My family‘s New Year’s never began with a raucous celebration, fireworks, or raising a glass at midnight. My family began the day, and the year, by attending Mass at Saint Charles. In the Catholic Church, the first day of the year is the Feast of Mary, a Holy Day of Obligation. We’d get up early, get dressed, and pile into the car for the drive to Big Stone City. An hour or so after we returned, Mother would prepare and serve the best meal of the week, the same as she did every Sunday.
The day was typically relaxed. Each one of us choosing his or her way of celebrating. But one year there was drama. My family remembers well January 1, 1961. It was raining hard as we drove to town that morning, and again as we dashed to our car following the service. We ate soon after we got home.
The word had gone out to area fishermen that weekend. The ice was thick enough on Big Stone Lake to hold the weight of ice houses, and after an early “January thaw,” the water beneath was warm enough to encourage perch to swim from the depths of the lake closer to the surface. The fish were hungry. And they were biting!
My father and brothers were determined to go ice fishing. My mother, sisters-in-law, and I opposed this. The previous day my father and a companion had gotten lost on the lake during a heavy fog. Instead of heading west toward the Big Stone shore, they had headed north in the direction of Lake Traverse. They were saved by my brother Bob. The fog was thick when he’d arrived at our house. When he learned that they hadn’t returned, he drove to the lake hoping to rescue them.
“The fog was so bad, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face,” Bob tells me.
By repeatedly honking his car horn, long-short-long (our family’s telephone signal on the party line), he indicated to my father which direction to head. With the previous day’s worry fresh in their minds, my sisters-in-law protested vehemently.
“Are you crazy? It’s raining and it’s warming up. The ice will get soft!”
I didn’t join in. I knew it was a lost cause.
My mother, who never argued with my father, conveyed her worry by saying only, “I’ll serve dinner early tonight. Be sure you’re home by five.”
“We’ll be home before dark,” my father assured her.
Once on the lake the men discovered quickly that the ice was melting—creating holes large enough, not for just a man, but for a whole house to fall through. They managed to find a safe spot to set the ice house, and chipped out four holes.
They caught fish—several crappies and strings of perch. The rain continued and the afternoon passed quickly. They knew it was time to leave when they noticed whirlpools of water were causing the fish holes to become larger. Stepping out into the rain, they saw that evening had come early. They were in the dark with increasingly fragile ice below them.
Bill went out in front with a flashlight, scanning for holes to avoid. John used the pole hitch to steer the ice house following Bill’s shouted instructions, while inside Bob and my father used ice chisels as an emergency braking system.
While they struggled not to fall through the ice, the women, helpless to do anything else, were worrying, and growing increasingly angry.
As I recall, the four arrived home late, cold, drenched, and joking about how they’d narrowly escaped the icy depths of Big Stone Lake. With that the women erupted. The men retreated to the barn where Dad milked the cows, and my brothers cleaned the fish they’d caught. Only after we sat down to dinner and began to eat the newly caught succulent fish did the women’s tempers diminish.
©Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic 2020