The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

Bee Lucke was the son of Havre pioneer Lou Lucke. He loved Clear Creek almost as much as his father had. He was blessed for his father-in-law C. L. Stuart shared that love for the area. The two of them spent years moving into old homestead cabins up and down the creek and turning them into fishing camps.

At the time fishing was not allowed during the winter on Clear Creek. No matter for most winters, with the cars the two drove, they couldn’t even get to Clear Creek.

However, there was that one winter that was so open that January, February, and March had not even seen a snow plow on the Clear Creek road.

Both Bee and C. L. Loved to fish. Both knew they could fish during the winter without getting caught because there were few game wardens running around those days.

But they wanted to keep comfortable fishing. So Bee built an elaborate fishing house, tiny but solid, insulated and it even had a tiny wood stove with a burner so they could cook a hotdog during the time they were fishing on the ice in the house.

At the time the cabin was the old Johnson homestead, a handsome and large log house sitting right on the edge of two cliffs.

To get the house down to the preferred ice on Clear Creek, Bee invented a perfect block and tackle system so to speak. They pushed the ice house to the edge of the cliff. Then they used their car to push the ice house over the edge. It fell until it was caught by cords that suspended it in the air, then slowly they drove their car closer to the cliff and lowered the house right down to where they wanted it, just above one of the best Brook trout fishing holes in the entire range.

They spent several weekends fishing in that house. It was snug, cozy and were they pulling huge fish out of the hole in the ice under the house.

On this particular Saturday afternoon, armed with a case of Budweiser and a bottle of Old Crow and some stew in a stew pot on the tiny stove, the two spend the afternoon fishing and talking of many things. As one poet used to write, they talked of ships and seas and sealing wax; cabbage and kings.

Full of the wonderful stew and a lot of alcohol, the two went fast asleep and were completely oblivious to the great adventure they were about to go on.

Up above the Diamond Bar ranch there was the mother of all beaver dams. The weather had been so warm that the dam had not frozen much, just about a foot of ice above several acres of cold water.

Was it the wing air currents of a crow flying by or the step at the wrong place of a cottontail? No one will ever know but all at once the main dam sprung a tiny leak. Then that leak became a gusher and in what seemed like just a moment, the whole dam failed sending a wall of water shooting down the creek.

Sound asleep, neither Bee nor C. L. even felt the water hit the tight little building. It rose above the water quickly, much like a cork in your bathtub and sort of bobbed gently long while water roared along beneath it. The house had become a boat. Water was roaring under it so fast that none even entered the tiny fishing hole on the bottom of the building.

Afterward both Bee and C. L. claimed to have had the best sleep of their lives, dreaming of ranch romances, ponies and Stutz Bearcats.

Six miles downstream the waters, much abated now, pushed the tiny house to shore. Both slept through that as well. Finally dawn came through the tiny ice house window. Bee woke first and woke up C. L. saying, “I think we slept all night long down here.”

They went out the ice house door and much to their shock and awe, they found themselves in Blackwood’s front yard. Mr. Blackwood had gone out to do some chores before dawn and never saw the ice house on his front lawn. Coming back for breakfast he saw the ice house and the men coming out of it.

Sitting in the Blackwood’s huge kitchen for breakfasts, all speculated as to how the ice house got where it was.

Bee said to keep the ice house, it would become a fine storage building. Blackwood’s gave them a ride back up the creek to the Johnson Place.

Bee and C. L. shut the cabin, drove town and raved to their wives for years about the night they got the best sleep each of them had ever had!