My dad is great. He is one of those guys that can do a little bit of everything, and would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it... but you probably wouldn't want it because it's likely to be plaid flannel and have a slight odor of dead fish clinging to it. My dad lives to fish. I'm not exaggerating. He retired early so that he could spend more time out on the lake. It's his true love. The rest of us are fighting for a distant second place in his affections.
I do not fish. Period. No discussion will be held on the subject. I will go out on the boat in the summer and read a book, or enjoy the sunny day, but I will not fish. I was scarred and remain traumatized by early morning father daughter bonding over a bucket of leeches, to ever be able to enjoy fishing as an adult. And that's summer fishing, when the temperature was above freezing. See, my dad is also a devotee of ice fishing, and that just brings memories to mind that I would much rather stay suppressed!
For those of you not from the frozen tundra, ice fishing involves drilling a hole in the ice, dropping a fishing line down the hole and staring at it all day in the hopes that a fish will swim by. Ice fishing held little appeal to me as an energetic eight year old, and less as a cold-avowing eighteen year old. Dad had other ideas.
I was home for Christmas break during my first year of college and Dad asked if I wanted to go ice fishing with him. I suggested that we just crawl into the freezer as it was warmer, more comfortable, and there were more fish. Dad insisted that it would be great fun, and Santa Claus had just brought him a new, portable ice fishing shack for Christmas, so I would be warm and toasty and could fish in luxury. Despite Hollywood's rendition of ice shacks as cozy cabins complete with fireplaces, comfy furniture and electricity, the ice shacks in this neck of the woods bear a striking resemblence to tin outhouses over a couple holes in the ice. The only difference is that in an outhouse, the holes have a purpose. If ice shacks are a temporary community built on the ice, than portable ice shacks are the trailer houses of the neighborhood. Picture a two man tent frame covered in a blue tarp with a plywood floor. That's fishing in luxury at our house.
The next morning Dad pulled me kicking and screaming from my bed at O'dark-thirty, so we could get on the lake before the sun came up, and pointedly ignored my questioning about how the fish knew if it was 6 am or 11 am under the ice. The temperature was hovering somewhere around 30 below with a wind chill of about 60 below zero, with wind gusting to 50 mph. A balmy northern Wisconsin morning. I spilled hot chocolate out of the thermos, and it froze before it hit the ground.
We got the shack all set up in Dad's "secret spot", and aapparently it was so secret that even the fish didn't know about it! Dad was in his glory, fishing out of several holes in the shack and several outside, where he had set up tip-ups. I was wondering how I was going to get to my classes and study after my arms and legs had been amputated due to hypothermia, when Dad yelled, "TIP-UP!" And ran out the door to check the fishing pole.
I stood up to re latch the door before the wind ripped it off, when I felt the Earth move. No, I wasn't having a religious experience, nor was the 3 foot thick ice sheet that we were on cracking. The wind whipping down the frozen lake had picked up, and had grabbed the portable ice shack in it's artic grasp. I was holding on to the metal frames, looking out the door, as without the additional 200lbs of Dad weight, the shack turned from a plastic tarp outhouse to a sailboat.
As the shack started picking up speed, I yelled for Dad, who was on his knees over one of the holes in the ice. Dad jumped up and started running after us. The lake we were on was several miles long and the shack was able to get moving at rather alarming rate of speed. I was sure I had misunderstood Dad when I thought I heard him yelling at me to "...jump! ...jump!" Then I looked ahead of me. the shoreline was coming fast, and since the shack hadn't been equipped with brakes, a crash into the rocky, tree-lined shore was eminent.
I jumped. It hurt. I broke my wrist.
As I was rolling on the ice, sobbing in pain, crying "My wrist! My wrist!" Dad came running on to the scene, and ran right past me, tears in is eye, crying, "My shack! My shack!"
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