F.R. “Fritz” Nordengren (beta)

Tan, rested, and ready

A repackged Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign was declared The New Nixon: Tanned, Rested, and Ready.

10 days in Northern Wisconsin has left me feeling the same way. This is the 7th year Dr Ronnie Garrison and I have fished the Northwoods together. Well, that’s not entirely true, two of the years, 05 and 06, I wasn’t able to make it and we fished in Iowa instead.

The trip began with a competitive fishing tournament held each year and made up of a group of men who met via an Inernet discussion group/ usenet Rec.Outdoors.Fishing.Bass. This year’s tourney had a somber note and one of the original participants died the week of the event, and it was renamed in his honor, the Bob Rickardt Memorial Torunament. Like it or not, we’re all getting older, two of our group suffer from significant heat ailments, and they are young men in their 50’s.

So the meditative quality of fishing every day for 7 - 9 hours, in the quiet solitude of Northern Wisconsin had a special pay off this year.

This year, Ronnie and I spent much of our time on Crab Lake. It was there, on Crab Lake, in 2001 where we heard the unbelievable news about 9-11, from a very unbelievable scruffy man standing on a boat dock in a bath robe. We’ve been back on Crab on 9-11 in 2002 and again this year.

I did not fish as aggressively as I have in years past. I enjoyed (almost) every minute of time on the water. The day is snowed and sleeted of and on for 8 hours left me almost too cold to fish. And then, there was the day we hit the rocks on plane. The boat stopped with a thud, just after Ronnie killed the throttle. The skeg and prop crunched beyond repair — the motor still working, but the repair bill amounted to nearly $4500.

On Crab Lake, Ronnie tallied he caught 100 small mouth bass.

Do the math, $45 a fish.

Three years…yeah right

My friend Ronnie Garrison told me it took him nearly three years to find his farm in Georgia, about 30 minutes from his home in Griffin. That was when I started looking for ground in the fall of 2002.I knew I might have to search, but I also thought I could find what I wanted in a short period of time. Two and a half years later, in January, I was about to give up. I had visited over a dozen farms, spent a lot of time searching internet listings, and in February, visited two properties that about ended it. The first was a small 20 acre parcel with a “house”. The house had been remodeled poorly, had been stripped, and the ground was littered with junk.The second, was a fair piece of ground, 70 acres including a deep pond. But this pond was placed right near the adjacent 10 acre farmstead of another family and the entire parcel felt like someone’s back yard. Or more precisely, someone else’s back yard.A week later, I spotted a listing with a photo: 80 acres, no other information. The photo showed what looked like an old home or barn, and some other small building. And on a Thursday afternoon, I drove down to take a look.Realtors take lousy photos — but then again, how do you take a photo of a farm.The buildings turned out to be a small barn and a small shed. the barn is about 24 x 36 and is set up to house a few animals to support a family. it has a solid pole foundation, but shows years of neglect and wear. The shingles are fair, the roof ok, but it’s not ready to be a home. Everyone thinks in en vogue to remodel a barn into a home. Usually, it’s a massive structure that gets turned into a palace. A suburban home in the country.I gave thought to taking this barn down, but now I’m giving serious thought to converting it to a cabin: checking the square and stability of the poles to support the live and dead loads of a shelter for people and not animals. Re roofing, and then, removing the siding a wall at a time and replacing it with new board and batten, or plywood. Once the floor girts are hung, I can place a level floor, finish the siding, and have a weather tight cabin built to lock-up.