Slater Family Tradition - Fishing in Hayward, WI

            My extended family travels every summer to northwestern Wisconsin and spends a week in cabins on Brewer’s Bay on the Spider Lake Chain near Hayward. It’s a fishing trip and its origins stretch way back in the Slater family. We don’t even know who was the first to go to the Hayward area for sure. We know that my dad went as a kid with his maternal uncles. There are stories of Dad standing on the side of the boat pouring gasoline into the motor from glass Mason jars while his uncle held onto his belt to keep him from tumbling into the lake. You see, the motor only held enough gas to get to the favored fishing spot - one way - and they had to carry along a supply so that they could refill it to get back. Dad was born in 1936, so that would have been probably in the late 1940s. Dad’s oldest brother and his bride went there in 1949 for their honeymoon. (I know, cleaning fish in a rustic cabin, how romantic, right?) How much earlier members of the Slater clan – or the Banes, Dad’s maternal uncles – were traveling to northern Wisconsin to fish is unknown.

            My dad and his three brothers went sporadically in the 1950s and 1960s when they were raising their families, but then most or all of the trips to Hayward stopped. Children were in high school, jobs were time consuming and life just got in the way. In the mid-1980s, however, the Slaters started going back to Wisconsin and a strong tradition was established. By the time I took my 3-month-old son and drove the 600 miles to Timber Bay Resort in 1994, I had heard many stories of laughter and practical jokes and the other special moments that form the glue that holds families together. By the time I left the cabin at the end of that week, I swore I’d not miss another year without an especially good reason. And I haven’t, except for 1997, when my younger son was only three weeks old.

Dad and my sons - Dad's last trip to Wisconsin in 2002

            Some years I don’t buy a fishing license and so I don’t go out in the boat to fish. Heck, some years – like this year – I don’t even throw a line in the water from the shore. It’s a fishing trip, but it’s not about the fishing. It’s about family. We could write a book with all of the stories of the things that have happened and been said, and the little traditions that we’ve established. It’s special. There aren’t that many kids who spend a week every summer playing with their second cousins and their second cousins, once removed. Mine have, since they were born.

            My family. We’re close. We’ve always been close, even during the times when we weren’t. That might not make sense to anyone other than me, but that’s the way it is. Our summer trip to Wisconsin keeps us connected during those long months in between. That was important to Dad and my uncles and it remains important to those of us who are left to carry on the tradition.