George Millard, Harry Munger, Bruce Meyer, and Walter Mondale boarding a float plane to leave Lake Elsie.
You might think that driving from Duluth to Ignace, Ontario with four octogenarians crammed into a blue Pacifica might be problematic, what with all the pee stops, driving instructions, and potential for discord inherent in such a journey. Not so. Oh, I’ll grant you that when my dad, Harry Munger, a lifelong friend of former U.S. Senator, Vice President, and Ambassador (to Japan) Walter F. Mondale tabbed me to be the driver for our annual fishing sojourn to the wilds of Ontario, and I found out I’d be hauling four men with the collective age of a deceased pharaoh, well, there was surely some trepidation experienced by this writer. Hitting the road a week ago last Sunday before sunrise to pick up Fritz and his pal George Millard from the Willard Munger Inn (no kidding), my dad from his apartment at UMD, and my dad’s law school buddy and outdoor adventure pal, Bruce Meyer from his son’s home in Clover Valley, I was indeed apprehensive. But once the banter between the old men began, once the philosophical and religious and political discourse echoed through the van, I knew that I was in for an interesting trip.
We met up with the rest of our crew (save one of our hosts) at the Blue Water Cafe in Grand Marais. Jay Litman, Dr. Bob Donley, Sammy Perella, and Sammy’s seventeen year old son, Tony, were all slurping syrup and eating big breakfasts when we meandered into the restaurant on a cool and foggy Sunday morning. Pleasantries were exchanged and then my carload of wisdom and wit found seats at a table and ordered Swedish pancakes, eggs, toast, sausage, and bacon to fill the morning void. We drank vats of coffee and, when we were ready to leave, we transferred Bruce’s and my gear from the Pacifica to Jay’s trailer to give George (who was manning a rear seat in my van) more room for his weary knees. Soon, we were back on the road, the Big Lake, a vast bowl of gray water whipped to frenzy by the wind, on our right as we made our way to the Canadian border.
Customs was a breeze. Last year, the Canadian agent manning the border noticed he was about to admit a former dignitary into his nation. This year, nary a word about Mondale’s fame was said by the guy who examined our passports and waved us through. A left hand turn onto the Queen’s Highway, a few more hours and we were at Ignace Airways, the flying service the Litman family has used to access their family camp on Lake Elsie for the better part of four decades. The ceiling was not conducive to taking off from water in a bush plane. The sky was rainy and fog socked. Brad, the owner of Ignace Airways, made the call early, sparing us any drama. We’d have to spend the night in a local motel hoping that the sky cleared by morning.
Monday morning, we packed food and clothing and eight guys into two small De Havilland airplanes for the short flight to the Litman camp. When we landed, we were greeted by Sheriff Ross Litman and a group of guys who’d been fighting bad weather for the better part of a week. We emptied the planes of our gear and Ross’s guests loaded their stuff onto the planes before leaving us alone in paradise.
Fishing was good. Not great. But steady. The surface water temp of the lake never exceeded 57 degrees, resulting in the nine of us catching and releasing far more lake trout than we normally do. Ross and Jay Litman, our hosts, divided camp duties between them, Ross being the organizer and constantly-in-motion camp caretaker and Jay the chef. Of course, given that Sammy Perella owns one of the Sammy’s Pizzas in Duluth, there was one night of Italian, prepared by Sammy, to go along with the fine steaks, fresh walleye and lake trout dinner, conies, and assorted big breakfasts Jay threw together (with some assistance from Ross).
Sammy and Tony Perella.
The rest of us filled in doing dishes, yard work, and assorted chores assigned to us by the Sheriff. And despite the diverse nature of our personalities, amazing as it may sound, nary a grouse or a complaint escaped our collective lips over the entirety of the trip. Tony, by far the youngest of the crew (and a recent graduate of The Marshall School in Duluth) listened to the stories, the political debates, the religious discourse, and the gentle arguing of older men, inhaling the experience like a new baby taking his or her first breath.
Bruce and George.
Jay Litman makes a point to a rapt audience.
Ross and Tony celebrate their birthdays at Lake Elsie.
Tony turned 18 on the trip, calling his mother via satellite phone (there’s no cell phone service in the bush) on his big day. Ross celebrated a birthday as well, though given the Sheriff’s advanced age, no mention was made (as we ate celebratory banana cream pie) of the exact number of years the chief
law enforcement officer of St. Louis County has graced this Earth. The high point of the trip for me was that, for two days, while everyone else was struggling to land fish using jigs and minnows, I was killing the walleyes, lake trout, and the occasional whitefish using a white and pink spinner tipped with a minnow.
“You better retire that lure,” Ross said the third day I tossed the rig into the clear waters of Lake Elsie. “That spinner deserves to be in the fishing hall of fame.”
Ah, but only if I had quelled my greed for one more fish. The third day wasn’t the charm. I lost the spinner to one of Elsie’s many rocks and, that night, as I sat in a boat watching Ross, Tony, and Sammy haul in fish after fish, my line as limp as an impotent suitor, I lamented that I hadn’t followed the Sheriff’s wisdom. But in telling you this tale of woe, I missed the most important part of our week together: the founding of a new and significant religious tradition; Walleyeism. Which brings us back to the photo I posted on Facebook of the former Vice President of the United States holding a stone walleye. Patience, dear readers, there is a connection here, I promise.
Sometime this past year, after Fritz lost his beloved wife Joan and found himself in the hospital for a variety of ailments, George Millard concocted a plan to raise his friend’s spirits. At first, it was only George and Bruce in on the caper. Inspired by a rock carver George met at a mineral show in Arizona, Fritz’s longtime confidant and friend came up with the notion to have the carver create a lifelike walleye out of Tiger’s Eye stone for the former Vice President. From such modest beginnings, George spun a web of deceit and inspiration that led to the Sheriff concocting an outrageous plan as to how to “present” the carved fish to Mondale. I was only brought in on the scam at the tail end, when Ross copied me in on a few of the emails flying between the co-conspirators. Mondale, of course, was part of the email chain only as a clueless victim. Fritz was provided with just enough information to believe that George and his cohorts were fabricating a tale for the Vice President’s amusement during his hospital stay and recuperation, but the great man was never savvy to the true intent of the plot: to gift him a magnificently carved fish on the shores of Lake Elsie.
Thursday. Ross and Tony left the Vice President bundled up in the cabin as they motored across the lake to set the trap. The plan was elaborate. The carved walleye, safely transported to Lake Elsie by the fictional Jesus through underground tunnels, was to be placed in a waterproof bag, attached by line to a fishing marker, and left in such a way so as to allow Mondale to snag the line securing the treasure, feel the heft of the fake fish, and think he’d hooked the mother of all behemoths. All three boats were to meet at the fishing marker at 2:30pm to witness the event. Oh, there were fears that the line might break, leaving a priceless artifact on the bottom of Lake Elsie for archeologists to discover and wonder over. But that was the only thing we feared. Unfortunately, we failed to take into account the fact that, for two solid days of fishing, Mondale had been incapable of catching his own pants leg.
The VP feels the weight of his stoney “catch”.
Ultimately, after about a half hour of spectators in the other boats pretending to fish, my old man (who was also brought in late to the scam) laying thick and misguided “hints” as to why the Sheriff continued to circle a fishing buoy that was yielding no fish, the former Vice President snagged the marker. Not the line he was intended to snag, the line from the marker to the stone fish, but the anchor line of the marker itself. The Sheriff quickly adapted and urged Fritz to reel in the prey he’d finally managed to catch. And there, on the slate gray waters of Lake Elsie, the stone fish, the icon of a new faith, Walleyism, was revealed.
The author with his first whitefish ever.
Our last day of fishing, my lament over the loss of the white spinner continued. I went out with Jay Litman and Dr. Bob on the pontoon boat. I had one bite, one small tap tap on the end of my line, as we trolled for hours around the lake. It wasn’t until we were within a stone’s throw of the cabin that I finally caught and landed two fine lake trout, my last fish of the trip.
That evening, Ross broiled fish for our last dinner together. The lake trout and walleye fillets, fresh out of Lake Elsie, could compete with any meal at any fine restaurant, including Wolfgang Puck’s place in San Francisco. After dinner, George and I tackled the dishes. and then Jay, Doc, and I headed for the sauna as the Sheriff took the Vice President and the Perrellas out for one last go at the walleye. I dove into the frigid waters alongside Doc, the two of us as naked as the day we were born, yelps echoing across the dusky sky. Across the lake, Fritz redeemed himself by landing three fine fish, walleyes of the flesh and blood, not stone, variety.
The next day, fog cloaking the trees, a gentle mist falling over the Canadian bush, we cleaned the cabin and the bunk house and waited for the weather to clear and for the drone of the De Havillands.
The Sheriff and Tony cleaning fish.
The New Prophet of Walleyism.
Thanks to the old guys, to Doc and Sammy and Tony, and to our gracious hosts, the Litman brothers, for making some more memories.
Peace.
Mark
