Snow Machining with Grampa Sherm

           

My Grampa Sherman passed away on May 2^nd 2021. He was 10 days away from turning 79. I miss him every day. This man is an absolute legend. I could tell you hundreds of stories about him. I’m going to tell you one today that is one of my favorite memories with him.

            Back in the good old days when we’d actually get a winter here the whole town would go for snow machine rides whenever they had the chance. If it wasn’t for hunting, it was for ice fishing, if it wasn’t for that, it was just for the fun of it. Grampa Sherman built this badass snowsled out of an airplane engine and people would take a bunch of kids down to the ice fishing lake in that. Everyone else would be out on their snow machines. Well one day when I was a little kid, I can’t remember how old I was but I was young, everybody went for a ride and nobody told me or offered to take me. Grampa Sherman was going to go down to the Fox Den (a cabin he built while people were putting in the waterline so they’d have somewhere warm and safe to go, more on that for another post). Grampa went to the Fox Den every single day of the year rain, shine or blow. Anyway, he told me I could go for a ride with him. I’m like heck yeah of course. I just wanted to get out cus I was the only kid left behind in the village (dicks) and I didn’t care if it was just one ride to the Den with Grampa. I went to his house all geared up, like a puff ball, I could barely move. Got on Grampa’s Yamaha Venture 600 and off we went. There’s a lil snow machine/truck trail we follow from here to the duck lakes in between town and the Fox Den. Part of the ride is spent on the river. Now Grampa Sherman isn’t like a cute old Grampa going slowly along the river bend. This mother fucker got us onto the river and blasted us WIDE OPEN on the snow machine. I was holding on for dear life back there. I had to use the handles on the back seat cus Grampa was so round I couldn’t hold onto him. If you’ve never been on a snow machine ride like that, you have no idea how sore your arms get from just holding on. And my grandfather is just rallying us to the Fox Den. It took us maybe 5-10 minutes to get there, no joke.

            So, here’s Grampa and I at the Den by ourselves. The stove is already going so it’s nice and toasty in there. Grampa sits in his seat and has me put a tape in the tape player to listen to his tunes. He cracks open a beer. Then all of a sudden my Uncle Ern shows up in his truck. The crazy bastard took his Toyota pickup and drove along the sea beach to the Den in the middle of winter. The Sea Beach is full of ice and big ice chunks and frozen like 5 miles out into the sea so he had a smooth ride. Not only that, he brought us a surprise. I step outside onto the cute little front porch of the Den to greet uncle. He gets out of the truck and he’s like “baby, come and look what uncle found.” I go to look in the bed of his truck and there’s a big, beautiful live king crab sitting there with it’s eyes googling around. My uncle found it on the beach on his way down. Him and I went back out to the beach to clean the crab while Grampa got the water on. That was the first time I ever cleaned a whole crab. I felt bad for it. I just saw it moving around, it’s weird little eyes watching me. I wonder if it knew it was gunna die. Maybe that’s why it was sitting on the beach. Maybe it was giving itself up to us. We went back to the Den and boiled those legs up.

We cross the river at the den when we go ice fishing so, here comes all the assholes from across the river. All my friends and cousins and aunties and uncles pour it on wide open across the river and over the frozen swamp. Everybody pulls in like “oh boy we had so much fun ice fishing.” I’m like, “yeah I had fun too,” as I’m mowing down a king crab leg in my hand. Everyone was like “where did you get crab?!” Like, oh, Uncle Ern found it on the beach. They literally did not believe us, haha. It was so much fun and so cool. Literally one of my most favorite memories snow machining and with my Grampa.