Scott City Musings: New Year’s here already

Another year has come and gone and 2025 is here! So how did you celebrate the New Year?

For me, supper somewhere between 5 and 8 p.m., and usually I’m napping around 9 p.m. On a normal evening, I’m sound asleep by 10 p.m. Now, I might wake up around midnight and watch the New Year come in. That’s a possibility. Me staying up won’t happen.

Growing up, we really didn’t celebrate New Year’s with parties and fancy food and booze, but we did spend the day ice fishing. All of us loved to ice fish. Mom and Dad and Mick and I and Marge loved to spend the day on a frozen body of water catching fish.

I remember New Year’s Day in 1974. Mick and Marge and I drove about 25 miles north of Arthur to a little lake that was full of yellow ring-eyed perch, bass and crappie. The fish we were targeting was the perch. It was cold that year in January, with a temp down towards zero. There was 5 or 6 inches of snow on the ground, and we were driving a Maverick Grabber. The Maverick wasn’t very high off the ground, but we were able to get it to the lake, which was about half a mile off the pavement. There really wasn’t any road so we simply made our own.

At the time, Marge had a pretty good-sized baby bump where she was expecting Vic the first couple weeks in March. She had to be extra careful, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get out on the ice and catch a fish. When we first got there, we had to clear the snow off spots where we could drill the holes. So one by one we started drilling probably 6- to 8-inch holes through the ice. It’s been about 50 years ago, but I’m thinking there was about 10 inches of ice. After we got some holes drilled, we started putting small minnows on the hooks and dropping them down the holes.

And little by little, we started catching perch. A perch is related to a walleye, so they are absolutely tasty. We fillet the perch so they are boneless. Dipped in flour and fried in lard, there aren’t any fish that are better. Some would argue crappie are better. They aren’t. I’d say they are about equal. I don’t have a clue how many we caught, but there was one special fish.

Marge hooked a pretty good-sized bass, and after a struggle she went to pull it up through the hole in the ice but the bass came off about 2/3 of the way through the hole. Without saying a word, Marge reached down into the hole and pulled him out. She wasn’t going to let her 3- or 4-pound bass get away! I can’t remember how many we caught or even how good they tasted, but I remember the memories we made that day, Mick and Marge and I. I’m not sure who took a picture of Marge holding her fish smiling from ear to ear with a sunburned face because of the sun reflecting off the snow, but it’s an awesome picture. We had some trouble getting back over the hill to the pavement given the snow on the ground. Didn’t really get stuck. Maybe the Maverick Grabber had positraction, but I don’t think it did.

When you figure up the total cost of our fishing trip, it was pretty cheap. Three dollars for the minnows. Three or four gallons of gas cost maybe $4. Some bologna or brown sugar sandwiches and maybe a pop or water or ice tea. Maybe a bag of chips. No booze. After cleaning the fish, Mom and Dad fried them up and we had a feast.

Memories don’t need to be expensive, and they don’t need to be made in some foreign land and they don’t need booze or alcohol. Some of my best memories never cost a penny. Three things: Keep it simple, make sure it’s fun and choose good friends.

Phillips began life as a cowboy, then husband and father, carpenter, a minister, gardener and writer. He may be reached at phillipsrb@hotmail.com.