The name has changed - several times. Motors have changed. The interior has been renovated.

The river is always changing. And as Bob Dylan sings, "The times they are a-changin'."

Long before the Internet and cell phones and text messaging on Blackberry smartphones, young Bill Lynch and his brother, Tony, were building a houseboat on the banks of the Kentucky River in Frankfort.

The construction site was at the old sand and gravel company on Wilkinson Boulevard. It took three years of "scrounging," sweat, trial and error, patience, fun and some beer to create " but they built it well.

"Tony had just gotten out of four years in the Air Force and I had just gotten a civil engineering degree at the University of Kentucky," Bill says. "We were wondering what to do with ourselves."

Bill Lynch was a carpenter, Tony a mechanic. And with instruction and guidance from men at the sand company's machine shop, Tony learned welding.

"He became quite good at it," Bill says. "It worked out. The boat hasn't had a leak yet."

Bill Lynch, who had gotten his first woodworking tool kit for a Christmas gift at age 6, had built two rowboats and a skiff before taking on the houseboat project.

He was 14 when he built his first boat but his mother wouldn't let him put it in the water because he couldn't swim. So he went to the YMCA on Bridge Street to take swimming lessons.

The Lynch brothers launched their beautiful houseboat " 39 feet and 9 inches long by 15 feet wide " on Sept. 15, 1958.

Bill Lynch still has a file folder with the receipts for the boat showing expenditures of $3,600 on materials on launch day.

Still going
Taking a short ride up the river on a sunny Friday morning recently, a tall and slender Bill Lynch smiles as he sits in a chair and gently holds onto the original oak steering wheel he built more than a half-century ago.

There's a gentle breeze but the river surface is a green mirror of trees. The pilot says the water looks healthy. In the dog days of August, "it used to get stagnant," he says. "But now there are more boats on the river, which keeps it churned up."

At the moment, however, other boats are docked.

"I love about everything there is on the river," he says. "I like lots of friends to come down and enjoy the boat. On a morning like this you have the river to yourself.

"It's very relaxing. As soon as you leave the dock, you feel like you're out of town. It's fascinating."

While building the boat, "we never gave it a thought that it would last 50 years," Lynch says. "We did make it a little heavier than most. Being a little heavier means you've got that much more to push through the water."

His brother died last December and Bill Lynch, 76, says he knows the white and navy-trimmed houseboat "will outlast me. If it's taken good care of, it will last another 50."

The Lynch brothers originally planned to name their boat "Little Casino," and have a roulette wheel and two slot machines inside.

"But we figured with a name like that, we would get raided the first day before we got off the dock," Lynch says.

"It's been named "Lynch Launch' the last 25 years. Prior to that the name changed practically every other weekend."

Other names have included "Party Boat," "Patricia B" - for Bill's former wife and still close friend Pat Berry Lynch, a relative of noted author and conservationist Wendell Berry, and "Bacchus," the god of wine in Greek mythology.

In 1968 Bill Lynch became the sole owner of the boat, and "one of these days I'll turn it over to the kids" - Anne Irish, a bridge engineer, and Bill II, who works for Kenvirons.

The Lynch children grew up on the river and photographs of their first fish catches " in wooden frames crafted by their father - are displayed on the interior walls of the houseboat.

In 1995 Bill started a two-year interior renovation project using light ash and darker walnut woods. It has a full kitchen with modern appliances and the cabinets and bar have intricate moldings resembling boat ropes at the edges. The boat doesn't have a TV because conversations go better without one.

A community affair
Over the years, Lynch Launch has become a community boat. Thousands have enjoyed a ride. Two logbooks have a detailed journal of weather conditions, guests and the highlights of each boating day since the early 1970s.

Prior to that, in their single, "half-wild days," the Lynch brothers wouldn't have wanted a written record of the boat parties, Bill says, laughing.

One day in the 1980s, while the Lynch Launch was gliding through the water it passed a docked boat with Gov. Martha Lane Collins aboard.

Bill, at the wheel, waved as they passed, and it wasn't until later that day he heard a young girl " on the upper deck " mooned the governor.

"I was expecting a pink slip when I went to work on Monday," recalls Lynch, an engineer in the bridge division of the state Transportation Cabinet.

But he survived and retired from state government in 1988 with 34 years of service.

The houseboat has been the place for a wedding rehearsal dinner, and a wedding. Bride Judy Hale, a niece, arrived by a pontoon and married James Winans.
Former Franklin County Magistrate Carmello Benassi performed the ceremony.
The Rev. Maurice Brinker, a former associate pastor at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, once said a Mass aboard the houseboat.

Some of the diverse groups that have enjoyed an outing on the boat include the Frankfort Bicentennial Committee, 10 nuns from Versailles, highway department executives, bridge office employees, the Kentucky Society of Professional Engineers, Boy Scouts, bowling teams, Hospice nurses, special needs children, Medicaid agency employees, a gourmet club and church organizations.

"A Lexington Baptist church choir group was a happy but rowdy bunch," Lynch recalls. "They were completely sober but broke out a window."

Not without mishaps
When all of the locks were operating, the houseboat carried the Lynch family and friends to both ends of the Kentucky River " from Beattyville to Carrollton, where it flows into the Ohio River.

It has made several trips to Boonesboro " once breaking down there 110 miles from home.

"We were lucky," Lynch says. "Bill Yount from Frankfort was there and hooked us up to his houseboat and towed us all the way back."

The Lynch houseboat also has traveled to the Madison Regatti boat races on the Ohio River, to a wine festival in Vevay, Ind., "and made one trip to Cincinnati and old Coney Island."

The boat has a loud towboat horn that will wake up anybody nearby, and a miniature cannon that has a deafening blast " perfect for Fourth of July outings.

The Navy replica cannon almost got Bill and friends arrested on a September weekend in 1981 at Bird Dog's Landing on the Kentucky River. They were doing a lot of cannon shooting and horn blowing on a Friday evening.

"Five game wardens from five different counties had been watching us all night and early the next morning threatened to arrest us for deer poaching," Lynch says. "We didn't know what they were talking about.

"Someone had seen our search light on and had heard someone on the boat saying, "Load her up,' referring to the cannon, and thought we had shot a deer. We managed to talk our way out of it and we learned from the game wardens that Bird Dog's Landing is a major deer crossing area."

Lynch Launch has been running on its third used and rebuilt motor for 27 years. A 1970 Chrysler 440-cubic inch, V-8, it came out of a big houseboat owned by Ray Barnett that caught fire and blew up in the river in Frankfort.

"I lived three or four miles away and heard it," Bill recalls. "It blew windows out around town. I bought the two engines from Ray that were pretty well burnt," and Tony took the best parts from both and rebuilt one that's still going.

"I'm not a mechanic. Tony was always my head mechanic, and by golly he was good at it."

He's hoping the third and best engine keeps running for a long time.

"The old boat has been really good to us. We've got lots of fun out of it and I spend more time on it now than I have in the last 10 years. It's been rejuvenated with the grandkids. Clare, 6, and Jack, 5, love being on it."

That's exactly the way Bill Lynch likes it " more so with times a-changin' " a slower, relaxing pace on an old houseboat on the Kentucky River, with family and friends and 50 years of memories.