TOPIC: Ain't no good fer....what ?

I offer a little boat story from my youth ;
Back in the early 1960s, my uncle Aldric lived in a sleepy little town named Pahokee, on the other side of the dike from Lake Okeechobee, Florida. Aldric loved to fish, and the best fishing in Pahokee was done, not on the lake, but in the little canals that crisscrossed the local swamplands. Back then, nobody had fancy 60 mph bass boats. Rather, small open wooden boats with 5 to 10 hp. outboards were the boats of choice. Aldric had several successful methods of catching bass and perch, including one called dibblin'.
Dibblin' was done by sitting in the bow seat of the boat, holding a long cane pole. A short piece of line was attached to the end of the pole, with a hook and some bacon fat for bait. The idea was to slowly cruise the boat along near the bank, and dangle the bait right along the water's edge. A slight up and down jerking motion of the pole was done, and that was apparently the source of the dibblin' name.
In 1963, when I was 15, my dad and I had just finished building my fiberglass Marlin boat. I was proud to finally have a boat with a deck, a windshield, remote controls, and a motor big enough to waterski. We had trailered my new boat up to my uncle Aldric's house to show it to him, and we were standing out in his driveway. My uncle was appropriately complimentary about my new boat . Just then, however, my uncle's elderly neighbor, Mr. Goode, wandered over. Mr. Goode looked my boat over, and pronounced " ain't no good fer dibblin' " , and walked away. My uncle just chuckled, and explained to me that, without a bow seat, you just couldn't dibble !

That's a cute story, the kind you would find in a Fire Fox book....
Thanks for sharing it!

Back when I was around 10, (Yes, I was 10 once.) Dad bought a brand new 10 foot flat bottom boat at Sears and a 3 1/2 hp Eska thrashing machine motor. We took it out once. Dad not knowing anything about boats bought the little one. Picture me and my Dad on the Allegheny River in this tiny little thing at almost capacity. The stern was almost awash with that little motor as fast asd it would go. It scared the hell out of Dad. He never took it out again. Dad sold the little flat bottom and kept the motor saying he'd get a bigger boat but he never did. About 12 years ago I got a little 12 Century alum' boat almost given to me. I paid junk price for it. I took the little Eska outboard from its peg on the basement wall. This thing was never moved for like 20 some years. The dust was thick on it. I threw it in a barrel of water and put the new gas mix in the tank. I remember it well, on the third pull it started. I used that thing for a few years. My stupid dickhead of a neighbor put a handful of dirt in the tank. I found out about it in the middle of the Allegheny river. It ran long enough to push me out into the channel. I ended up with an old 9.8 Merc. Loved that thing. The neighbor did survive the episode. he denies he did it but when I got home I could see where he walked intohis garden and picked up a handful of dirt. He stepped over the fence bending it also. His nose scabbed over and he was a good neighbor for a few years.

robert- Thanks for your boat story ! Those are the things that we remember for all of our lives. I can identify with the white knuckle situations of being in a swift water channel with too little boat, too little power, or no power at all !