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My mother, Del, at the Pickerel River in Eastern Ontario
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Chapter 16It was late August or early September and we only had one guest in camp. Mom and I finished the supper dishes and were eager to go fishing. We wanted to try trolling for walleye around the islands that lead into Trout Bay, just a mile or so south of camp. Dad was down at the boathouse, working on an outboard he had taken off a boat and put on a stand. Then the customer, who had already gone fishing, came back to the dock. He had a fishhook in his thumb.
"No problem," said Dad. "Let's go up to the lodge. I can take that out in a few minutes and you can go back out on the lake."
"I would really rather see a doctor," said the guest.
"It's not all that hard to get out," Dad said. "We'll just cut that one hook off the treble, then use needle-nose pliers to turn it back out through the skin."
"I REALLY WOULD RATHER SEE A DOCTOR! PLEASE!" said the man, his voice shaking with emotion.
"OK, sure, we can do that too," said Dad, soothingly. "It's going to be a cold trip though so you had better go put on some heavy clothes. I'll do the same. We won't get back from town until after dark and there might be frost tonight."
I couldn't understand why the man wouldn't let Dad take out the hook. It was something he did just about every week.
"He seems like a squeemish type, " Dad explained. "Better to take him into town. We don't want him to go into shock."
I made a face.
"Seriously," said Dad. "Shock can kill a person. It's not a joke."
It would take an hour for them to make the trip into Red Lake and it would be done in our 18-foot cedar-strip skiff with no windshield. They would need to go to the hospital and hope there was a doctor on call. If not, they would have to wait until one arrived, get the hook extracted and then make the 20-mile trip home in the pitch dark.
Dad put on his long underwear, wool pants and a heavy parka for the trip. He got a couple of canvas tarps for him and the guest. These were for holding in front of them to break the wind. Dad took the gas can out of the boat to fill on shore while the customer settled into the front boat seat.
"You two may as well go fishing," he said to Mom and me. "Hope you get something."
We jumped in a boat and left. The sun was already behind the trees so we hurried to the spot and started fishing.
An hour later we started back, cold and fishless. As soon as we came past the islands we realized something was wrong. There were floatation seat cushions bobbing all over the lake. When we were among them I cut the engine, searching for an explanation.
"There's something over there by the shore," Mom said, pointing in the general direction of Cabin 10.
It was so dark we could just make out some movement. I raced the boat that way just in time to see Dad emerge from the water and crawl up the mud bank. It was obvious that his parka was waterlogged and weighing him down. He unzipped it and just left it there. The customer was trying to paddle the boat toward the dock.
"Help George tie up. I've got to go warm up," said Dad, heading toward the lodge.
After he changed his clothes and warmed up by the stove, Dad told us what had happened.
The 35 h.p. Evinrude on our trip boat had to be hand-cranked and could only be done from the standing position. The starting procedure was tricky as well. Dad had connected the pressure tank, pulled out the choke and taken a couple of pulls on the rope before realizing he had not advanced the throttle far enough. From experience he knew the motor would be flooded and that the only way to get it unflooded was to disconnect the gas line, then pull the rope several more times until the engine started which is what happened.
Dad then had untied the boat from the dock and headed toward the center of the narrows. He had only gone a couple hundred yards when the motor slowed down and stopped. He had forgotten to reconnect the gas line! He did so then and, standing up, tried a couple of pulls on the rope but the motor wouldn't start. He pulled out the choke and tried again. Still nothing. Now it could be flooded again so he took off the gas line and made sure the throttle was turned up.
On the very next pull he suddenly found himself in the lake with the boat speeding away from him. He had forgotten to put the motor in neutral and when he had advanced the throttle it was to full bore.
He immediately realized he had a big problem. The quilted lining in his parka had soaked up water like a sponge so much he couldn't even raise his arms to swim. He could just barely keep his head above water by kicking his feet. And then he noticed the boat. The tiller handle had swung to one side and the boat was circling right back toward him.
George, sitting in the front seat, was looking ahead and had not realized anything was amiss until he saw something in the water up ahead. It was my dad!
He looked quickly to the stern to find there was no one back there. He was scrambling over the seats to grab the tiller and keep the boat from striking Dad when the motor died because the gas line was still disconnected. Dad was about 30 feet away and was struggling to keep his face out of the water. George realized how serious the situation was and grabbed a paddle but in his panic just paddled the boat farther away. Dad yelled to him to reach under the deck in the bow where he kept floatation seat cushions. George found these and flung them like Frisbees but they sailed all over the place. Finally, one was within Dad's reach.
He got George to calm down and gave him instructions on how to paddle. Couple strokes on one side. Now a couple on the other, etc., until the boat was alongside. Try as he might, he couldn't get the waterlogged parka off so that he could try climbing aboard. He was also going numb from the cold water. There was nothing to do but hang onto the side while the inexperienced George paddled the boat the hundred yards or so to shore. It took about 45 minutes. That's when we had come along.
Back at the lodge George had us all laughing when he noted that during the whole episode Dad had kept his pipe clenched between his teeth.
"Well, it's my best pipe," said Dad, now placing it near the oil stove to dry. He took another off his dresser. "Are you ready to go?" he asked George.
"If you are."
They took off again, now navigating by starlight. It was well past midnight when they returned.
Dad had survived what was then one of the most common ways to drown -- starting the motor in gear.
When the motor was shifted to neutral, the correct procedure was to turn the throttle up as far as it would go. That is where the engine started best, at fast idle. But if you left the motor in forward and turned up the throttle the engine would start at top speed and pitch you over the transom. Many, many people died this way.
One time I had a similar experience with a smaller engine right at the dock. I went over the stern too but had the additional problem of having my pinky caught in the boat gunwale. The boat drove itself up onto the dock and was roaring away with me dangling behind, just inches from the propeller. Somehow I managed to use the other hand and pull out the choke and kill the engine.
Today's outboards have a safety stop that prevents their starting in anything but neutral.
Despite his close call, Dad never did wear a life jacket although he was careful not to dress in insulated clothing when driving a boat. Wool, he pointed out, doesn't absorb water. He seldom mentioned the incident after that but if pressed to do so just turned it into a big joke. My mom, on the other hand, was terrified at what almost happened.
Mom and Dad had shouldered everything in their lives 50:50 and she also had half the responsibility of running camp. Along with one young Ojibwe woman, Jessie Keesic, she did all the cooking and cleaning of the lodge and the four cabins. She took reservations, answered correspondence, and did the books. She sewed all the curtains and tablecloths and painted buildings. She doctored, bandaged and counseled. Most of all, she befriended everybody. My mother never met a stranger.
The First Nations guides at camp loved her like they do their own aunties. Her poor and rural upbringing had much in common with native people in Ontario.
Mom and Dad both agreed that the guides should be fed the same meals that the guests received. When the guests ate steak, so did the guides. This differed from most of the other camps. Mom asked what they ate at these other places.
"Beans and wieners," said one to the laughter of the whole table. "Sometimes, spaghetti. And Jello."
The guides loved to eat lots of bread and butter with their meals and would always polish their plates with the last piece. One time we were out of bread so Mom made "fried bread" which was a dough made with flour, baking powder and salt and a pinch of sugar and fried in a pan with grease. It was a Southern Ohio family recipe. When she set a plate of these on the table the men all chattered excitedly in Ojibwe. After they had all taken a bite one of them said, "Del, this is good bannock!"
For several winters mom and dad ran the outdoor hockey rink at Red Lake. Dad looked after the ice and rink building while Mom operated the concession stand. The rink would close at 9 p.m. and we wouldn't get home until 10. One night we were driving down the Forestry Road and came upon a First Nations woman walking in her long skirt and leggings. It was probably 20 below Fahrenheit.
"Hey, that's Stanley's mom," said Dad.
Stanley Keesic was my best friend and lived on the other side of the hill from Ken's Lodge.
We stopped the car and I opened the door to the back seat. Mrs. Keesic got in and laughed. Mom laughed too and asked her something but only got another laugh in reply. It was obvious Mrs. Keesic didn't speak English. Dad eventually stopped the car at the trail that led down the hill to her home and Stanley's mom got out and said "miiquetch" which is thank you in Ojibwe.
About a week later Stanley came over to play and brought a beautiful pair of beaded moosehide slippers for Mom. They were trimmed with mink fur. Mom tried them on and they fit perfectly. She was astonished because she had very small feet and Mrs. Keesic, sitting in the back of the car, couldn't even have seen them.
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Mom's winter mukluks
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Mom just had to know how she did it and so asked Stanley to find out. The next time he came over he said, "She saw your hands."
Mom baked Mrs. Keesic a pie and this cemented a friendship between two women who couldn't even speak the same language. Stanley's mom and also Jessie's would go on to make dozens of slippers that we sold for them at camp. We also bought slippers for Dad and me as well as outdoor moccasins. Mom even got a pair of mukluks that she wore in the winter.
Mom and Dad's closest friends in Red Lake were Ross and Ella Williams and Art and Gertie Larson. Ross and Art worked for the Department of Lands and Forests on Forestry Point, not far from where we spent the winters at Ken's Lodge.
Ella and Gertie were super at helping Mom adjust to living in the bitter cold during the winter. She was at the Larson's one day and was astonished to see laundry hanging on the line.
"You've hung out your laundry! It must be 30 below zero!"
"Sure. It will freeze dry," said Gertie who was Icelandic. "It just takes longer -- four or five days. Try it." We did so, of course, and were amused at how jeans and shirts would freeze as solid as a board. A few days later they were fluttering in the breeze and took just an hour to "finish" draped over the back of a chair inside.
Like most Red Lake women, Ella and Gertie were expert knitters. Mom could crochet but not knit. By the end of her first winter, however, she was turning out mittens and socks for my dad and me and in subsequent winters produced sweaters.
Besides reading and writing letters to family during the long winter nights, I would practise my guitar and sing. Mom often joined in. She could play guitar too but I only ever heard her strum chords. One night she flabbergasted me when she expertly picked out "Under the Double Eagle." My Mom could play as well as those professional country music stars on the radio!
When I became old enough for high school my parents decided they wanted to go back to Ohio in the winter. My sister Sandi and her husband, Cliff, seemed to be settled there, finally. They had rented a different home every year in many of the towns around Willoughby where we had come from but then had spent several years in the same house in nearby Kirtland.
I could stay with Sandi and her family and attend Kirtland High School all four years. I would spend the summers at camp, of course. My parents ended up renting a basement apartment right beneath Sandi's rental house.
I thrived under this arrangement. Sandi's husband, Cliff, was like an older brother to me and Sandi and Cliff's four children were like younger siblings. I would get to spend four years at the same school, make friends, play sports and do all the things normal teenagers do.
Everything went well for the first two years. Then Bill Stupack went berserk.
A young woman whose boyfriend was a worker in the area had pitched her tent beside Bill's house and Bill had quickly become infatuated with her. She also worked part-time as a waitress at camp. She told Bill that a customer at camp had "come-on" to her and this resulted in Bill coming over to camp and threatening to kill the man. (This may not have been an idle threat. We found out years later that Bill had actually shot a man back in the gold rush days for spending time with his "girl" or at least the woman he thought was his girlfriend. He was fined for that crime and forbidden to enter the Howey Mine gold camp ever again.)
Mom suspected Bill was the victim of a scam and tried to tell him so. Her suspicions were confirmed when a day or two later Bill returned to say he was calling-in his mortgage. He wanted the balance in 30 days or he would take possession of camp. He would go on to buy the young lady a new car.
After eating at least once a week at our dinner table for 10 years, Bill, my childhood hero, would never speak to us again. Somehow we had become the enemy.
About the same time my sister split up with Cliff and moved her four children to Red Lake to be nearer Mom and Dad. So now nobody was back in Ohio. I was determined to return so I could start Grade 11 or my Junior Year as they say in the States. So when September came around I flew back and set up in the apartment by myself.
Just a few weeks later came the real disaster: Mom died. She had a massive heart attack in her sleep while at camp. She was just 51.
Dad and Sandi flew back with her body so she could be buried in Willoughby, just down the street from what had once been her and Dad's dream house but which had been taken by the bank and creditors when several homeowners reneged in paying dad for homes he had built them. It had been the catalyst for us moving to Canada in the first place.
Dad and Sandi wanted me to move in with my Uncle Ervie and Aunt Ruth in Eastlake, about 10 miles away, but I convinced them I was OK. I had good friends and a girlfriend in Kirtland. I wanted to stay in our apartment. So that's what I did. I was 17.
...to be continued
More in this series:
Bullies
Wolverine
Roots
Racism
Animals
Mentors
School
Lots of Bugs
Hard Work
