Barnacle Brad Odin:
"This boat was bought by my Grandpa and Dad and they bought it used around 1955 for around $125.00 It was registered as a 1949 Shell Lake 14-ft. Cedar strip over steam bent oak ribs. Dad said he drove his red 1950 Pontiac Chieftain Convertible to go check it out at a nearby lake. It belonged to Sherrif named Parker Erickson who Dad and Grandpa knew well. Parker even stood on top of the over turned boat and jumped on it to show how solid it was! The boat was used alot after that. It had a 10 horse Johnson on it that my uncle used to always use when he'd take his entire family fishing in it. The motor on it in the picture is an early 50's Evinrude 3 horse that rarely worked! It seemed like almost every year, we'd paint it and it was getting pretty rotten by the 1970s. Dad was even putting screening and plastic wood over the holes and painting over it! It was red and white and then finally green and white. Around the mid 1980s while stored upside down over 2 big benches, a tree fell right on top of it and it was so rotten that it was hardly salavageable so we started tearing it apart and threw the pieces in the wild area in the back lot behind the cabins. Believe it or not, there's still many pieces of that boat still sitting there and in solid shape! We did get the anchor pulley and the oars and oar locks, manufactures tag, etc off of it though. Looking back, I wish we would have tried to save it as I'm sure now that it would have been possible. Oh well! We found another old cedar strip row boat a few years ago, another 14 footer but not as wide as the shell lake, but very solid. The Shell Lake had a small wooden deck up front. I can still see Dad sitting in back by the L corner seat, with a fishing rod in one hand and a small bailing cup in the other, trying to keep up witht the water that leaked in! Almost as if it was just second nature and normal to be bailing water while fishing!"



Barnacle Brad Odin:
"The little tin boat that I'm rowing is still around! That boat goes way back, around the 1930s. Flat bottom, 11 ft long with 2 sealed air chambers in it. It was given to my Dad when he was a kid, by his cousin's husband. They used it when they first got married and years later gave it to Dad. It was then used for duck hunting and was even left all winter one time by the shore of a slough, miles from home, and it got pretty banged up over the years. Grandpa used it in the 1940s and 1950s to gather rocks along the shoreline to use on his split rock cabin. Then it finally went to me and I rowed it all the time! I have a movie of me painting it in the driveway when I must have been about 12 or so! I believe the boat was sold by Montgomery Wards, but have never been able to verify what make it actualy is, but it's made of steel. It could use some bodywork and some seam work to make it tight again. I remember one time when we left it tied to the dock one night and it rained hard. It sunk to the bottom and we had to bail it out to bring it back up!"