tschram

Sometimes people ask me how I stay ahead of the news. Well, I have many trusted sources, but I’ve been reading one publication in particular for longer than all the others. The periodical both informs and entertains. Its prose is simple and clear, but not without style. Their news stories cut to the chase. There is a focus on the natural world. And their puzzles keep me razor sharp. That’s why I still read Highlights magazine.

Once summer passed Violets family hunting and trapping became their life. Floyd and his brothers Wes and Orrah Jr. spent the winters with their father learning the finer points of trapping and hunting, Floyd eleven, Wes fourteen and Orrah Jr. thirteen when they started trapping. According to Floyd ammunition was scarce so they had to make every shot count and he attributed that to him becoming an expert marksman and skilled hunter by his early teenage years, By the time Floyd was eleven and when Spring approached and the rivers opened his dad taught him the art of running rapids and helped him build a flat-bottomed skiff made of two and half inch thick White Pine, it was twelve inches deep, thirty six inches wide and pointed on both ends like a canoe. The bottom had a keel down center and if he hit rocks or stepped on it wrong it would spring a leak so to reinforce the bottom they put two keels on each side of the main keel and referred to it as “twin keels”. They were made of one-inch by one-inch Spruce, Jack Pine or Ash without knots, if a piece of wood with a large knot was used the keel would break at the location of the knot. This resolved the leak issue however if it were left out of the water it would dry out and the leaking resumed, naturally the solution was to keep it wet. It was the first boat he used to “run the rapids” and because the sides were straight and not rounded he had to be careful that it would not tip over, he used it for three years. The boys became expert canoeists and learned from their Dad how to “read the rapids” and by the time Floyd was twelve he started to run the rapids of the Pipestone River by himself and by mid-1950’s started guiding for the Namakan Narrows Lodge.