Aureliocira, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, assists the keeper in sorting through the reasons he feels extra good this spring, and one is that he does not own a boat.
Add that to the cliché about the two happiest days in a boaters life–the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it.
The keeper’s boating history is long and modest in financial terms, approaching yacht status only with an inherited old wooden Dunphy that came perilously close to neutering him when it knocked him down and fell on his midsection.
In keeping with his frugality, it was the keeper’s style to buy boats that needed help to remain afloat, and sometimes the boating season would be nearly over before he got on the water. And then it was always with trepidation.
One of the last boats the keeper “revived” is now son Mike’s pontoon fishing boat which regularly strands Mike and his passengers on the Wisconsin River at Sauk.
It makes the keeper proud, and profoundly thankful the boat is Mike’s and not his.
Photo by Bill Stokes