Don remembers persuading his father to go fishing with him one night on Lake Fork. It was shortly after Don and Patti had married, and he took his dad out in a boat he had bought from him.
The boat had originally had two batteries. By that night, Don was down to one. They stayed out fishing, running the boat's lights through the night. When daylight came and Don was ready to go in, he turned the key. The motor would not start.
“I turned that key and it didn't crank.”
His father knew the boat and asked about the cranking battery. Don had to explain that the one battery had been doing all the work.
Don recalls sitting there for about three hours before another boater slowed down and came over to help. The man had jumper cables. Eventually, the motor fired up.
His father's instruction was simple: keep it running until they reached the boat ramp and got the boat onto the trailer.
According to Don, later invitations to go fishing in his boat met with the same answer: no. Don's explanation, as he finished telling the story, was just as simple: "No, he just remembered."