Observation of the Day!
There is something about being on or near a body of water that gives you the peaceful feeling of a little Nirvana. Five Lakes in Northern Michigan is not the Pacific Ocean or the Caribbean, but that feeling surrounds me. Jimmy Buffet sings in my ears through my IPOD, providing the background music.
When my brothers and I were kids our family had two cottages at Beaver Dam Lake in Northern Indiana. My grandparents were among the first to build on this lake in the early thirties. There were no beavers at Beaver Dam. The term in Minnesota would be “cabins”, but in Indiana they were “cottages”, and the “docks” of Michigan and Minnesota were “piers” in Indiana.
The cabins were very much the thirties, even though it was the fifties. The core of the cottages was still there, but additions were made, I wouldn’t go as far to say remodeling. Additions were attached periodically to provide more bed space. The additions sagged in places.
There wasn’t indoor plumbing until the fifties, and the icebox was truly an icebox with a chunk of ice cooling the perishables. We didn’t have running water until the fifties. We pumped fresh well water.
We actually had a two-hole outhouse. We always thought the two holes were so people could take a poop and chat. We boys never understood one was for the women and one was for the men. They weren’t marked, so we boys used them both at random, much to the dismay our mother and grandmother. Terry and I used to use the privy as a personal hidden, rather stinky smoking lounge. We stole the Luckies from Uncle Gurne.
The game, when we went to the lake, was to see who could see the lake first as we came over the little hill. I remember sitting under the big tree by the bridge on Saturday nights about seven, waiting for Dad to come up after he closed the store. Sunday was Dad’s only day off.
Beaver Dam Lake was not a Nirvana then, but it surely is now. We loved that childhood.
As I sit in the pontoon tied to the “dock” (I’m in Michigan now), I look at the lake and listen to the King Parrot head. There are no yachts or sailing ships of which Jimmy Buffet sings, but there are the boats of lake tradition moving back and forth across the water. In the Beaver Dam days it was rowboats and rowboats with outboard engines. If you had a ten-horse power outboard you were the fastest on the lake. Now if it’s smaller than a sixty-five hp you got nothin’. Jet skies are all over the place, speeding across and around the lake like Tennessee Walking horses with their tails in the air. There was a fellow on a big jet ski, certainly the fastest on the lake that raced past unendingly. He wore a vest, which I am sure he hated, He had bulging muscles, a shaved head, a real macho, macho man. He was like the guys at Beaver Dam who had ten horses on their tail.
There are speedboats of various sizes pulling big fat decorated phony tires with kids hanging on for dear life. What happened to just pain innertubes that were mostly just idlely floated in?
There was actually an old rowboat of the Beaver Dam era with a small outboard puttering along. Definitely uncool.
And then of course the boat of choice for the older folks, the pontoon. They do have large outboards and can reach enough speed to pull a tube, but nothing is more uncool than a young person driving his grandpa’s pontoon pulling a tube.
Strangely enough there were no water skiers to be seen this day. I guess they have gone the way of the rowboat, replaced by jet skis and fancy tubes.
It was wonderful and peaceful and Nirvana on earth.
Sam
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