Lots of people thought that Grandpa didn't care for them. I think that he was just in pain. His body coursed a steady decline for each of the 18 years that I knew him. Besides, Grandma was often in his ear.

He took me ice fishing. I was visiting from Chicago. It was winter, 1960, and I was in my fifth year. It was cold. He kept his icehouse on Lake Minnetonka off of Hardscrabble Point. He enjoyed driving the car onto the lake that morning and watching my reaction.

We got out of the car and walked through the snow to his icehouse, dark gray, with black lettering on its side. We pulled a sled with his drill and yellow minnow bucket.

Grandpa removed the padlock. it was dark inside and smelled of his cigarettes. He propped the door open for light and removed a section of the floor. To my horror, he began to drill a hole in the ice. I don't recall him spending much energy alleviating my fear of sinking when that hole was done. When the drilling was complete, he gave me a tea strainer and I removed the slush and ice shavings that remained in the hole. He closed the door and the water in the hole threw what was left of the sunlight beneath the ice into the interior of the icehouse like a muted green flashlight. I watched the minnow drop from darkness into the glowing water. Grandpa had all of my attention.

I don't remember how long it took, but I remember seeing my first fish flash below the hole. I remember my first fish coming out of the hole and ending up outside lying in the snow. I remember that we caught a few. I remember that it never really stopped being cold and that I had never seen that much color in Grandpa's face.

The icehouse door was locked, the fish were picked up from the snow and the sled was pulled back to the car. The heater was turned way up and the trip made home. Grandpa put the fish, frozen and stiff, into the kitchen sink and covered them with water. He told me to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't get away. I did. They didn't. I jumped when the first fish thawed and began to flop. Grandpa laughed.

My mother told us that she wished we had known grandpa when he was younger, and not sick. I did, they day we ice fished together.