Ice Fishing—Or How to Survive Minnesota in Winter

Kee is Malaysian, offspring of well-to-do plantation owners in the South Pacific, and obviously Asian. At the time of our meeting, his command of the English language was adequate, a vital prerequisite for his chosen field of marketing.

When I met Kee, we were both working at the Carlson Companies in Plymouth, Minnesota, during the early days when the burgeoning firm was primarily involved in trading stamps, promotions, and merchandising. My job as public relations manager gave me easy access to the firm’s total range of activities, including the earliest involvement of the Radisson hotels.

In our in-house advertising agency, it was my privilege to meet Kee and to give him his first, and probably only, exposure to the “real” Minnesota winter. As a promising college student with his sights on the American Way, Kee was eager to learn as much as possible. And, since I was eager to be of help, I asked him to go ice fishing. We chose one of the coldest and snowiest post-blizzard days to drive to Alexandria, Minnesota.

My primary contact in the ice fishing world at the time was a Korean War veteran, as Scandinavian and Minnesotan as they come. Ole—that was his real name—had a reputation as one of the most ardent fisherman in the area, and I had shared his fish house on more than one occasion. I knew that if we were to find some ice-fishing adventure for Kee, Ole was the man to see.

When we arrived at Ole’s place, the snow had drifted so high that we had to park on the highway and walk, ponderously, through the highs and lows of a storm’s aftermath, covering our faces against the searing cold that bit and numbed our noses and mouths. I had lent Kee a cap with earmuffs to cover most of his head, but his nose and cheeks were taking on the whitish complexion that indicates pre-frost.

I rattled the outer door of Ole’s house and Kee and I pounded our arms and waists to keep the blood circulating until Ole opened the door and swore in disbelief: “Holy cow” was his greeting, and he backed away in shock. It was a moment before he regained his composure and said “My God, I thought I was back in Korea.” A glance at Kee made it clear to me how Ole must have flashed back to see that Asian face, rimmed in fur cap and muffs and frosted with cold and a nearly fixed grimace of pain.

Needless to say, Ole’s Minnesota hospitality returned when we had a chance to defrost in his warm kitchen, and we did manage to get into his fish house, where Kee caught his first freshwater fish, which, quickly frozen on the ice outside the shelter, later became the feature of a typical Minnesota meal. The warmth and comfort of Ole’s rather simple fishing shack became the atmosphere of international camaradery, and I often remember the confrontation at Ole’s back door and my Malaysian friend who has moved on to his career as a professor of marketing.

And, just to add a final anecdote to this narrative, remember the newspaper item printed in the 1960s when a visitor to Minneapolis noticed the fish houses on Cedar Lake? He remarked to the cab driver, “Boy, I knew there were hard times, but I never imagined the unemployed in Minnesota had to live like that.”