Fishing license DISASTER turned triumphant
Anna Houck's ice fishing story
Here’s a story by Anna Houck. Thanks for reading!
Every year, since I was about eighteen, my dad has taken me and my twin brother Ian ice fishing. We usually go about four hours north of Minneapolis, my dad will text us the night before asking if picking us up at 6:00am is OK, show up 5:00am and become exasperated when we aren’t ready. Historically I never had my shit together and would usually be hung over or not packed or both – very, very cool of me. So, always off to a great start! The dynamic was predictable and comfortable; Ian and I didn’t have to do too much of the leg work because only my dad knows how to do everything and we had learned that trying to help would only break his brain.
One year, Ian had just moved out of state and so I figured ice fishing was off because dad and I didn’t spend too much time alone together, but no! He wanted to go ice fishing with JUST ME! Unprecedented.
He said he would pick me up at 6:30 am and showed up at 5:00am as usual, and I had my patented hangover and disregard for other people’s time. He doesn’t really like to listen to music in the car for some reason, and without Ian there the silence was deafening but I was still optimistic that we could bond. About 3/4 into the drive he asked me if I had my fishing license (this is a question he asks every year knowing quite well that I do not) and my heart sank and turned to diarrhea when I realized my wallet did not contain my ID. I thought maybe I could just not tell him, and hopefully the people at the fishing license place would just trust me that I was a MN resident. I decided nah, I will tell him and let him lose his mind in the car and not at the bait shop. He promptly lost his mind. I thought he might like to drive us both off a cliff, he was so mad at me. We stopped at the bait shop, and I decided to try and bat my eyelashes at the guy behind the counter. He seemed ambivalent and denied me, which was very annoying!
Desperate not to have to turn around and drive back with him in his current state, I tried to think of ways I could get my MN ID. We were in a small town and it kind of seemed like nobody alive lived there, just ghosts. I saw a courthouse and thought maybe I can go in there and explain the situation and they would write a court-order that the bait shop must give me a license so my dad won’t be mad at me. The courthouse was closed. We drove slowly and aimlessly while my dad’s gasket blew. He decided to park, and I decided to get out of the car and try to think of a solution.
My Dad parked near a Subway, and I saw a cop housing a cold cut combo. Normally, when I see a cop, I have zero inclination to interact with it, but I know from watching thousands of hours of YouTube body-cam footage that they have all your personal information in their little car computer. I said brb to my dad and briskly walked up to the cop and explained that I just drove almost four hours with my dad in silence to go ice fishing and I forgot my ID to get a license and asked if he could pull my MN ID up for me real quick and he happily obliged, which was shockingly easy. He even wrote it down for me!!!! I excitedly told my dad that my genius plan worked. We went back to the same bait shop where the employee had already forgotten I existed. I gave him the piece of paper with my MN ID and he gave me a fishing license!! I felt oddly vindicated, even though all of this was my fault. When we got back in the car to continue our journey, my dad said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you, I might not deal with adversity very well”, a very self-aware thing for him to say! And he said he was impressed that I came up with the idea to interrupt a policeman’s Subway breakfast. Truthfully, I would have done anything to ease tension between my dad and I, and I was pleased that it worked. We were able to ice-fish. My dad spent a lot of the time auguring outside, but it was still nice to spend some one-on-one time with him for the first time in years.
We have continued to ice-fish every year, but never just the two of us, so I am grateful that it was a memorable and over-all successful trip.