As a young boy, Joseph Rooney was told the legend of “the crooked duck” by his uncle at the family’s summer house on Island Lake in Illinois. The legend is about a man who accidentally hit a duck while he was out water-skiing on the lake. Everyone on the boat was horrified at what they had just witnessed, and thought for sure he had killed the duck. As everyone sat there staring at the water in disbelief, and what they thought was a dead duck, it started to move.

All of a sudden, it started to swim towards the shore in a very peculiar manner. When it reached the lake’s shore it waddled away, but it was quite obvious the duck’s neck was now crooked. The duck with the crooked neck was seen from time to time by people out on the lake, an acknowledgement to the resilience of a duck. Joey never forgot about the legend or the duck, and “The Crooked Duck” is his tribute to that duck!