True Story: My Dad had a early Plywood Grady-White 12 ft. Utility skiff. When he could no longer do as he used to it sat in the yard under a pine tree. it disintegrated with time. It was on a trailer that I moved after pumping the tires up enough to mow the grass and weeds under it and move it back. I tried several, several times to haul it to the county land fill for him, for which he had no interest in doing. Every time I had to fill a portable air tank at the gas station and then pump up the rotting tires to move it to mow around it I cussed. Finally I figured out the story. As long as that boat was where he could still see it from his porch, the good memories of fishing and family times on the water ( I learned to water ski behind it in the mid 1960's) were still alive for him. So I made the trip to the gas station with my portable air tank, pumped up the rotting tires and mowed without cussing. Once each spring I washed it a little so it looked better and I sat beside him on the porch and day dreamed about tarpon fishing at night with him and him pulling us all over the river in an old patched up car inner tube and loved my Dad even more. When he died in 2013 that spring I hauled the old boat off to the land fill for my widowed mother, it was a sad day because the artifact of those happy memories was finally gone.
