The year is 1971 and this is the Sunday ad in the Monroe News Star Sunday edition. A full page ad was almost always ran by Howard Griffin Marine in Monroe, Louisiana. At the time they were the world’s largest outboard dealer and were probably near the top selling boats too. The place was huge. They had a warehouse they kept the boats in that had a rack system where they stored the boats minus the trailers that ran probably 50 yards wide or more and longer than that and about three to four racks high. They stored the trailers in a separate enclosed yard and it all came together when boats were purchased. About mid October Mr. Howard would empty the showroom of boats, motorcycles, and ATV’s and the boat dealership became Howard Griffin Land O’ Toys through Christmas and in early January he would switch back to being a boat dealership and kick it off with a huge boat show. In my teen years I actually got to meet Bart Starr at one of those shows. He was the QB for Green Bay back in the Ice Bowl days if my memory serves me correctly.

$220 boats won't even get you a key to new motors these days. AHAHAHHAAHHA

That picture looks like he back yards of the houses around cedar creek. Lol.

Great nostalgia.......

that is cool! funny how a 20HP was the biggest listed!

I was probably 10 or 11 years old when this ad was printed and I can remember the adults would talk about guys that bought boats with a 20 or 25 on it and you'd here comments like " that thing has to be dangerous to drive, that guy is going to kill himself in that boat". Almost everyone else was fishing out of a 12 or 14 foot john boat with a 9.9 or smaller. Having a john boat with a 9.9 on it back then was like owning a 20 footer with a 250 on it today. About 3 to 5 years down the road Howard Griffin was selling the Terry Bass ABF17, Skeeter came to the table with the HP Wrangler series, and Cajun had similar offerings. They were all rated for anything from an 85 to a 150 horsepower and people about lost there minds. I think there were folks that went RB on the situation until folks finally adjusted to these bigger boats. It wasn't uncommon to hear comments like " if someone comes by me in one of those boats hauling A** I'm going to shoot a hole in it". I've known folks that were fired upon and being in a high performance bass boat was probably why back in those days.

Very cool...

Neat post.

Love it.

And I just started my career with a major insurance company. I made $500/ month. No way I could pay a months salary for a boat motor.

I can remember thinking about how big my stepfather's 50 horse Merc was.

Loved that place during Christmas was the biggest toy showroom ever.

Simpler times & simpler boats for sure. Hard to imagine what 50 more years of boat evolution will look like.

Can't believe that they didn't sell Powercat's , i guess that was a Texas thang