After my 78 year old mother saw the MiniCups, she began talking about
her childhood growing up in Cocoa, Fl and how her and her older brother
decided to build a sheet metal canoe from plans in Popular Mechanics.
Apparently, it was fairly successful and they canoed it all over the
Banana River, This had to be about 1944. I had never heard this story
and always wondered why when I was a kid of 5 yrs age, they bought a
canoe. She already knew how to use one. They would take all 9 of us
kids, put the two youngest in the 18' Grumman canoe, tow a rope behind
and all the rest of us would swim holding the rope snorkeling down the
Wakulla River. Fortunately, there were few alligators in the 1960s.
Most of my childhood involved that canoe on various Florida bodies of
water.
One memorable occasion had three of us little kids in the canoe, my mom
in ther stern, my dad on the shore and suddenly a water moccasin
decided to become aggressive and swam right toward us rearing up like
he was going to climb in. She quickly gave that moccasin an "attitude
adjustment' with the canoe paddle.
We went all over St. Joe Bay, snorkelling and looking at weird critters
throwing crabs and scallops into teh boat till we had enough for
dinner. As kids, we had free reign of Tates Hell Swamp from White Oak
Landing on the River Styx as there was no trouble we could get into.
They had raised us to be independent and resourcesful even if we did
get lost. They had little money and lots of kids but had us convinced
we were the luckiest kids anywhere being able to swim with water
moccasins and gators instead of in one of those sterile swimming pools
at some boring motel like those "poor" rich kids.
Her brief discussion of her childhood experience building that boat
brought all of that back to me.