Chili, Hot Chocolate, and Fish

Journey of our Journeys

Chapter 7 - Chili, Hot Chocolate, and Fish

Smelt fishing each spring was an annual event for our family, rather like Christmas and the Fourth of July. If you have ever lived in the Northwoods, you will know that that does not make us strange at all; it means we fit right in.

There was no question that Dad would pack us all in the camper one Friday afternoon as soon as he got home from work, and we'd head to Ashland. We never knew exactly when until Dad heard from someone that the smelt were running. But it was sometime in April or early May, depending on the length and severity of the winter, I suppose.

We usually stayed at a little city park in Ashland, Wisconsin, along Lake Superior. We'd always get there after dark on Friday, so Pat and I would wake up amazed on Saturday morning to find ourselves parked next to the greatest of the Great Lakes.

One year, we camped in a different park in a setting of green grass, pine trees, and a pond. Instead of being greeted by the majesty of the Great Lake in the morning, we found a swan lazily paddling laps in the tiny lake. Not that it mattered to us; my sister and I were kids who found everything amazing.

During the darkness of night, Dad and his cronies from the paper mill where they all worked would wade out into Lake Superior. Wearing chest-high waders, they would trudge with their nets into the freezing water, then pull the nets back in full of hundreds of three- to six-inch fish, many of their undersides bulging yellow with eggs.

Or at least that's what I pictured happening. Since this all happened after dusk and it was invariably cold out, Mom was reluctant to release us from the camper. Someone usually lit a bonfire, though, and occasionally, Mom would let us out to bask in its heat.

The most vivid smelt-fishing incident involved chili and hot chocolate. Pat and I were sitting at the table in the camper, sipping hot chocolate with Kenny Venzke, the son of one of our neighbors. Mom was at the stove heating a big kettle of chili so the men could warm their insides when they had finished freezing their outsides.

The camper was parked in its usual spot, far from shore, when suddenly it started moving. Well, we were all stuck inside. Remember the "no further than the edge of the back of the dinette when the truck is moving" rule? Even Mom was not immune to it. One look through the camper's small window into the cab of the truck told her that Dad was at the helm. We weren't being kidnapped or rolling out of control down some hill.

Mom was understandably vexed, but she would ride it out and see what Dad had in mind.

Then, he drove over a set of railroad tracks. These were not ordinary railroad tracks that might be on a downtown city street. These were hideous tracks, compact car-eating tracks. If ATVs had been invented at the time, their drivers would have loved the challenge of these tracks.

Though we kids tightly clutched our cups of cocoa, we could do nothing to prevent their contents from making a quick exit and spilling all over the table. Of course, that was nothing compared to what happened to the chili.

Tomatoes, ground beef, sauce sloshed all over the stove, the back wall, the ceiling, Mom. You name it, there was chili everywhere.

When the truck came to a complete stop a short while later, Dad trotted around to the back door to sheepishly apologize. He had decided to drive down to the beach to be closer to the action. He didn't know that the railroad tracks were that rough.

Watching Dad's innocent face through the open door of the camper, we waited with bated breath to hear what Mom would say in her fury.

I don't remember what she said, maybe nothing. Or perhaps it was one of those things so awful that our subconscious buries the memory so we won't be haunted by it for the rest of our lives.

Whatever she said or did next, over the following year, she found more tomato sauce to wipe up every time we went camping.

(The picture is of Lake Superior at Ashland, taken when we were at a cabin up north in 2020. Not sure how close this was to where we camped coz things have changed so much up there in the past fifty-plus years.)