Pee Paw and His Boat
A while back I posted a photo of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. with a picture of a ship behind him. (Pee Paw and the Aquitania) While we knew the name of the ship, we didn’t know the reason that he was posing beside a photo of it. This is a photo of him with a different boat. We don’t know the name of it (at least I don’t!), but we can be pretty sure why he was posing beside it.
Pee Paw with his fishing boat in 1951.
As you can see by this photo, it is a fishing boat that he likely owned. He looks like he is working on painting or varnishing the vessel to make it seaworthy. I know he went fishing quite frequently and made his own flies and rods. I don’t know if he made his own boats. If I find out that he did, I will follow up on that with the details.
This photo was taken around 1951. I know that because of what was written on the back of it. It says that the photo belonged to my dad’s (Bob Landry) older brother Hubert. It gives the approximate year and it was based on my cousin Hugh being three years old when this photo was taken. Hugh is not in the photo (unless he was dressed up as a cow in the background, but most likely not!), so Uncle Hubert must have remembered that fact about this photo.
I wonder how many boats he had over the years? I posted a photo of Pee Paw and my dad in a boat in 1942. I suppose it could be the same one. ( I have been told that it was not. The earlier one was a flat-bottomed boat and this is a canoe.) It looks like he takes good care of it, which should make it last a while. He must have been proud of his handiwork, because he seems to be happy to pose with it.
But my biggest question is this: Why is he wearing a tie and dress clothes while he is working on his boat? Didn’t they know about comfy clothes back then?