Front:
AESHINGTOR
1991
20069
19
whitcumr
DC
Back:
FISHING BOAT
First Day of Issue: August 8, 1991
First Issue Location: Washington, D.C.
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf
Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without
taking a fish." With this sentence, Ernest Hemmingway
began his immortal classic The Old Man and the Sea
(1952), a simple tale of an old man, a fish, the sea — and
a boat. For as long as man has turned to the sea for food,
boats have played an important role. Fishing boats such
as those belonging to the old man in Hemmingway's yarn
have transported man onto lake, river and ocean for
centuries. As early as 6000 B.C., the Egyptians built boats
from tightly-woven bundles of reeds, craft which took
them out onto the waters of the Nile and into the Mediter-
ranean in a never-ending quest for fish. Contemporary
fishermen have much better craft - such as the boats
depicted on this Maximum Card – and may rely upon
dozens of inventions from electronic sonar equipment to
locate fish, to sensitive instruments which gauge water
quality, but even the best fishermen of today can go many
days without taking a fish.
No. 91-56
©1991 The Maximum Card Collection
A division of Unicover Corporation . Cheyenne, WY 82008-0007
Original painting for the Maximum Card by Skip Whitcomb
