ESTESBOG

by Peter Walker

One thousand acre Wassookeag Lake lies just outside the little mill town of Dexter, Maine. From 1975 through 1977, Wassookeag was the most northerly of the more than 600 lakes on my watch as an Assistant Regional Fishery Biologist in Maine’s Fishery Region B, the south central coastal plain.

            Lying next to a minor population center in otherwise rural central Maine, Wassookeag received heavier ice fishing pressure than most lakes. The lake at that time possessed small populations of landlocked Atlantic salmon and lake trout (“Mackinaw”). There were never enough to go around, yet I could always find an assortment of several dozen “townies” trying their luck on Wassookeag.

Wassookeag was well inland and high enough in latitude to lie in a much colder climate than lakes along the coast. By late winter the ice might approach four feet in thickness. This was enough to support any vehicle safely.

            During that particular winter we had a couple of February rain storms in between cold weather cycles that had flattened and blended the snow cover on the lake before it refroze.

            Whereas the teens in Fort Morgan cruise Main Street after school each day, when conditions were right, the students at Dexter High School went out and cruised the surface of Lake Wassookeag.

            My mission, on those days when I worked Wassookeag was to sort through the relative chaos and glean accurate angler hour and catch rate information from the confusion.  I found the most effective way was to interview individual anglers out on the ice during the middle of the morning and afternoon, then return to the one vehicle access point – the town boat ramp – during the noon hour and again as sundown approached. I interviewed anglers at the end of their efforts.

            On that particular day in 1977, I returned to shore around 3 p.m. and parked parallel to the boat ramp. With an excellent view of the entire lake, through binoculars I could monitor the activities of about 60 scattered ice fishermen.

            Except for fish holes and a few chunks of litter and debris, the surface of the ice was nearly unblemished except for an 18-inch raised  “wave” in the ice about 100 yards off shore to the west of the south-facing access ramp. This had been created earlier in the winter when someone with a Jeep plowed a road out onto the lake after a big snowstorm. Soon afterward the rain flattened the snow and the cold that followed welded it into the ice sheet. The snow bank created by the plow became a solid, wave-like ridge that presented a potential obstacle to drivers and snowmobilers.

            The day had begun sunny and clear. By afternoon puffy clouds moving in from the southwest began to increase in size and darken. As I sat in the warmth of my Plymouth station wagon, I watched a particularly dark cloud approaching on a track that would bring it right over the lake. Heavy precipitation was dropping from its underside.

            Before the squall hit, most of the cruisers left the lake and headed into town leaving the lake to the die-hard ice fishermen. But a minute or two before the squall struck, one of those huge, 1963-vintage Oldsmobile 98s came down the ramp and headed off across the lake. You probably remember those cars – broad and flat with hood and trunk so large helicopters could land on either end.

As the rusted relic passed close down the port side of my own vehicle, I saw that its 4 occupants were droopy-eyed men in their 60s. I’d run into them a few times before. All four had little else to do all day in a rural town than ride from spot to spot while maintaining a high titer of blood alcohol to ward off the boredom of a long winter.

            Moments later the squall struck Wassookeag with a vengeance. Like a great white curtain it enveloped us and pelted the lake with wet snow driven by high wind. In the 15 minutes it lasted, it blanketed the lake with 3 inches of sticky snow.

            Visibility at the height of the mini-blizzard was barely 100 yards. It was an absolute whiteout. There were no shadows; there was no horizon.

            Halfway through the squall, through wipers set at the fastest speed, I suddenly made out the faint glow of double headlights off to the right. A second later I could make out the large, low silhouette of the Oldsmobile. It was coming on fast and, although I couldn’t see it, I knew it was fast approaching the vicinity of that ridge on the ice.

            So limited was the visibility that no more than a couple of seconds lapsed between my first spotting the car and it hitting the curved ridge at right angles at 35-40 mph.

            The effect was sort of like the launch of a jet from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Suddenly the nose snapped into the air and the great craft left earth on an orbital trajectory. Sadly it lacked the means to continue its rather graceful flight.

            For a brief moment I saw the entire underside of the car as it completely left the ice at a 45-degree, nose-up angle and rolled slowly to the right. Then its right rear corner struck the ice and caused the car to slam back onto the ice on all four tires very violently.

Within two or three car lengths the would-be spacecraft came to a stop with the heads, arms, and legs of its scrambled occupants sticking up out of a pile of bodies clustered more or less in the center of the fuselage. An entire header pipe, muffler, and tail pipe assembly, along with a wide assortment of other rust-colored pieces-parts, littered its wake.

I was just about to drive out and assess the damage and check for injuries when the car suddenly came back to life. Sans muffler, it sounded like a stock car as the driver revved the engine. Ever so slowly the battered, roaring beast moved forward again and limped up the ramp. I rolled down my window and the driver did the same as he pulled alongside.

All four men were nearly as white as the snow. I asked if they were okay. The driver said he thought so, but they all needed to go home and change their underwear.