My elementary Red River education ended in 1959 when I graduated from Bonham High School and moved away from Red River. My formal Red River education began in 1986 when I started designing and building dogwood twig furniture. From 1986 until 2000 I spent 2 and 3 days a week (every week) on Red River gathering material. In 2000 I hung up my hammer and retired from furniture building to travel on Red River and write about her. Like Dad dreamed of doing over 50 years ago, I began building a boat especially for the occasion. I remodeled my canoes again; this time for gathering material of another kind. This time my plans were to build the ultimate Red River runabout, touring boat. I began the tedious process of building a deck between the two canoes. In order for the canoes to run true, I had to keep the keels of the canoes exactly the same distance apart, from one end to the other. I made the deck out of 3/4 inch plywood and attached it with stainless steel bolts. The transom was a simple matter of bolting aluminum tubing and plywood across the blunt ends of the canoes. I ordered a Go-Devil boat motor an when it arrived I bolted her down and then put the boat in my pool, fired off the motor and puttered around.