Wintertime and Farm Island Lake is frozen. Mike, Jack and I take Mike's '55 Buick onto the ice and Mike starts doing cookies (drive ahead as fast as you can then cramp the steering wheel one way or the other) You will spin really fast. Then someone sensible (I like to think it was me said, "This is really crazy; this car is really heavy, and we don't know how thick the ice is."
PLAN B: Mike and I had 60's era sleds and Mike had a sheet of plywood (His dad owned a construction company.) Jack's contribution was a sheet and two bamboo poles (His dad ran a motel.)
Wrap the edges of the sheet around the poles and tack them in place with short nails.
Back at the lake, we sit on the sleds with our backs to the wind and slowly raise the sail.We take off slowly but pick up speed faster and faster. The sleds make a clackety clack noise and I notice a black band across the horizon beyond the fishing shacks. The fishermen inside the shacks used what they call tip-upsthat potrude about 5 or 6 inches above the ice when a fish bites. I yell,"That's water up ahead!" As much as we try to turn the sleds, it only skids sideways and we begin to take out the tip ups. We bail off the sleds and hustle back to the car with lures hanging from our coats,each carrying a piece or two of the incredible ice flying machine.
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