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<br />shore. I was waving frantically for the fellows to come over and <br />help me because I'd lost power. I couldn't change the motor un- <br />der the car, nor could I put another handle on it. <br />Myoid friend, Shorty Burton, came over in another raft, a <br />twenty-eight foot nylon neoprene pontoon, yelling that he <br />couldn't stop me. I said, "Turn around and run right into my <br />outfit. You can slow me down." He did. Then we threw some <br />lines alongside and tied him off. He managed to edge me over to <br />a little sandy spit on the shore. The movie people came in on the <br />helicopter and we all got on the beach and talked over that first <br />rapid. I said, "You know, I just don't think this is very stable. I <br />might lose this car." The director came over and said, "Oh, don't <br />worry, Ford Motor Company makes a lot of cars!" He wasn't <br />very concerned about that car. <br />There were three stunt men for the commercial and I said, <br />"Why don't you have one of your stunt men take the raft and <br />run it, because I'm not too sure I even want to do this:' They <br />said I just had to because this was going to be a very important <br />commercial, Ford's halftime commercial for the Rose Bowl foot- <br />ball game. <br />They were paying us a lot of money. In those days, the aver- <br />age guy made about $20 a day and they were paying us, per man <br />per boat, five times that amount. We decided to stay and work, <br />but we made some changes. From then on I tied a line on the <br />wood-covered raft carrying the car and ran a rubber raft above <br />it. Then I lined it up with the next rapid and turned it loose, <br />unmanned. We ran down behind it and caught it with the other <br />rubber boats. <br />We brought in a crew of six to run three rubber boats on <br />each side to work as cushions to catch the runaway car-raft. <br />One of the other guys we hired was PJ Wells, a fellow from Las <br />Vegas, whose wife was the famous jazz singer, Sarah Vaughn. He <br />had an airplane he'd brought over to watch us do these shots. <br />The movie people immediately hired him because they needed <br />more men. We had our six rivermen, but that was alL <br />When we first started we'd all out in the <br /> <br />16 <br />