It Sunk!
By Rocky Barker The
story of the house that fell through the ice of Lake Superior off the shores
of After a
January when temperatures in “They
wanted me to plow the road,” said Bill McCarty of Bayfield. “I
said no.” The
seven-room, fully furnished house only made three of the four miles to
Madeline March 2. The truck broke through the ice and eventually pulled the
vacation home to the bottom of The
story made international news. It came less than two years after the Edmund
Fitzgerald went down and only five months after Gordon Lightfoot’s song
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald reached No. 2 on the Billboard
charts. The
picture of the house sitting crooked in the broken ice ran from One
picture taken later in the month showed the sign warning drivers that the
regular ice road from Bayfield to LaPointe was unsafe for cars. Someone
painted an addition: “and houses.” Like all
good news stories it stayed around for an encore. The Coast Guard ordered the
owners to remove it in the spring from its 90-foot deep resting place. Divers worked with Ed Erickson, owner and
skipper of the scow Like the
Edmund Fitzgerald, the house story had its own song, “It Sunk,”
written by Washburn cop and folksinger Tim Chaney, now of “I
heard about the house through the song,” said Tom Martin Erickson, host
of Wisconsin Public Radio’s Simply Folk. I was a
reporter for the Washburn-Bayfield County Times then. They were moving the
house on a Wednesday, the day we went to press. I covered the event in my
1965 Volkswagen bug, driving nearly a mile out from LaPointe to wait for the
truck to come. The
house tilted off the driver’s side and looked like it fell off the
trailer. I drove up and found the late Lyle Rhine, the driver warming his
hands. The
truck was still running and in gear. Moments later, the ice cracked and the
timber of the house moaned as the truck sank with a gurgle from its exhaust
pipe. I raced back to the newspaper office in Washburn and yelled to Editor Don Albrecht, “Hold the presses!” © Rocky Barker 2018
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Moving
plan falls through Lyle
Rhine of Dale Movers, a
About three
quarters of the way across the road plowed just for the moving trip the tires
of the trailer broke through the ice and with the truck still running and in
gear
In May,
divers worked with Ed Erickson, owner of the
It Sunk Copyright
1977 Tim Chaney He came through the forest
and he had a song to sing. About concrete walls and
neon halls and place to sit and eat. He told of the story of a
land that he would build. With flashing lights and
city folks and fountains that he drilled. It sunk. Then he planned to bring
some boats from ports near and wide. Yes And when the first boat
entered into his harbor deep and wide. The captain yelled across
the horn he had no place to hide. It sunk. And then he planned to take
his toys across the distance shore. And no one ever thought
that they would see his house no more. Yes the timber cracked and
the men were crying and there was a mighty sound. As the house they drug
across the ice went slowly down and down. It sunk. He came through the forest
and he had no song to sing. Just broken promises to
folks and other things he dreamed. And now the story’s
over and the man he sits alone. With his fully automated
aqua-summer home It sunk. There was a washer and a
dryer and chair and a couch. He never had a chance to
take it all out. It had glass sliding doors
and thermal window panes. A trough for the gutters
for even when it rains. There were pictures on the
walls and carpet in the halls. Blankets on the beds and
showers in the heads. It sunk.
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