5th Generation

Sometime around the mid '60s, my Dad and a partner founded a little camping store.  Easy Camping, Inc, they sold boats and pop-up campers.  Dad and the partner traveled to Lebanon, MO to sign contracts with an outfit called Appleby, Inc.  In the intervening years, we sold a bunch of campers from Appleby and Coleman, but in the early '70s, Dad closed Easy Camping.

There was one boat left, a little 14 foot jon boat, so Dad gave it to his father.  Over the intervening years, that boat got pushed across most of the small lakes and rivers in central Louisiana.  My grandad fished in that boat, hunted out of that boat, taught grandkids basic boat-handling skills.  It's just an old jon boat.  Tippy, unstable, you have to be still in the boat.  But, it's made of good aluminum and with minimal care, it's still in service.

It's probably had a half-dozen transoms over the fifty years it's been in the family, and ten years ago, my elder son and I replaced a dozen or so rivets, to make ti water-tight.  (Truthfully, the transom I put inn ten years ago will be due for replacement in another year or so.)

But, this morning, the youngest grandson and I took it out in our little neighborhood lake to do a little fishing.  We spent a couple of hours in the lake, exploring the mysteries of small bream, worms, and bobbers.  It was his first trip out in the boat, but I doubt it will be the last.

Five generations of my family has used that boat, and with just a little luck, several more will learn basic boat-handling from it.