Sweet and Sour Pie: A Wisconsin Boyhood

The Secret Smallmouth Lake in the U.P.

102 l The Secret Smallmouth Lake in the U.P. The story of the secret smallmouth lake in the U.P. began in the White House Lunch on a June noon in the mid-1950s. The White House Lunch was on the north bank of the river, surrounded by the shipyard and the White House milk condensery. It was small, noisy, hot in all seasons, and incredibly busy when the yard was working three shifts. The White House always smelled pungently of fried onions and cigarette smoke, which darkened the walls and even the pictures of pretty girls and bird dogs on the calendars. When you walked in, Rich, who owned the place, would point to an empty stool at the counter, yell “hamburgeronion” to the kitchen, and slap down a 103 ruby-red plastic glass of ice water. You didn’t want a hamburgeronion ? Tough. Hamburgeronions were du jour at the White House. Trouble was coming, but Dad didn’t sense it as he left his sweltering office at the shipyard and headed for lunch at the White House that day. Even the hellish spit, pop, and flash of welding in the yard’s fabrication shop didn’t seem like a warning. But when the screen door of the White House banged shut behind him, Dad saw that the only vacant spot at the counter was next to Clifford. That was an omen. Clifford was a thin, lonely, red-headed welder and a breathless, nonstop talker. He lived to fish, but not at local places like Pigeon Lake or the Coast Guard pier. For Clifford, real fishing didn’t start until you were at least a hundred miles away, somewhere north of Highway 64, as far back in the woods as possible, and in the company of a good listener. Clifford saw Dad, smiled, and patted the empty stool beside him. Knowing that Dad was a bass fisherman, he shifted smoothly from perch, which he had been discussing with a grizzled pipefitter, to smallmouth bass in the North Woods. “Dammit Dave you know that little smallmouth lake up in Michigan I’m always talking about well I was thinking the other day I said to myself dammit I’ve got to get Dave Crehore up there because he’s the only other guy I know who likes smallmouth and why should I keep it to myself I just got a new tent so why don’t we drive up there Friday night and camp out right on the lake we won’t need a boat and we can take my car so what do you say?” Clifford said. Dad loved to talk, but he was careful and thorough and no match for Clifford in words per minute. He thought the proposition over as he began the ritual of filling and lighting his pipe. “Well . . . ,” Dad said, between initial puffs. “Well that’s great dammit y’know I found that lake way back in TheSecretSmallmouthLakeintheU.P. 104 TheSecretSmallmouthLakeintheU.P. the woods when I was working for the CCC in 1935 we built a little road to it but nobody’s been in there since then dammit Dave you’re going to love it I’ll pick you up after work Friday jeez I’d better get back to the shop,” Clifford said. Dad worked six or seven days a week when the yard was busy, and he had to take his fishing how and when he could get it. And so it came to pass that on the following Friday afternoon, he sat on the porch with his waders, tackle box, bedroll, frying pan, coffee pot, “6-12” mosquito dope, flashlight, and axe. Atop the pile were aluminum tubes holding his treasured nine-foot Wright & McGill Granger Special fly rod and an equally precious six-foot, five-sided Airex bamboo spinning rod. Canvas bags held a Pflueger Medallist reel for the fly rod and a Bache Brown spinning reel loaded with fifty yards of the latest braided nylon line. What is so rare, he thought, as a day in June on a wilderness bass lake that hasn’t been fished since 1935? But when Clifford pulled up, almost on time, Dad’s sunny optimism began to cloud over. For one thing, Clifford’s fishing car was remarkably old, a prewar Hudson with faded paint and a rotted muffler. “By golly Dave you’re all...