A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded pistol on your coffee table – there’s nothing wrong with them,
but it’s hard to stop thinking about it. – Garrison Keillor
1992. Dateline. Ann Lake. No relation to Veronica.
Ann Lake and Ann River are named for an Ojibway woman who lived nearby. She’s probably most famous today for having the place named after her.
The lake itself is eight hundred acres of tepid green watercolor soup full of Walleye, Bluegills, catfish, Northern Pike and Black Crappie.
There should be more statues to the guy who invented the screened-in porch. A commemorative stamp for sure.
Mosquitoes in Minnesota are a protected species, a mutant strain powered by small outboard motors. They laugh at insecticides. HaHa, HaHa, HaHa, sounding like Eddie Murphy. Look at them out there.
Locals tell the story about the time four skeeters stuck themselves into a French Poodle (standard-size yet) from St. Paul and lifted the curly pooch right off the ground. Hung the dog in a tree like a sausage. Invited their friends over for a barbecue.
“Would you like to stay a week?,” Bob Chuck asked before I had even unloaded the van.
“No,” I said, somewhat stunned. “I mean, yes. I hadn’t…”
“The Mrs. and I have to go back to work in the city, of course, but you’re free to stay until next weekend.”
“Thank you, Bob.” I was moved. “Can I get you another beer, Bob?”
The Chucks had arrived at their cabin, heavily weighed down with six-packs of local Scandinavian brews. Like Corona. Grain Belt.
“I knew you were a lush” were Bob’s greeting words to me.
Our hosts, Bob & Mrs. Chuck, smoke Merits outdoors, on the screened-in porch at their own lakeside cabin. Which I imagine gets poco gnarly during ice-fishing season.
They don’t use salt, but they eat Canadian bacon. Gave up caffeine, but they drink beer. Read many good books and they don’t watch much television.
They like to sit side-by-side and fish together quieting. Thinking thoughts and releasing the infrequent naive, perhaps blind, fish who accidentally bites into the hook.
Minnesotans. I value these people.
Halfway through the first evening, Mrs. Chuck said she liked me. Which is about two days sooner than most women this wise.
She’s so cute. Bob Chuck’s trophy bride. Queen, a collector of cookbooks, loved to watch me eat her grub.
“This would be real good soup,” I piped up, “if it was heated a little.” “That’s gazpacho,” Mrs. Chuck said.
“He knew that,” Hiawatha offered without kicking my shin.
Bob is a pound or two pounds heavier than he was in college and he’s wearing a stubbly white beard now.
“I’ve never seen him before,” I said, “but he looks the same to me.”
I loved Bob Chuck the moment I saw him. I told him he was “one of us.”
He looked concerned.
“I assume,” Bob Chuck assumed, “you know how to operate an outboard.” This was said after a cruise around the nearby wildlife management preserve.
“Oh, sure,” I lied, recalling the time my father had let me take the helm and I’d turned the dock of the Crab Basket on Lake Candlewood into a takeout-window. I was only fifteen.
“I used to do some boating with my old man when I was a kid.”
“Here,” Bob called my bluff, “take it for a spin yourself.” With that, he was out of the boat.
I looked at Hiawatha. “Do you want to come along?”
“No, thanks.” Little does she know.
Within an admiral’s heartbeat, I was zigging and zagging, zagging and zigging across my own wake at top speed.
Docking needs work.
The next day I took Hiawatha for a boat ride. We went fishing without bait. Without poles even.
Suddenly I found myself thinking about doing this for a living. You know, taking attractive single women on intimate wildlife tours.
For big bucks.
I imagine some of those worked-up environmental types still get all moist over a fellow nature lover with good bone structure.
We are skimming across Ann Lake, a single crack sliced its smooth pea-green pane of a surface. The engine throbs through my right forearm as I head straight for an armada of baby ducks.
Throb. Throb.
“Ranger Barker Ajax, Psycho Tour Guide,” I announce to the back of Hiawatha’s head. “Welcome aboard. Thank you for joining us today for this periodically exciting journey into the deepest recesses of our Wal-Mart Wildlife Management Area. A Division of Dow Chemical. This park can only be reached by boat or the Interstate.
“We began our tour today by swamping some ducklings.” About then I made a huge hard turn, almost tossing Hiawatha into the drink.
“Tomorrow, I’ll be killing many of the very creatures you’re oooing and ahhing at today. Got tomorrow off, it’s a state holiday here in Minnesota. Garrison Keillor’s birthday.”
That’s right. Wouldn’t miss it.
“Bambi Day,” I continued. “That’s when the Department of Fin, Fur, Feather, Fowl, Fish & Game holds the annual Twenty-Four-Hour Fawn Derby.”
“Because this is such unusually cold weather for this time of year, ya’ll won’t see any of the cougar, bison, Rocky Mountain goats, or Kodiak bears we often get to see on this very tour at other times.
“Funny, isn’t it, how you’ll pay a wad of cash sometimes to observe the various thangs, your flora and fauna, in their natural habitat and the damn little shits never stick their heads out where you can see’em.”
Cabin de Chuck is not built of logs. Don’t mean to complain. But there’s is no lap pool . And, aargh, no hot tub.
Otherwise… it’s perfect. No phone. Got my own motorboat. The interior is a symphony of four thousand square feet tough-and-groove knotty pine paneling. Like a jigsaw puzzle of Lincoln logs. All hand chinked by the owners.
We took walks in the woods and made love in front of the fire.
“I think we’re talking second honeymoon here,” I said, jumping Hiawatha from behind.
I love to do that.
Of course, nobody sneaks up on Hiawatha Moscowitz. Not unless she wants them to.
“Excuse me,” Hiawatha said. “This second Honeymoon you’re talking about.” Inevitably.
Backed up and moved her ass east to west and back again. “I don’t seem to remember the first one.”
That person Hiawatha.
MINNESOTA: AN ACTIVE FANTASY LIFE HELPS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oEHYysFtbY