Dan Told me he had an old ribbed boat of mine.
The last boat I ever built that had ribs in it
was 1981 sometime. So that's a pretty old clunker.
It's sitting in Dan's front yard as a planter now:
filled with potting soil and flowers. I had
to laugh. Dan said he rowed my boat for years--
and loved the way handled. But he didn't love the
work it took to keep an old-fashioned wood
boat in guide-ready shape for the Madison River.
...I understand. That's why I gave up on
on ribbed boats and starting building stitch-and-glue
boats in 1982. Makes you feel old when you
meet an old friend who bought a boat you built 25
years ago.
Dan said he also had a Phil Sadowski boat
(also a planter now). Phil started hanging
around my shop a lot one summer in the mid-80s
He acted like he was going to buy a boat any
minute. He asked me a million questions, and
then next thing you know he was building and
selling stitch and glue boats. Oddly, or ironically
or something, I do remember Phil's fiberglass work
was better than mine (back then anyway) but his
wood-working skills were, well, lacking in discipline.
Phil got sent to prison for murder a few years
later. He shot a guy at point blank range, over
a whiskey bottle and across a card table. He escaped
prison about 10 years after that and has never been
heard from since. He was smart devious dangerous and often dishonest.
And he had a really bad problem with whiskey
Where ever he is now, Montana
is the last place on the face the earth he would
go to now. And I like that a lot.
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