Parker Gun Collectors Association Forums - Does your Repro have soul?

When Teresa and I first met back in the late 1960’s I had just graduated from beaver pond wood duck hunting school and moved to the big water leagues of the Mississippi River near Buffalo City, Wisconsin. My little ten - foot jon boat with a three horse weedless Evenrude outboard was too small and just unsafe for the big water. That problem was solved with a handful of overtime paychecks from my graveyard shift job at an Eau Claire, Wisconsin tire factory. I was filthy payday rich. I bought a wide and deep fourteen-foot flat bottom boat and a brand new Johnson 9 1/2 horse outboard which resembled a Maytag washer with a prop. Teresa and I named the boat Sweet Blindness after a 60’s era song and we spent every free moment watching sunrises and sunsets, and the clouds of divers funnel down the Great River valley.
The River can be tough on boats especially traveling in the dark. One late October night in a hurry, headed for a special spot, a memorable thing happened….. We left home for the river on a Friday after work, negotiated the winding river valley roads that led to the Mississippi, landed the boat, and made our way by boat thought the black maze of shifting sandbar channels. In the darkness at full throttle, as if a 9 ½ has any other speed, we smacked an elm stump that had washed into our path nearly tipping the boat. We survived, shaken, with only an odd dent in the bow of the boat. Saturday brought a cold still duckless day. It was mid afternoon on the Mississippi. Suddenly, out of nowhere about a dozen canvasbacks slipped silently past our cedar decoys heading for Spring Lake downriver. To our amazement, they turned in a long line and coasted back into the decoys. Teresa stood with her little 20 gauge pump and shot once. Four canvasbacks tumbled from the flock!
Unbelieveable!
Stunned, surprised, delighted, and very proud, I proposed marriage to her right then and there. (The smartest thing I have ever done.) She promptly accepted and we have been hunting pals ever since.
Later we moved to Ely, MN where canoes are standard water transportation. Sweet Blindness saw less and less use. Finally, unneeded, I sold her to some guy in the Twin Cities. That was the last we saw of Sweet Blindness.
Fast forward about 40 years. On the very day we arrived to purchase our dream of a duck camp in Canada, the camp partners converged in Manitoba. One partner from Wisconsin arrived towing a trailer with a jon boat, a wide fourteen footer with a 25 Merc. That boat was nearly a twin to ol’ Sweet Blindness. This one was in much better shape, it had a nice camo paint job, a new trailer, a new boat cover, and it was clean and well kept. I told him nostalgically about Sweet Blindness and the wonderful and memorable times we had had in our boat. I told him about the night we hit the stump in the back channel, the dent, and the canvasback proposition. The look on his face told it all. He showed me where the big dent had been repaired, and the boat sandblasted and repainted. Our old boat, Sweet Blindness, had returned!
An unbelieveable story, but true!
The boat now lives in the Manitoba boathouse. Teresa and I take her for a ride every October and reflect on our nearly fifty years together...shoulder to shoulder in the blind, watching sunrises and sunsets, introducing our children and new puppies to the duck blinds for waterfowl fun. Now there are grandkids and grandpuppies. We still reminisce in the old boat, cherish the spectacle of migrating waterfowl every fall, and realize how unbelievably lucky we really are.
The circles of life continue.