On Thin Ice In Rural Wisconsin

Infamy And The Lions' Klunker

Welcome to Inspired By True Events with me, Adam Rockwell! I’m an Oregon Coast-based writer, humorist (sure you are!) and chronic oversharer. This is part of my Offbeat Stories Series - Cheese Curd Days!

I was born and raised in Menomonie, Wisconsin. It’s a small town of around 16,000 people.

Menomonie sits on Lake Menomin. That’s a man-made lake that I swam in every summer until I was thirteen. That’s saying something, especially if you’ve ever been on the shores of Lake Menomin. You see, Lake Menomin is filled to its britches with algae. It was plain old green algae when I was young, but over the years it has turned into a blue-green algae. A toxic blue-green algae. It has been reported that land mammals drop over dead if they even think about drinking the water. That smells about right.

One hot July summer day when I was twelve, we spent most of an afternoon swimming in Lake Menomin. It was slimy green that day I tell you. When I got home from our fun in the sun, we found that our hair had been bleached blonde by the waters of Menomin. After researching this phenomena, I found that it was most likely from industrial pollutants rather than blue-green algae. Yum.

Lake Menomin also puts off a smell to beat all. It’s a smell unlike any other in the world. Similar to the old stockyards in South St. Paul, but somehow worse. You have to experience it to truly take it all in, if you’re tough enough to take it.

That’s why most of us Menomonites welcome winter. The lake, as you might expect, freezes solid. That stops the stench of the blue-green “water” (I use that term lightly) in its tracks.

After the lake freezes, we spend the rest of the year ice fishing. Nobody in their right mind would eat the fish from under the ice, but hey, it’s something to do. Right?

Then, something magical happens in late winter. The city of Menomonie has a strange tradition on the frozen lake:

The Menomonie Lions Club, which is an official branch of the city government (JK), puts a car out on the ice and the locals bet on when it will fall through. It’s called “The Klunker On Ice”.

The Lions Club Klunker. March 21, 2023. I was back home and got to see it in person!

The Lions Club has been putting the klunker, an old car, on the ice for over 250 years. Or something along those lines. For all I know, they’ve been doing it since they got their hands on the first Model-T. Why the Department of Natural Resources or the EPA allows this has always been a mystery never to be solved.

When I was young, I LOVED the tradition of “The Klunker” out on the ice. Every year we would save up five bucks and go make our wildly wrong bets for the date and time the car would make its dramatic explosion through the ice and sink to the bottom of the green, green lake.

My bet never won. Even now as an elderfolk, my bets are always way over-the-top wrong. It’s notoriously difficult to predict when the ice will go out. Ice is gonna ice, just as certain as I’m going to lose my “Klunker” bet.

The (Now) Infamous Writer Comes To Town

Editor’s Note: In order to protect the privacy of the "Infamous Writer,” I have changed his name to “Schneil Schmaiman” for no discernable reason.

At some point in my early twenties, I was informed by my friend who was knowledgeable in matters of town gossip that the famous graphic novelist, Schneil Schmaiman, had moved to Menomonie. In true small-town style, I’d never heard of him before.

My late father, Norm Rockwell, was a well-known cartoonist in Menomonie and throughout the cartooning world. He was a “local celebrity” and was even on the city council!! He LOVED both Menomonie and his small-town fame.

But suddenly, he had competition for biggest fish in the littlest green pond.

The new-to-town famous writer was not yet a household name. At that time he was more of a specialized writer who later became a Hollywood phenom.

All over town you would hear whispers of the famous graphic novelist who nobody had ever read but had moved to Menomonie. Various plumbers, electricians and other assorted townsfolk had been out to do work on his pseudo-Victorian home. You hear things when you’re a local, and gossip is the number one thing you hear.

To be honest, I don’t think more than three Menomonites had heard of Schneil Schmaiman’s spectacularly popular graphic novel or even understood what a graphic novel was before he became spectacularly famous. To us, a graphic novel was, well, a comic book.

Breaking The News To My Father About Schneil Schmaiman

Once I’d found out that another cartoonist, that’s what I thought a graphic novelist was, had moved to town, I went home and excitedly told my father that another cartoonist had moved to town! Two famous cartoonists in one little town! Amazing! I thought he would love to hear this news and maybe they could hang out and talk about being cartoonists.

My father just said, “He’s not a cartoonist, for Christ’s sake! He’s a writer!”

I was confused, as I often am, but he explained to me that Schmaiman was a writer of graphic novels. Not the drawer.

Aside: It was interesting that my father knew exactly who Mr. Schmaiman was and what he did… interesting indeed…

That was a lot for my eighteen-year-old brain to take in. I never had even considered the fact that somebody WROTE a comic book and somebody DREW a comic book separate from one another! Amazing!

This all said, Mayor Knaack is probably furiously trying to get him scrubbed from Menomonie’s Wikipedia page as we speak. Good luck with that, Mayor Knaack, good luck.

Back To The Car On The Ice

I have lied to many, many, people over the years that I have read the entire book, Canadian Deities (name of book changed for privacy), one of Schmaiman’s most popular non-graphic novel novels. Luckily, it has been turned into a TV show and maybe one day, perhaps, I will convince myself to watch it. Unlikely, but maybe.

In the book, Canadian Deities, Schmaiman references the Lion’s Klunker and the city of Menomonie itself! He changed the name of Menomonie to protect its identity, so I’m told.

This brings me back to “The Lions’ Klunker” as a metaphor for many things. MANY things.

Instead of the explosion of ice and exciting sinking of the car, it’s more of a long, drawn-out process. There are cracks that begin to appear. Whispers about what’s happening. Is it going down? Then there’s a slow, sinking that begins. After some sunlight is applied to the Klunker, it finally falls through and is never seen again.

I wish there was a happy ending to the story. But, the lake still stinks and I never win the Klunker bet. Maybe the silver lining is that my dad is still the greatest cartoonist Menomonie has ever seen.

The Sinking Klunker Video

Here is the 2023 Klunker in all its glory. Watch till the end, it’s amazing!!