Problems with the Buick

 I had a small problem with the Buick while filling it up at Thorntons the other day.

I always use my credit card to pay outside.  Doing so forces me to interact with the gas pump.  Feels a little silly.  Black print on a small gray screen asks for my zip code, which I provide, and asks me three questions every damn time, to which I always respond by pushing the NO arrow.

              Are you a Refreshing Rewards Club Member?        NO - I belong to too many things now.

              Would you like to join and save $.03 blah blah        NO – I don’t care

              Would you like a receipt?                                          NO – I got them for years. Never wrong. 

I just want the gas.  Maybe a hot dog.  I’m always aware, standing out there between the Buick and the gas pump, how close I am to the jumbo wieners turning slowly on the roller grill inside the station, shiny with fat, with soft warm buns in the drawer beneath them, and the fresh condiments next to the grill.

It was quite a blow, during the pandemic, when Thorntons went to foil packets only for condiments.  Mustard and ketchup in packets, pitiful dehydrated onions in some chemical soup in a packet, and sludgy packets of relish.  Want a hot dog with the works?  Here you go, take it or leave it.  I declined.  I understood their health concerns, but it was a huge loss.

To their credit, Thortons is slowly bringing fresh condiments back. They sell a lot of hot dogs at their Ottawa store by I-80, which means the dogs and condiments move fast and stay fresh.  Currently they have four little bins with spoons and clear plastic covers containing chopped white onions, sauerkraut, jalapeno peppers, and sweet pickle relish.  Yet to make an appearance are sport peppers, dill pickle spears, and celery salt.  Added to their current condiment buffet is an array of squeeze bottle condiments: yellow mustard, spicy brown mustard, Sriracha, ketchup, and mayo.  The wieners may cook on a roller grill, but Thorntons is the hot dog condiment king.

I skipped the hot dog that day.  I was nearly empty and would no doubt spend plenty on the gas alone.  After getting the gas pumping, I checked the Buick’s oil.  I don’t check it every time because the Buick has never used oil.  It’s a 2006 Lucerne with a 3.8-liter engine and 156,000 miles.  It still runs like a top.  I probably check the oil every other time I fill up.   

I popped the release, pushed up the hood, and put a wooden stick between the hood and the grill.  The pneumatic arm that keeps the hood up wore out.  Happened sometime last winter.  I found a stick the perfect length.  It fits neatly hidden in a tray up by the windshield.  I always planned to get that fixed.

That V-6 Buick engine sits sideways under the hood.  The dipstick is right in front, bright yellow plastic that’s easy to see and grab.

When I pulled the circle handle the dipstick came out hard like it was stuck.  I wiped it off with a blue paper towel I keep tucked under a metal strap towards the headlight.  But when I went to put it back in, it wouldn’t go.  It was stopped by something.  I’ve been driving cars and tractors for sixty years and that’s never happened.  Couldn’t check the oil.  Dipstick wouldn’t go in.  I stuck the point of my pocketknife in the tube that receives the dipstick and found nothing. I used the flashlight on my phone to try to see down into the hole but didn’t see anything.

“I’ll be damned,” I said.

Don’t know if I said it out loud or to myself.  When you’re by yourself a lot you lose track.  I threw the dipstick into the Buick on the passenger side, held up the hood, removed the stick, tucked it into its place, and let the hood slam shut.  My tank was full ($43.00 and some change).  When I started up the Buick its check engine light came on.  I drove away perplexed. 

I called Jim Boe’s independent gas station downtown.  They feature non-descript gas and Firestone Tires.  Jim is gone now you know, but family is carrying on.  They know the Buick pretty well.  A woman answered the phone.

“Hey, I have a funny problem with my 2006 Buick.  I can’t get the dipstick to go back in.  Is that something the guys in the shop can help me with?”

“I don’t know.  Let me check.”

It was an old landline phone.  I heard it clunk as she put it on the counter and while she was gone the murmur of people talking.  You don’t hear that much anymore.

“Yeah, they say come in anytime.”

I had things to do.  Believe it or not, retired people do get busy.  I went in the next day.  That same woman was behind the counter.

“I’m the guy that called the other day with the dipstick problem.”

She laughed. 

“We have just the guy to help you.”

A young guy, big with a full red beard came out and smiled.  He was holding something like a long ice pic with a crook on the end.

“I think I know what’s wrong with that dipstick.”

We walked out to the drive.  I popped the hood release and propped open the hood with the stick.  He didn’t say a word.

‘You got it still?  The old dipstick?”

I pulled it out from the passenger side.  He took one look at it and knew what was wrong.

“There’s a little collar on these now with an O ring.  Started putting them in when they came out with Check Engine lights.  Even a little drop in oil pressure makes the light come on.  See this?  Your collar is gone.  It’s probably down in that tube blocking your dipstick from going in.”’

“I’ll be damned.  I’ve been driving all these years and never heard of that.”

“It happens.  I had one yesterday.  Dipstick handles are plastic after all, and right next to that hot engine block.  Guess it only lasts so long.  This Buick’s a 2006 right?  I’d say 15 years is maybe the limit.  With any luck I can fish it out and get you going again.”

He went down into the Buick’s dipstick hole, I guess you’d call it, with the tool he had in his hand.  It looked homemade.  He pulled it out.

“There’s your O ring.”

Little black circle on the end of his finger. He handed it t me and went back in.  After some shifting and prying around, he appeared to get an angle on something, and drug it back up. Handed me a small yellow plastic crescent.

“There’s half that collar.  Let me see if I can get the other half.  If not, it will more than likely just fall into your oil pan and come out at your next oil change.  Better if I can grab it though.”

In a minute or so he came out with the other half.

“There you go.  Your dipstick technically would still work, but your Check Engine light would always be on, and you’d just figure it was that bad dipstick.  You ought to get a good one.  We keep a few in the back off wrecks and stuff.  Let me see if I can fix you up.”

He was gone a few minutes and then returned.

“No luck.  But they got them at NAPA.  Probably in stock.  Won’t cost you much.”

“Wow.  Thanks very much.  What do I owe you?”

“Nothin’.  Think of us when you need tires.”

“That’s very nice of you.  Thanks again.”

He smiled.

“Say, what do you know about this arm with the cylinder supposed to keep the hood up?”

“Same deal.  They wear out too.  When we work on old cars with bad cylinders like that, we just use vise grips.  Clamp ‘em right here.”

He showed me the spot.

“Works fine.  You can buy those at NAPA too if you want.  Cost you a little more than the dipstick though.  Easy to replace. You can do it yourself.”

He showed me how.  Two screws.  Easy peasy.

“Sure you don’t want anything for this?  You‘re giving me not only free labor but free advice too.”

“No.  Really.  That’s why we’re here.”

 

A new dipstick and hood support were $59.00 at NAPA.  I haven’t gotten around to fixing the hood deal, but I will soon.  I considered getting a cheap pair of vise grips and keeping them in the same place as the stick but that’s not right.  I like to keep the Buick in relatively good shape.  That car has been good to me, and I want to be good to it.  I figure the pandemic added at least a year if not more to the useful life of the Buick.  I barely drove it.  And while I know we’re going through a bad time still with COVID and this Delta variant, it’ll get better.  Has to.  We can’t lose hope. 

After I put that new part on the hood, I’m going to do some serious clean-up on the Buick.  The garden has been hard on it.  I got a lot of dirt in the trunk, and more on the floorboards.  A good vacuuming would do a world of good.  All the vinyl, sidewalls of the tires too,  could use a good wipe down with Armor All. 

The Buick and I haven’t been on a solo road trip since 2018.  I can’t believe it’s been that long. Those road trips in retirement take me back to when I traveled in the ’70s.  I was mainly hitchhiking then, and that’s apparently over.  But there is something about being on the road with time on my hands and all my thoughts to myself that pulls on me.  I have some maintenance issues of my own I need to take care of before I head out.  But I’m anxious to get out there again.  It makes me feel free.

I better see how much tread the Buick has on those tires.

Heading North

 COVID has changed even the simplest of things.  Like the annual guys’ fishing trip to Canada.  What’s simpler than going fishing?   Assemble the group, get the deposits, book a cabin on a lake, buy food, check your equipment, pack up and go, right? 

Wrong.  Last summer, pre-vaccine, the border never opened.  Gary Robinson broke a 30-year string of planning and enjoying group trips to Canada.  He thought the same thing might happen this year, but the Canadian government opened the border on August 9^th.  He quickly put a plan together and we crossed on August 27. But that crossing was completely different.

Most of us remember a time when you could cross into Canada by simply showing your American driver’s license.  9/11 changed all that.  Passports have been mandatory for twenty years, but this year brought several new wrinkles.

The ArriveCan computer app for starters.  It’s like pre-registering to enter Canada combined with providing health information.  The guys in the group helped each other figure it out by multi-texting on our smartphones.  We scanned the strip on our passport, provided photos of our vaccine card, a crossing date, emergency contact information, where we would stay, where we would quarantine if necessary.  Not easy but then again not hard if you have rudimentary computer skills.

Key to the process was proof of a negative COVID test within 72 hours of crossing into Canada.  We all took the drive-through test at Walgreens on the same day and crossed our fingers.  All good.  We took off the next day in two vehicles, one towing a trailer with all our gear.

It was a long trip, 15 hours, but shorter than previous years.  We’ve been driving to Red Lake, Ontario, and flying north onto Job Lake in a bush plane equipped with pontoons.  Job Lake is inaccessible by road and has just one cabin on the lake.  For that reason, the fishing is wonderful, and the privacy is exquisite.  No phone or internet capability.  We are connected to our camp owner by a satellite phone only used for emergencies.

Typically, we drive to International Falls, Minnesota the first night and cross the border into Fort Frances, Ontario the next morning.  But sleeping off eight more hours of our ticking 72-hour COVID test clock spooked us.  We booked a room in Fort Frances knowing we’d feel better when we successfully made it into Canada.  We crossed at 6:00 p.m.

The border official was friendly.  We produced actual passports, vaccine cards, and written copies of our COVID tests, all of which she looked at carefully.  I have a hunch all that information was already on her computer screen, but she checked it anyway and passed us through.  As U.S. citizens, we take our ability to travel freely throughout the world so lightly.  It’s a huge privilege, having access to nearly every nation on the planet, and not just our neighbors to the North.

It’s hard to say what was different about Fort Frances, Ontario after two years had passed.  Like all border towns, the community’s economy is based on those crossing back and forth.  There was a new and nifty cannabis shop so close to the border I think I could have hit a golf ball onto U.S. soil using a sand wedge.  It was busy.  But the town, in general, was not.  The local economy looked to be hard hit by the border closure.

At the Super 8 motel, the counter staff seemed to have been waiting for us.  I think they were smiling but we never saw their mouths.  Staff were strictly masked all the time. Canadians take preventative health measures more seriously than us.  The lobby was largely empty to prevent groups from gathering.  In the dining room, chairs were upside down on the tables and there was no breakfast service.  Brown paper bags were promised for the morning.    

We celebrated our escape from the U.S. that night at a beer and pizza joint close to the motel.  We encountered a long wait for service, not due to a crush of hungry diners, but because tables inside were shut down to provide safe distance between diners.  Our server seemed new.  Could be Canada is experiencing the same slow return to full employment as us.

Typically, the next morning before leaving for the trip into the Northwoods we would stop for one last prized provision.  Our group does serious bacon business in Canada.  You can still get butcher shop bacon up there wrapped in that thick brown waxed paper.  We buy ten pounds for the trip, and some guys buy more to bring home on the way out.  We used to buy it in Red Lake but lost that connection.  Thankfully, we found Einar’s, a tiny convenience store in Fort Frances with a butcher and wonderful thick Canadian bacon.   

I don’t know why bacon is better in Canada, but it is.  Einar slices our bacon from a freshly cured pork belly.  We’ve seen him do it in the store.   Oscar Mayer is no match for Einar’s bacon.  One of our first lunches on the lake is BLT’s with homegrown Illinois tomatoes and Einar’s bacon, and it's built into almost every breakfast.

Trouble was, we had crossed late Friday night and Einar is closed on weekends.  Gary phoned Einar prior to leaving and he promised to bring the bacon to the Super 8 so it was there for us Saturday morning.  It was.  I think Einar needed the business.    

The economics of the resort business changed our trip.  At its best, Northern Ontario’s fishing season is short.  It opens in mid-May and closes in early September.  Fly-in fishing is more expensive, and resorts that provide it face greater costs.  Contracting with pilots, gearing up planes, arranging for a season that could start no sooner than August 9^th, which gave them no more than five or six weeks of bookings, just didn’t add up.  We couldn’t find a fly-in option, to our regular lake or any other.  We were grounded.

So we chose big Lake Wabaskang, three hours North of the border and right around the corner from Perrault Falls.   In past years we would meet lots of southbound U.S. vehicles towing boats heading home on Saturday having finished their trips.  This year, traffic in both directions was light.

At Perrault Falls we turned off the road to Red Lake and followed a gravel trail 50 yards to a small parking lot on a lake.  It was the far south shore of Lake Wabaskang.  Dave, the owner of Peffley’s resort, pulled up shortly after we arrived in an old 21’ fiberglass speed boat with a big Yamaha outboard.  Most of the seats had been pulled out.  We loaded our gear into it.    

“I can only take half of you, so we’re going to have to make two trips.  The lake is really low.  If I put on too much weight, I can’t make it over the rocks in the shallows.  Besides that, I’m waiting on two more guys from Indiana.  They got stuck on the border.  The rest of their group got here yesterday.”     

Our group was headed to the north end of Lake Wabaskang, which covers 15,000 acres and has 105 miles of shoreline. We let the younger guys go ahead so they could get a head start unloading the gear.  I was selected for the second trip.  The boat pulled out and left us on the dock.  Occasionally you could hear a vehicle on the road.  Seemed odd to hear traffic on the lake we were going to fish. 

While we waited the guys from Indiana showed up. They carried a few bags and boxes from their car to the dock and we began to talk.

“Heard you had some trouble at the border.”

“I guess you could call it trouble, yeah.  Big damned confusing mess is what it was.  We didn’t think they were going to let us in.”

“What happened?”

“They said the information on that Canadian computer app didn’t match up with our papers.  Made us pull out of line and re-do it.  Gave us a Wi-Fi code and a password.  I don’t know shit about Wi-Fi.  I tried to tell ‘em that.” 

The other guy chimed in.

“A young guy in a car in line saw what was going on and came over to help us.  Started punching stuff into Jerry’s cell phone.   Got to some point and asked us what our email addresses were.  I knew mine but Jerry didn’t know his.”

Jerry threw up his hands and looked defeated.

“My wife does all that internet stuff.  I don’t pay any attention to it.  She told me I was all set.”

The digital age can be cruel to old guys who checked out of it long ago.  Jerry’s friend picked up the story.

“He don’t know his wife’s number.  So anyway, we got back in line and tried to explain our problem, but they weren’t having it and sent us back to the American side until we got it figured out.”

Jerry hung his head and his friend continued. 

“We lost a day.  My COVID test ran more than 72 hours but thankfully they took my temperature and stuff and didn’t make me take another one.  It was a mess.  But we’re here now.”

“Yep.  And it’s a nice day.”

We heard a boat in the distance.  Soon we were on the way to the fishing camp.  Jerry and his friend from Indiana were long-time acquaintances of Dave.  They hadn’t seen each other for two years and caught up during the trip.

At one point, when Dave throttled down and was scraping rocks in a narrow channel, Jerry inquired about one of their friends who had arrived in camp the day before.

“How many times has Bob fallen down?”

Dave laughed.

“None that I know, but he stumbled clear across the kitchen the other night when we came to visit.  He pulled on the door to let us in, it stuck, he let go of the knob, started pedaling backward, and couldn’t catch himself.  And it’s taking him a long time to get to and from the dock.”

The average age of your typical American fisherman in Canada is not going down.

We arrived at the opposite end of the lake where a cluster of a dozen or more buildings was built on a high rock bluff overlooking the lake. Peffley’s Wilderness Camp has a small protected cove with good solid docks.  Parked in the slips are more than a dozen nice 14’ aluminum fishing boats with new Yamaha electric start 20 hp motors.

Dave tied up on the dock and drove a four-wheeler with a two-wheel trailer down to the lake.  We loaded our stuff onto it to haul to the cabin.  Actually two cabins.  One slept six and a tiny one close by slept two.  Gary and his son took the tiny place.  It sat at a strange angle.

So did the bigger cabin.  If you dropped something off the kitchen table, it rolled clear to the door.   We made up for a lack of electrical outlets with extension cords.  The asphalt shingles were curling up on the roof.  The cabins need a lot of work.

Electricity at Peffley’s is powered by two Diesel generators.  Dave has another fiberglass boat equipped with a 100-gallon tank he uses to haul fuel across the lake to keep the lights on.  He takes good care of the place, cleaning the fishing boats and filling the gas tanks each day.  He makes sure minnows are brought in for bait.  He keeps the fish house, where fish are cleaned and filleted, clean and tidy.  We weren’t used to the comforts, running toilets, a fish house, someone to tend to the boats. 

Many operators of remote camps have invested in solar panels and battery systems on their cabins which provide electricity for the fishermen and pump water to the cabin.  Once those systems are in place, the cost to maintain them can be negligible.  I wondered to myself what it cost Dave to fill that big diesel tank and to keep the generators going for a season. 

Dave lives in Indiana in the off-season.  He bought the camp 16 years ago from its previous owner after fishing it summer after summer.  He’s in his mid-60’s I’d say.  He and his wife are going it alone this summer.

“We shortened the week by a day because we just can’t get one set of guests out, another in, and clean the cabins all on a Saturday.”

“So, usually you have help?”

“Yeah.  We bring in a couple in the middle of May and they stay all summer.  We provide housing of course and much of their food.  We’ve had good luck with Newfies.  The last Newfie couple we had worked six summers straight.”

“Newfies?”

“Canadians from Newfoundland.  Don’t ask me why they work in Ontario so far from home, but it works for them.  Nice people, hardworking.  But you can’t attract those kinds of workers for a five-week season.”

Gary’s booking was last minute.  He had brought a group there many years ago and called Dave on the chance he had an opening.  Many fishing camps on lakes in high demand are typically fully booked for years.  Not so during the pandemic.

“We were damned glad to get your call,” Dave told Gary.  “Sort of put the cap on this sliver of a summer’s business.”

Dave’s wife brought dessert over to our cabin twice, and Dave shared some ceviche he made from Walleye.  We reciprocated by mixing them cocktails.  They’re nice people.

“I thought maybe with the Americans unable to cross the border that Canadians would take up the slack and book the weeks the Americans didn’t use.”

“Nope,” Dave replied.  “It’s not like that.  I think upwards of 85% of the camps are run by guys like me, Americans who visited these lakes, dreamed of owning a resort, and found a way.  And our guests, I’d say 95% of all the fishermen, are American.  Canadians can nearly always find good fishing close to home.  They don’t need to rent boats and cabins for a week.  When the Americans couldn’t come, the resort business crashed.  If it wasn’t for some government help, we’d be out of business by now.”

“Used to be it was all word of mouth.  Most of my guests are from Indiana.  They tell people back home about the place and I get a ton of repeat business.  Most have kept their same weeks for years.  But it’s changing.  What we really need is younger fishermen, and we haven’t gotten them yet.”

We were surprised Dave was able to purchase the camp outright. The more remote fly-in lakes allow only long-term leases for outfitters.  Lake Wabaskang had other private parcels of land tucked here and there, though we saw little activity at their docks.  The other boats we encountered on the lake seemed to all be from Dave’s resort.

Despite the differences with our fly-in lake, Lake Wabaskang had plenty of similarities.  The one I yearned for the most was the quiet.

I consider it quiet in the shack but if I listen closely, I hear vehicles on Route 80, the overhead fan, planes from Skydive Chicago, any number of background noises we hear in our communities but typically filter out.  But on the north end of that giant lake, on flat water ringed by trees and away from towns, deep calm silence wraps around you like a blanket. 

 And on clear nights, the absence of ambient light makes the sky come completely alive; the bright highway of stars that makes up the Milky Way, the constellations.  There are smartphone apps now that you can use to point out the sky.  They outline the constellation you are looking at on the little screen, bringing it to life.

That’s another feature of Dave’s camp.  For the entire trip, we were rarely if ever shut out of an internet connection.  I stayed away from my phone as much as possible, using it mainly as a camera, and tried to ignore my friends who were talking about breaking news.  I was looking forward to being off the grid entirely. Different year, different trip. 

But no matter what men build around those big Canadian lakes some things remain constant.  Lake Wabaskang is a great fishery.  It has depth and variety, good flow in at its shallow north end and out the south at Perrault Falls.  It produces primarily Northern and Walleye Pike, many of them big and healthy.  We made the trip to fish, to be in the company of good friends, and experience the beauty of the Canadian Shield.  Mission accomplished.

Thanks to Gary Robinson for making the trip happen again this year under difficult circumstances, and for thirty years before that.  He has provided a great experience for many of us for a long time.  Give that man a fish.