Diamond Lake was the wonderful place that we packed up and moved to every summer from the time I was six months old. Once we got there, however, my world expanded way beyond those shimmering waves in the front yard. Perhaps because I am an only child I was always on the lookout for my own entertainment. As a result I was fascinated by the whole north shore of this special place, spending a lot of my time on both sides of our country road.
Looking back at my 10th summer at the cottage, my mornings did start with a fundamental lake activity – patrolling the shore for treasures. With my red rubber boots pulled up to my knees I was out and about at the crack of dawn, slogging through the clear shallow waters, hopping up and over the docks that I crossed like hurdles. Collecting mostly fishing lures and broken bobbers I did occasionally catch a wayward beach toy floating by.
My first breakfast of the day varied a lot in location and menu. Some mornings Matt would call out to invite me next door for coffee cake. Still working long past retirement age as research director for O’Brien Paint, he was a great story teller and had an even greater scientific mind. Building a huge telescope to accommodate the 10” lens he’d ordered from Mt Polamor he poured a concrete pad in the back field where he was able to make several observations, contributing articles to Sky and Telescope Magazine. The best nights for me were when Matt would tap on my downstairs bedroom window to wake me up to look at his latest discovery along with him.
There were other mornings, though, when I would keep my red boots on after my beach walk and hike up to the farm to watch Gus feed his pigs. Although the farmhouse was directly across the road from our driveway the pigs were raised in a pen down a little lane from there. After that chore was done we always went back for a farmer’s breakfast of bacon and eggs, hash brown potatoes, juice and milk – all cooked by his wife Laura in an ugly looking cast iron skillet on a wood fired cook stove. Toward the end of the summer Gus would let me ride to town with him to sell his crops. I was always fascinated to watch him roll a cigarette with one hand while he steered his old pick up with the other.
I really didn’t question these close relationships with the adults on our shore – getting to call them by their first names, even as a kid. It was always just Matt and Lois or Laura and Gus when we were among these special people at the lake. Unconsciously I just naturally switched over to calling my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Nelson and my scout master, Mr. Benson when we made the move back home in the fall.
My second breakfast each morning was a bowl of cereal at my house, to prepare me for nine o’clock swimming lessons at the yacht club dock. This activity did not appeal to me as a break in the action so I sometimes pleaded a stomach ache to get a pass. My mother’s reply was always the same, “Drink some hot water and get going.” That might have prompted a sigh but no other complaint on my part.
With my dad working in Grand Rapids, except for his weekend commutes and two weeks of vacation in July, our one car stayed with him. And I was always a little worried about him from the time he waved goodbye from the top of the drive until he arrived back at the lake at the end of the week.
But my mother and I still managed to play our weekly round of golf together on Wednesdays, my one day off from swimming lessons. We loaded up our clubs in the small outboard motorboat and headed over to a family friend’s house which backed up to the course. Leaving our boat tied there, we carried our clubs up the hill to duck in the back way to the first tee. Playing with a starter set I sent the money I’d saved from cutting lawns back with my dad each Sunday night to buy the next club. I’m not sure who I was more excited to see that next Friday night – my dad or my new iron.
Swimming off the raft and building endless seawalls with rocks dredged up from the lake with the other neighborhood kids was great, but there was always the lure of the farm late in the afternoon. Leaving everyone else behind, I remember my futile attempts to shoot the pigeons off the rafters in the big barn with my BB gun. They were tough old birds. The pellets just bounced off. Then there was the hayloft ladder to climb, up through the slanting rays of dusty sunshine, then the big jump into the soft, threshed wheat. It is all the smells and the sounds that come back to me now; the ping of the cow’s milk hitting the bucket at the end of the day and the squeak and the rattle of the windmill as it pumped cold well water into the trough that kept the milk cold in big metal canisters. And then there was the one legged milking stool which I still think is pretty cool. With your own two legs added to make a triangular base it was comfortable and efficient and one size fit all.
The really special family activity of the summer each year was going to the Cass County Fair with my folks. That summer I was particularly fascinated with one of the games of chance. Tossing nickels through a chicken wire screen, and successfully landing a coin in three separate saucers, would win you a baby duck. Getting tired of hearing my urgent pleas, my mother bought a double handful of nickels at the booth and told my dad, “Win him a duck!” We promptly left him to his task as we toured the livestock barn. I smugly navigated the rest of the fair that evening, carrying my new duckling around in a plastic bag, half filled with water and half poked with holes for breathing. That duck, soon named Lulu, did take to water but she only wanted to go in the lake when we went for a swim. Otherwise she lived happily in a pen under the deck. It was at the end of the summer that Lulu supposedly went to live with Gus at the farm, in exchange for a chicken for our Sunday dinner.
Those chickens also provided our family with another lake tradition. About three times each summer our dog Tippy got away and high tailed it up to the hen house. On the following Friday my father was greeted with the news that Tippy had gotten another chicken at the farm. After dinner my dad knew what he had to do – drive to town and buy Gus a fifth of whiskey as an apology. It was always graciously accepted and immediately shared with a toast to summer.
Later that same season my family upgraded from their five horsepower outboard motor to a seven and a half. Keeping the same 14 foot long aluminum boat that I’d learned to drive when I was eight years old, the increased speed with that new motor was amazing. Until then I could only drive our boat by myself from Taggart’s dock next door down to Wolfe’s dock before turning around to come back – about 200 yards each way. Still required to wear a life jacket I was now allowed to go anywhere on the lake as long as I told my folks when I would be back. That was when I got my first wrist watch too, specifically for that purpose. It never occurred to me to violate this rule, probably in part because I could only take the boat out by myself. My mission became the exploration of the hidden channels of the lake and timing how long it took to circle the island in various wind and weather conditions.
Standing in the yard of our lake house now I can still look around and see almost every place where I roamed that summer. It was a big world then for a ten year old boy and still plenty big enough to be almost my whole world today.
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