Bad Guys, Frozen Pools and Frozen Lakes

With the snowfall of this week I thought of some of Dad's winter stories.  I've already told the Ernie and '67 Blizzard story.  I've already told the winter camping story.

I have a couple of short little stories I could tell.

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The first one was one dark winter evening when Dad and his partner were following a, "bad guy."  They couldn't see him but it had started snowing lightly and they followed the footsteps in the snow.  Eventually they just stopped.

They looked around and heard a voice in the dark, "Three fifteen."

It was an old man in a doorway along the sidewalk.

Dad said that he thought, "No, it's more like 7:15" before he realized that the old man was talking about an appartment number.

Dad and his partner found and arrested the suspect in appartment 315.

Growing up we had a round, above ground, 25' pool.  One particular winter it had frozen over before Dad had had a chance to do something.  I had no idea why, but Dad decided that he had to break the ice that had formed on the pool.

With my Mom watching from the back door, Dad climbed up on the ice with a sledge hammer and started whacking away.

Suddenly the ice cracked from the center where Dad was standing, straight to both sides, cutting the ice into two huge semicircles.  Dad had one foot on each semicircle and they slide away and up, dumping him directly into the four feet of water below.

Mom saw Dad disappear and the ice slide back to close over him solid.  He was completely gone from sight under what was again a solid sheet of ice.

Suddenly Dad popped up through the ice and worked his way to the edge and climbed out.  Later he explained that he had gone under with the sledge hammer in his hand.  He ducked beneath the water to make sure the ice slamming back together did not slam into his head.

Only a couple of years before Dad retired he was driving around alone in a patrol car, as he was wont to do.  He liked to get out of the office and cruise.

Since he was never in a district along the lake I can only assume that he was not really where he was supposed to be when this story happened.

He was driving along the lakefront when he got too close to the frozen water, and it wasn't quite as frozen as he had thought.  The two passenger side tires broke through the ice.

Since he wasn't where he was supposed to be, doing what he wasn't supposed to do, he was on his own to get out.  Slowly he put the car into reverse and carefully, thankfully backed out.

As soon as he got back off the beach and into his own station I don't think he ever went out alone again.  I KNOW he never went driving on Lake Michigan again.