One of my most vivid memories of my youth is ice fishing with my dad, brother and my dad's buddy Gordy. We lived in southern Minnesota and made the pilgrimage every Christmas vacation to Winny. The excitement started by going to Gordy's place to get the spears sharpened. He would show us the big Turkey he was cooking to take along for sandwiches, we always ate it all over a couple days. We always left early in the morning. We didn't have 4 wheel drive pickups in those days. We took dad's 59 Pontiac more than a few times. My brother and I sitting in the back seat feeling pretty proud to be going with the men. My brother and I sat and listened to Dad and Gordy talk about things we never heard about before, some small town gossip, some a little off color, but it was OK because we were with the men after all. We seldom contributed anything to the conversation and didn't dare whine about "when will we be there?" or we may not get to go next year! We arrive at Judd's and it is already dark. I remember the snow squeaking under our feet and how still it was in the woods, snow piled on the fence posts like upside down cones. We would walk into the lodge and Judd would usually be there himself, he always treated us like long lost family. Years later I found out he treated most people that way. Judd had an ability to remember people's names. He would be playing cards in the lodge, probably with a jug on the table, he was wearing a red union suit on one occasion. Judd was nothing if not a man of action!

We'd get a cabin and hardly sleep we would discuss how we made such good time and how lucky we were that we left before or just after a storm so that we got here. Before daylight we were up and put on long johns, and two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, and 5 buckle overshoes. We always told ourselves that overshoes were better than those big boots some of the city dandies had. The morning started by lining up behind Larry's pickup (Judd's son-in-law). After the struggle to get everyone's car started we would head out, sometimes as many as 20 cars snaking out across the lake. He would pull up to a group of houses and a couple cars would fall out of line. When it was our turn to get our houses the anticipation was almost unbearable.

The houses were a simple design 4 foot by 4 foot plywood, a small wood stove with a whiskey bottle of kerosene to get it started. The smell was a mix of fish slime, kerosene, and wood fire. The hole in the floor the only light source. There would be little pink licenses stapled to the wall, and different shaped discs tacked to the outside for the game wardens to worry about. You would walk in and the wind was cut off, the heat from the stove would fog my glasses, the contrast between dark and the daylight outside was drastic and took a while to get used to. When hour eyes started to adjust, the shapes in the bottom of the hole started to take on the look of fish. They seldom were but my mind needed an outlet for all the pent up excitement. The first few hours were always stressful until you got a fish in the house, then it was either hoping for another one or trying to figure out how you screwed up the last one. If things slowed down you would hear someone's door slam and someone was on the move. I always kind of hoped they would walk over to my house and have a little talk. My buddy Sam was a great visitor on the ice, he wandered over to my house. After a while I said "Don't you think you should get back, your fire will go out." "Oh I fired it up real good before I left." With that he opened the door. He did a double take and there was his house, all that was standing was the stove and pipe the rest was reduced to a small pile of ash. He slowly turned to me and said "Do you suppose lightning struck it?" Judd laughed so hard when we told him the story he didn't charge us for the loss of his house.