Woman Aquaplaning on Towed Disc, Woodland Lake, 1950s

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Woman Aquaplaning on Towed Disc, Woodland Lake, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Woman Aquaplaning on Towed Disc, Woodland Lake, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-D69E56

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Sometime in the 1950s, an era that had decided water sports were an excellent way to spend a summer afternoon and that safety equipment was more of a suggestion, a woman in a navy swimsuit and swim cap is being towed across a broad inland lake standing upright on what appears to be an aquaplane — a flat disc or board on a tow rope — with a balance pole in her hands and the expression of someone who has done this enough times to smile for the camera. Aquaplaning enjoyed a brief serious vogue in mid-century America before water skiing absorbed all the attention and the hardware, offering the same combination of speed and probable humiliation at a lower entry cost. The forested shoreline stretching across both horizons places this on one of the larger glacial lakes of the upper Midwest or Great Lakes region, the kind of lake every family within driving distance had decided was theirs by right of annual visitation. Someone in the tow boat thought to photograph her from behind as she cut through the wake, which means at least two people were having a good time that afternoon. She is grinning, which is the most damning evidence that aquaplaning was, briefly, genuinely fun.

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