Corey Coyle, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper cheers the recent finding of the 3,000-year-old canoe at the bottom of Lake Mendota; and is reminded once again of the time that the propeller fell off his outboard as he and several highly questionable fishing companions cruised Mendota in search of bluegills.
Without the influence of said companions, one of whom was the saloon keeper Dan McCarthy and another the UP bureau chief George Armor, the keeper would not have had the guts to ”borrow” a prop from a boat on a nearby raised dock, and to return it hours later when his own prop had been replaced.
The incident was, of course, a detail that never made it into one of the keeper’s outdoor-writer stories of that era. It is revisited now to offer thanks for having survived questionable fishing companions over the course of many years–John Lawton, Bob Williams and Art Jensen among them, and to serve notice to those mucking around in Lake Mendota that if they find a rusty outboard prop the keeper will deny that it is his.
