Late to this thread, but I wanted to voice my admiration, jealousy and nostalgia.
On the lake I grew up on every summer in Maine, where I paddled a Grumman canoe, we had a wooden rowboat with a 3 hp Evinrude. To my young mind, a Johnson was the "enemy" motor. The only other motor that existed was the Mercury, mainly on expensive speedboats. Of them, I was envious.
But I scooted all over our chain of three lakes with the Evinrude, and was delighted to figure out that I could magically increase maximum speed by weighting down the bow. It was only about ten years ago, in discussions about canoe physics, that I came to understand why. Researcher that I later became, I had no way of doing so in the late 40's to early 60's in that home. No internet. No TV. No telephone. The only way to learn anything was by personal experience, library books or, when affordable, a magazine.
Life in the real world of nature, of simple tasks to provide food and warmth for family, and of face-to-face communication, was so much more fulfilling than the anomie and fake life of the modern electronic virtual world.
