You may have heard of the Upper Midwestern tradition in some towns* of rolling an old car out onto the surface of a frozen lake, and then taking bets on the date that it breaks through the ice in the spring. If nothing else, you might have encountered the practice in the pages of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods**.
Sadly, we have had such a tepidly warm winter that the practice was discontinued this year. No klunkers this pathetic winter! I don’t know if there’s even been much ice fishing this year — Lake Minnewaska, which usually has a thriving metropolis on its surface every winter, has been strangely barren. Maybe the fish have been enjoying the reprieve?
*Not every town can do this. The lakes in the immediate neighborhood of Morris are rather shallow — we live in the prairie pothole region, where mostly what we’ve got are shallow wetlands. If we did this, the lakes would be dotted with car roofs rising above the water.
**If you’ve read the book, you’d know it’s for the best, since we also don’t have murdered girls in the trunks of the klunkers.
Do they at least take all the fluids and hazardous materials out of the vehicle before placing it on the ice? It would be bad to provide a source of contaminants each year to the lake.
I don’t get it. That is really a quite extreme way to pollute a lake. Don’t they care about their fishing holes? Don’t the cops come within a day and haul it out and fine the owner?
Sometimes this doesn’t end well.
Car Found In Illinois River Could Solve 1976 Cold Case
Reginald Selkirk @ 3
I was just about to comment on the negative impact for serial killers.
The shallow lakes make your state a good place for Tesla owners.
Also, beavers and muskrats*.
*not really rats. A maligned species of voles.
(BTW the flat terrain will make any ziqqurat temples serving the Elder Gods visible from far away. Get on it!)
Every year we place a float at the middle of Umeå river and make bets of when the ice will break up and the float drift away. In retrospect, we should have asked Emmannuelle Charpentier to preside over this business while she was here discovering CRISPR.
The Nenana Ice Classic in central Alaska has been going since 1919: gambling on the exact time the Tanana River ice breaks up enough to flow and dislodge a tripod on the ice.
Ah, but does Morris have its Hinzelmann?
I assume the uneven deposition of material is because the glaciers stopped moving at the end and just melted in situ, depositing all the material mixed in with the ice.
So I followed the link and it says
so now due to the frequent repetition of “Menomonie” I’ve got this shit stuck in my head and I don’t see why I should suffer alone.
Curse you Myers and your weird foreign ways. X-D
https://xkcd.com/1321/