to have more solid friends. A moment where my house was sad and I needed a change.

I was the first to wake up. My father went to bed too late, and my sister was always a late riser. My mother, was barely getting out of the bed.

I went outside to not wake anyone, and saw that we were near a sort of beach.

Now, don't get your hopes up. The Ohio River is banked by trees, streets, farms and in rare places, factories. It's an industrial river, not a recreational one. It's a famous canal.

But this place, had a sandbank on the side of the river. I went over Google Earth many times to find it, and some potential candidates made me think it could be the place, but this was over 35 years ago, everything changed.

Perhaps it was dredged. Maybe it has since then eroded. Perhaps construction took over. Possibly, a campsite was founded on the location since then, and I am discounting it.

But then, it was rural. And when I say rural, I mean, middle of nowhere. Now, both shores seem built most of the way, but sometimes, there are gaps in construction where I wonder if it's not that spot.

It's not the beach which changed my mind, it's the people on the beach. There were about 25 people, maybe 6 or 7 kids, some were my age, with a few adults playing volleyball, and some kids just playing in the water or making sandcastles.

Some of those kids saw me, and waved at me.

Everyone was happy. All of them were smiling. I was just perhaps 12 feet from the beach, but I was on the boat, and was not allowed to swim in the river without my parents.

It's like there was this barrier between them and me. It's like I was stuck in a prison with an absent careless father, a depressed angry mother and a grumpy manipulative grieving sister, while they were all free to enjoy themselves!

But what struck me the most, was how everyone was naked. I couldn't see a single piece of clothing on anyone. The adults were naked, the children were naked, everyone was naked. Each one of them. The fat men, the hot mothers, the girls my age who were only starting to develop. Everyone.

And they were happy!

My father came out perhaps 20 minutes later, and saw the scene, and he was perhaps just as transfixed as I was. When my mother came out, however, hell break loose. My sister came out to see what the fuss was about, but all she could do is laugh at the nudists. To her, it was the most pathetic thing she had ever seen.

We went back inside, and my father pleaded that the place was deserted at night.

He was sent to anchor the boat and keep going, and we would stay inside until the "perverts" would be out of sight.

You would think that this event would start fights between my parents, but the reality, is that it rained the next day and well, my mother had enough of this boat.

My theory, today, is that these naturists were members of a non-landed club who picked this place early in the morning to occur before the barge traffic on the river.