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.