Always The Lake
For me, elementary school in late spring was about the youthful anticipation of leaving behind the daily grind of public education and entering three months of summer vacation. Similar to most students, towards the end of May I would be in an unairconditioned classroom, forearms sweaty and sticking to the desk surface, watching the clock tick away the minutes. The teacher, whoever she was, must have wondered as well, as twenty to twenty five kids squirmed, and barely listened to whatever she was teaching. This was a drawn out ordeal that stretched until the last bell on the last day, when we would finally be released and pour out of Judge Haynes Elementary in Portland, Indiana. In that strange expanding and shrinking of the perception of time, three months as an adult does not seem that long. As a child though, this was an eternity, and for the Howard family meant two weeks at Lake Gage, two weeks to be allowed to play to my heart's content. For most the first seven years of my life, this was part of what our family did each summer, and was often the highlight of the year.
The vacation had become a ritual since before I was born, and was really the result of two things. The first was that when my father was young, his family vacationed in Sister Lakes, Michigan every summer, and for him this was what middle class families did. The other was that there were five children in the family, and a vacation at one location two hours away was easier to handle. Susie, Barbie, Janice, Bill and myself were spread out in age by fifteen years. Susie is the oldest and I am the youngest, with Bill being two years older than I am. Five children made for an active household, and when July 4th approached, tensions would begin to rise as Mom and Dad would start gathering all the groceries and household items we would need. This was part of the difficult task of corralling us towards the goal of getting everyone into a car or cars at the right time with the right things. There was some shouting and stretched nerves as Mom fanatically cleaned the house for our departure, and ordered us around to help her. Bill and I would repeatedly be told to go clean our room. We whined and complained until we were faced with the inevitable of having to spend the few minutes to put clothes and toys away in our bedroom. We did this, but I could never understand why we needed to clean a house we were not going to live in for two weeks? However, her wisdom was sound, in that after the let down of a vacation, a clean house makes for a welcome return. A few days before we were ready to leave, Dad would take the boat out of storage and park it in the backyard. The boat was jointly owned by my family and friends of my parents, the Hardy’s. We would dutifully clean out the remnants of the last usage and put a little gas and oil in the fuel tank. Climbing into the driver’s seat, Dad would hunch over slightly and turn the key. After a few seconds of cranking the motor would catch and start with a billowing cloud of blue smoke, a combustible signal that we were now ready to go.
Lake Gage is about two hours north of Portland, near Angola, Indiana, and is in a collection of lakes in the northeastern part of the state. Along the way, we drove through downtown Ft. Wayne, where I would hang my head out the car window and marvel at what were the tallest buildings I had ever seen. From there we would get onto the interstate and finally the country roads until we came to The Lake and cottage. Once we arrived, Bill and I would lug our bags to the second floor bedroom, and then help with a few other things before we would be released. We would put on our swim trunks and run down the stone stairs leading from the house to the waters edge. After two hours in the car with us, Mom and Dad were probably glad to let us run off and go jump into the water. I don’t remember my sisters being that eager to run to the end of the dock and leap off the end. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what they did at that point, as Bill and I were for the most part left to our own devices for the next two weeks.
Lake Gage itself is a medium sized lake at about 350 acres. We rented the same house every year, a two story grayish-brown cottage, with three bedrooms on the top floor and a living room and kitchen on the bottom floor. There was also no television, however, we never lacked for forms entertainment. Next door, the Hardy’s, John and Margaret with their daughter Susan, best friend of my sister Susie, would be staying. On the other side, for a few years, we were joined by my Aunt Nita, my father’s sister, and my cousins, Nancy and Candy. The owners of the houses were an older couple, the Roth’s, who lived across the street. Mr. Roth was a lanky man who always wore coveralls or work cloths, chewed tobacco, and never let on to what else he actually did for a living. Every other day or so, he would show up to see how things were going, though he was not one to stand around and chat with my parents. He took good care of his properties, and saw to all the maintenance needs. Mrs. Roth was a small rotund woman, who claimed she was a past President of the local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, WTCU. When Mrs. Roth came around drinks were quietly hidden under chairs and tables, only to be brought back into view when she left.