Sticking Around Here During Summer: A Classic Boat Show-- Part 1

SATURDAY, JULY 20TH

This is a time I hate when two local communities here in northeast Illinois both have their big summer festivals on the same weekend.  Try as I may, I just haven't been able to pull off being in two places at the same time.  Someone needs to talk to Antioch's Taste of Summer and McHenry's Fiesta Days.

However, today, the first two things we did were not entirely connected with Fiesta Days, but I'm sure they were planned around it.

First, Liz and I went to Famous Freddie's Roadhouse on Pistakee Lake to see the Blackhawk Chapter of Antique Boats Show in the water by the outside tiki bar.  Our friend Glenn had his Coronado there.  I'd estimate there were around 30 old boats there, several as old as the 1930s.  There was even one that reminded my of Humphry Bogart's African Queen.

This used to be held in McHenry at Joey T's before it burned down.

Of course, old motor boats are most often what we call Woodies.  They are made entirely of wood and require a whole lot more upkeep than I'd like

We talked to one guy in his 1936 woody who said he'd bought it from a 95-year-old lady living north of Minneapolis-St. Paul two years ago.  She and her deceased husband had had it since the early 1970s, but she hadn't had it in the water for many years and it was in horrible shape.  He said he had spent a whole lot of time refurbishing it and today was the first time he had had it in the water. (Hopefully he remembered to put the drain plug in before he launched it.)

Freddie's is on the Chain Crawl so we had cocktails and got the passport stamped.

Then, onto the Wall.

But,  Then, That Boat Looks Mighty Fine.  --RoadDog