The News from Lake Waconia

The unseasonably warm weather continues, with the temps hovering above freezing this morning. Rodney “Waffle King” Peters has once again fired up the new waffle iron. We listen to this month’s archives from the Prairie Home Companion, judiciously going directly to the specific sections of the show for the “News from Lake Woebegon” and “Guy Noir”. Fearful stories of Norwegian bachelor farmers practicing their Lutheran heritage at “Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility”, while keeping an eye on the children of the parish in case they wander into the Catholic section of town where they are in ever-present danger of being abducted, tied to a chair, and forced to say the rosary.

The warm weather has turned the lake into a slush puddle. A thin layer of ice over about 6 inches of water with 6 inches of ice below that, making it safe to go out on, but slippery and wet. We went out ice-fishing with “Muskie” Matt Peters last night. A true professional in every sense of the word, Matt knew his nephews, Benjamin and Dominick, and brother Jim, had come a long way to sit on a 5 gallon white bucket and jig a minnow through a hole in the ice with hopes that a walleye or two might take up an offer to join them for dinner. After a few hours of anticipation with only a 6 inch perch to show for their efforts, they returned to home base for a Swiss cheese fondue, a meal chosen to commemorate the Swiss-based visitors.

Matt has one of those new fandangled ice houses that have wheels that can be raised and lowered, allowing the easy movement of the shack from spot to spot. With the slush and thin ice, there are no cars out on the lake yet, so Matt pulled the house behind an Artic Cat 4 Wheeler. As they packed it in to head home for the “Big Cheese” do, they managed to drop one of the house's wheels into a fish hole that had been made the day before, getting it well and truly stuck. They decided they needed reinforcements. Matt and Jim had just finished their last Leinenkugel, “The Pride of Chippewa Falls”, and didn't want to take on the task of getting the house freed without proper hydration.

After filling their bellies, and grabbing some more “Leinee’s”, the rescue team, consisting of Rod, Dave, Jim, and Ed, drove a car around on the lake road to a dead-end on the east side, where they were closest to the stranded ice house. They all then proceeded to walk out across the dark, slushy ice.

At the house, Matt was there, and he had called in a friend with another 4 wheeler. They strapped both the 4 wheelers to the house with tow straps and began “giving it hell” yanking and pulling like all get out. The “boys” took the opportunity to light up cigars, crack a cold one and applied all their concentration and focus on observing and making pointed recommendations about how to best get this house unstuck, while pratically speaking, not “getting their hands dirty”.

After not so much splashing and yanking, she was freed. Our heroes then retraced their steps across the dark ice, back to the car, while Matt towed the house back to home base. At this point, there was no option but to stand under the brooding clouds, on the shores of Lake Waconia, and to finish those cold ones and smoke those cigars down, and do what is known locally as “shoot the shit”. They stood there at the dead end of a road that doesn’t quite go around a lake that was not quite frozen and did the "do you remember when", tossing out words that wove into stories, before making memories, that swirled in the cigar smoke, between the giggles and laughter, that scattered into the dark woods, driven by the North wind. After standing around long enough to finish those cigars and empty those cold ones, they all went back for a marathon session of Texas Hold-em, where Ed proceeded to fleece them all.

And that’s the news from Lake Waconia, where the women are good looking, the men are strong and the children well above average…