yup, yup, and triple yup. Should be a fun book. Ernie cracked the old recipe folder open and found some things that they've been making there for a long time. There's DEEP FRIED OLIVES, OH, FUDGE, VIVIANS TWICE BAKED POTATOES, WAY-TOO-GOOD CHEESE STICKS, LEMON BREAD, MAKE BELIEVE APPLE PIE and lots of others.
Here's a little sample. It is the INTRODUCTION to the new book, and just gives you an idea of where Ernie and the guys hang out:
INTRODUCTION
“There’s nothing quite so sad as an empty skillet.” At least that’s what Bob’s Grandpa said when he came out to camp last summer. He’d had a pretty good night’s sleep and came into the kitchen pulling up his suspenders. It didn’t take long for the rest of us to catch on and get some bacon and eggs going for him. At least the coffee was already perked and probably stronger than what he usually got at The Home.
We had a lot of fun while he was there, talking about the old times and catching up on some news. He filled us in on all sorts of things like how to keep pump leathers soft and the best way to get a bat out of the cabin. Those geezers know more than you can guess a lot of times. The most comforting thing about getting to be a geezer is just knowing that you know a lot, even if much of it is useless information. And, most of the guys at the Club are either geezers or geezers-in-training.
We’ve been trying to keep the Club more family-friendly lately, too. For a long time it was a place for the guys to keep their boats, fix snacks in the kitchen, then sit on the porch and drink beer and fart till the mosquitoes got bad. First, some of the wives started coming out, they said just to clean up a little. Then, the kids, and even some of their kids started coming to visit, just to fish or swim or fly kites. Well, that’s OK. The guys can still fart when they’re fishing or carrying in firewood.
Like a lot of men, most of the guys here like to cook. They sure as heck love to eat, so things balance out pretty well. Nobody likes to clean up, so most of the things we fix here are as simple as possible and leave a minimum of pots and pans to clean up. And, like a lot of hunting and fishing camps, we keep the staple items on the shelves here. Potatoes and carrots, flour, salt, ketchup, and frying oil. Just that sort of stuff, not much fancy. Through the years we’ve sort of collected some spices, and a box of this or that and a surprising amount of canned goods. It just seems like the stuff we need most is on a shelf someplace. A little can of ground Sage will last for years, but we try to “rotate” the canned goods. Bulgy cans go to the dump right away.
Back in 1988 we had that problem with the bricks falling off the chimney and cutting up the shingles over the kitchen. The snow melted and ran into the cabinets and we really couldn’t tell a can of tomato soup from a can of crushed pineapple till all that stuff was used up. Boy, we had a couple of real surprising dinners that spring. Bob thought he’d dreamed up something real special when he mixed cans of diced carrots and sweet green peas and heated them up with dinner one night. He was shocked when he found out that you could actually buy them mixed that way in most grocery stores. When he served the baked beans with peach slices we locked him out of the kitchen.
It’s a funny thing but when we all got to talking one day we figured out that lots of the things we make here and like the most were first found at church dinners and luncheons. The Methodists are known for their deserts. The Presbyterians have the best-baked goods and the Catholics know how to make the best Americanized Italian-style pasta dishes. The Fire Halls fry fish better than anybody and the Elks Lodge has a couple ways to serve baked chicken. Then, of course, there are things that were invented right here at Camp. On TV they would say, “developed, tested and proven in our very own world famous test kitchens.” I guess that’s the way it works here, too. We wipe down the linoleum counter top and put all the extra fishing reels and baseball caps on the coffee table where they belong and then we cook.
The Iron Lake Fishing Club has been here a long time. Iron Lake was formed about ten thousand years ago, or at least that’s what the fellow from the DNR said. The Club itself sits on the north east end of the lake on just about thirty-three acres of scrub and poplar that wasn’t worth cutting when Tony’s great-grandpa bought the place in 1917. The original cabin was just one room and made from logs chopped and dropped nearby. The original owner was Zeke Johnson and we owe the “sunset view” to him. Tony’s great-grandpa burned the original log cabin and built a spacious three-room cabin with two 12’ x 12’ bunkrooms and kitchen/dining/sitting room. The outhouse was just out back and was in use till 1963 when everybody chipped in for a little addition. That year we got a new kitchen, a real bathroom and a mudroom where we could hang our wet hunting clothes and fishing rods. The big camp stove is on the back porch now and we still cook with wood in hot weather. The stove inside runs on bottled gas just like the water heater. We have electricity of course, but the gaslights on the walls still have mantles in them and when the power goes out we can see. Gaslights are sort of pretty, really, and when we light them up the older guys feel more like telling stories about the old days.
The big porch that runs all the way around the cabin went on in 1974. One of Tony’s uncles passed on and willed it to the club. It has been a tradition since then to drink a toast to his memory whenever two or more guys sit down on the porch to enjoy the view. Some traditions just make good sense.
One of our best traditions is the Annual Picnic and Family Fun Day. This started out as a Fourth Of July celebration in the 1950’s but the weather on the Fourth can be sort of cold and wet sometimes, so it was moved to the first weekend in August, just before the trees start turning in the fall. If you have lived in the Upper Peninsula this makes perfect sense to you. If you have only lived down south, that is anyplace south of Milwaukee then you are not familiar with the 47-day summer season we have up here. And summer, by the way, is anytime we don’t have snow. Like a lot of things the Annual Picnic and Family Fun Day started out simple, with some of the guys bringing baked chicken or macaroni and cheese out to camp, and sharing some beer that had been chilling in the lake. Over the years it grew to include the wives and kids, and eventually grand kids of the members. Last year we had a set of twins that were Arnie’s great-grandkids. Tony is still with us, but he’s moving pretty slowly these days. He didn’t get in on the boat-bailing event last year, but he enjoyed a beer while the other guys made fools of themselves. The Bocce’ Ball court is a little bit too civilized to suit me, but lots of the guys enjoy it, so I say let ‘em have fun. The horshoe pits have been moved a couple of times over the years and they are out by the mail box now, but the kids still tote the horse shoes out there at least once a year to play. We had to wait all summer for parts to fix the mower a couple of years back when Joe ran over one of the horseshoe stakes. I don’t know why we have never done it before but this year we’ll have a bait-casting contest. There will be distance and accuracy events, open to everyone. I guess we’ve just been watching the stringers and figuring that they guys catching the most fish were the best bait casters, but fishing has sort of slipped these last couple of seasons, so we’ll make a game of it, just for fun.
The food has gotten better nearly every year, and we have had to bring out folding tables from the church to set everything on. We have a big smoker now and usually have BBQ ribs and sometimes even a big smoked turkey. There are still lots of finger foods and the eating usually starts about sunrise on the Picnic day. All the bunks are full of course and now some of the guys bring their RVs out and park them near the road. I guess that’s OK, but it just doesn’t seem right somehow. Of course, there is still beer, as cold as the lake is ten feet deep. And Tony’s oldest son has been bringing out something he makes at home he calls Dago Red. That’s pretty good stuff and two years ago Father Mark even blessed it after he’d had a glass or two. We all like fishing with Father Mark even if he won’t get out of the boat and walk on the water like the fellow in the good book. We figure he could if he really wanted to. He isn’t one of those “stuffy” Priests, he’s more like one of us, and it never hurts to have a man of the cloth around just to help settle the big questions that come up around a campfire sometimes.
Of course, the desert table has changed the most over the years. We used to have a pan of brownies and were happy with that. Now we have Fluffy Banana Cream Pudding and Delightful Danish Sunrise Sweet Rolls, and hundred other things that guys can’t cook in a camp kitchen. That stuff comes out to camp one day a year. In this book we’ll stick with the things we actually fix here. Actually, not many of us really NEED desert. For some of us, the fishing boats are floating just a little deeper every year. Only part of that is because of the stuff we accumulate in our tackle boxes.
Between the games and talking and eating and drinking we all have a great time. Sometimes guys who have moved away come back to visit and sometimes their kids come even after the old man has passed on to what we call “the better fishing lake” in the sky.
Things change here, but slowly, thank God. It gives us some balance against what is happening in the world. Two of the younger guys think we should have “inter-net” here, whatever that is. We all decided to put that on the agenda for the fall meeting two years from now, unless we push it back to deal with more important stuff.
In the really big picture, the Club is a retreat and a destination, an out of the way place right on the biggest road some of our members will ever drive on and at the same time it is a stopover in a backward time-warp for some of the guys who have moved into the city someplace. It’s a hideout and a shelter and a comforting nest for most of us at sometime or other. When Vern’s wife died in 1960 and a year later his son was killed in Viet Nam he moved out to camp and parked his folding chair on the end of the dock. He sat there every day, winter and summer, from dawn till dark for nearly a year and we just let him take all the time he needed to get right. One day he folded the chair up and threw it as far as he could out into the lake and came back to the cabin about noon. He got into the fridge and opened his first beer in about a year and we knew he was OK.
On the other had we have smoked a lot of seegars on the porch with those little pink or blue paper bands on them, too. Happiness and sadness seem to find a balance here.
I might have chattered on long enough, but I wanted to tell you just a couple things about the Club. Have fun with the recipes we have written down here and drop me a line if there’s anything you really like.
Regards, Ernie
