The Cracker Barrel: The boat

The Cracker Barrel: The boat

When I was a kid, there were still a lot of rowboats. Most of them, like ours, were made of wood, which meant they needed ongoing attention. You didn’t just haul them out of the lake in the fall, stick them under a tarp and expect them to be shipshape in the spring. Wood moves. Wood shrinks. Wood swells. Wood rots. Wood can loosen screws and shed a coat of paint. All of which, taken together, creates a necessary protocol before launching a woode…