The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was talking with my neighbor today. He drives milk truck. Home delivery. Glass bottles. Old school. It’s like having a time warp drifting around in the back yard. I’m expecting the Iceman soon on the other side of me. Big tongs dropping blocks in my 1910 icebox that sits on the porch for decoration now, you know, the present, before the century turned back. Why not? Might be time to save on the electric bill running that old Frigidaire we got back in the future.

The milkman was telling me how he’d gone to Minnesota to go ice fishing. 20 below zero. Couple feet of snow. Half a mile out on some lake near the Arctic Circle above Minneapolis. Heaven on earth. I asked what YOU would: why? He’s a dedicated fisherman and he just wanted to experience it, he said. Part of his Bucket List. I was afraid to ask what else was on that list.

I went ice fishing once. 1966. Northern Wisconsin. 10 below. Nice wind freshening up the crusty snow. My brother and I trekked out like deranged Zhivagos across a frozen desolate God-abandoned expanse, lugging an ice auger, some ice fishing ‘jigs’ and a little bait. We drilled a 2 foot hole through the ice, slapping ourselves to keep warm, then set the jigs to pop up when some sluggish fish floated by in a state of half-hibernation and got a sudden appetite. We stood there, two primitive people hunting food. The wind swept snow around our feet and the water in our fishing hole began to close up with slush. We didn’t talk much. The jig didn’t move. Time itself was freezing up.

I looked at my brother. He looked miserable. He looked at me. I know what I looked like. Without a word, we pulled our lines up, packed up the jigs not very carefully, grabbed the auger, our pride, our fishing fantasies and trudged back to shore, half frozen. Let’s just say — Ice Fishing would never have to be on our Bucket List later in life.

I asked my milkman how HE liked it. “Just wanted to experience it,” he said. “And Minnesota too, in the winter. I’ve heard about it. “ “You catch anything?” I asked. “Naw, just a small walleye. Twice, I think, same fish.” “Probably the one we didn’t catch,” I mumbled.

The rest of you anglers, give that poor walleye time to grow before you trek across the tundras in search of Antarctic fish trophies. They grow slow under the ice.

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