CHINESE BELLS DAY

Dear George, 

When my dad returned at the end of World War II, our family moved out to the country on the shore of the Menominee River. There were no other kids within a mile, and the river became the center of our universe. Swimming all summer long, boating in the autumn. The river froze in early December. We chopped holes in the ice to see how thick it was, and when it reached three inches we were allowed to walk across to Pig Island. Sometimes I did winter camping there, pitching my tent on a bed of pine boughs. Skating, sledding, ice fishing, hiking — the river was nearly as much fun in the winter as in the summer. 

By mid-March temperatures began to rise, the ice softened, and our parents told us not to. go out on it. One day, though, our Irish Setter Mike went for a walk on the ice, and he fell through about thirty feet from the shore. Our mother, home alone with us kids, ordered us to stay in the house, grabbed her winter coat, and raced out to the riverbank. She crawled on her stomach to where Mike was flailing in the freezing water, about to go under. We watched in terror from the dining room window. Grabbing him under his front legs, Mother pulled the 70-pound water-logged dog out of the water, and they made it back to the riverbank and into the house. That was the day our mother became our heroine forever after. 

All 180 miles of the river’s ice went out on a single day in late March or early April, the millions of tiny chunks rubbing together and making an enormous non-stop tinkling sound. My father named it Chinese Bells Day. Every year we carved the date of Chinese Bells Day into the Norway Pine wall that separated our living and dining rooms. The flowing river snatched up flotsam and jetsam along the shore as it made its way to the mouth at Green Bay — tin cans, bottles, stuffed animals, canoe paddles, etc. I put on the hip-waders that my grandfather had used for trout fishing and stepped into the ice flow near the riverbank, trying to haul in floating items with a bamboo pole. I’d always snag a few oddities, but never any true treasures. 

Aside from Christmas, Chinese Bells Day was the most significant holiday of the year for us children. A change in our physical environment, and it signaled the transition from winter to the upcoming swimming/boating season. I left for college at 18, my parents sold the river house in the early seventies, and I never experienced Chinese Bells Day in person again. Though we now live 600 miles away, I do still celebrate Chinese Bells Day in my mind every year at this time. 

Love, 

Dave