The Big Lake

January 13, 2001

THE BIG LAKE

It was only big because the other lake was smaller. The development was built around the two lakes, both man made, both offering us eye infections annually, but also offering continuous "something to do". We moved to this "development" in 1924 when the original developer had gone bankrupt. My father finished the cabinets and other odds and ends, which didn't concern me at age 4. This was not Levittown. Each house was set on an acre lot, mostly hilly, with an acre of woods between each two. These wonderful buffers were of course filled in later. The lake frontage houses had beaches and boat docks. Across the road from them were homes with lake view. Many of the first houses were built high on the Torne, our private mountain.

Our house was at the Inlet end of the Big Lake, with a long driveway. In memory the canoe was always there, but it must have arrived sometime after we did. The Inlet had a wide grass bank along the road, a dam one foot wide and three feet high on one long side, and a real island, with a white wooden bridge from the mainland. The island and bridge belonged to the people who owned that piece of mainland, and was out of bounds unless you were a guest there. It was a very tiny island, but a real island, not a peninsula or an isthmus. Geography is much easier to learn outdoors than in. My father built a home for the canoe under the end porch and he built a device which cradled one end of the canoe and ran on bicycle wheels. Anyone old enough to be allowed to take the canoe out was big enough to pick up the uncradled end and pull the boat home AND put it away.

Besides being big enough to pull the boat home, we had to pass other tests. Both parents grew up on the prairie and had nothing to do with boats or swimming until they moved east as adults. My father decreed that the first step toward boat privileges was being able to swim across the lake at its widest. (It was one mile long and half a mile wide.) His theory was that no matter where we fell out, we would be able to swim ashore, I don't know how my big brother learned to swim, but I remember how I did. The neighbor known as Uncle Dan stood 5 feet away from my father and they took turns saying, "Come on. Swim." I didn't learn any authentic strokes until I watched a high school friend teaching swimming at the Y. After we could swim across the lake, we had to demonstrate that we could "fall" out of the boat with our clothes on, hold the boat upright, get back into it, and paddle on our way. This was a solo performance, with father watching from shore.

Taking that boat out alone was as wonderful as getting your driver's license. Of course, my brother had first choice, and needed the boat for frog and turtle hunts, and races. One of his friends had a bulldog who would swim along behind the canoe for hours. The boys tired before the dog did. The boys organized jumping frog races. They tried walking under water with an ash can over the head for air. They sailed big, beautiful model sailing ships, with the sails set to bring the ship back to port. My brother wanted a sailboat, which my father thought was extravagant, so they fitted the canoe with outrigger paddles with a board between them that held the mast. I was never allowed to sail, but made up for it years later, when the first born and I went to the Annapolis Sailing School.

The Inlet had a narrow part as you passed the island, where you had to learn the exact location of each rock. Tearing the canvas on the canoe would have been as serious a crime at our house as denting the car. One winter my father put new canvas on the boat, painted it black, and proudly stenciled the Cornell seal on the prow, after my brother became the third Cornellian in the family. (After both parents.) Once past the island, you were out in open water, where there could be enough wind for challenge, where you were far enough from shore for privacy, where nobody could call you home. No cell phone, no waterproof watch, no church bells. At the far end of the lake, past The Club, a canal led to the Little Lake, which had a private members-only beach. The canal was usually too low to float the boat, and there wasn't much to see there, so it was more fun to stay on the Big Lake, but sometimes it felt dramatic to glide under the canal bridge, and close to people's yards.

On summer evenings some one might bring a record player out in a canoe and the music would carry across the water, along with the voices, but this was not an easy thing to accomplish and was not common.

At first we could only swim at the Big Dam. Later the town built a public beach, with a sandy bottom instead of stones, with a raft to swim out to, and a lifeguard. We met my father at the 6:20 train, took him home to change, put the rubber blankets on the car seats and went to the lake.
I remember the night my brother raced my father to the raft and won, and I understood even then that my father was proud and unhappy all at the same time. The raft also figured in family history when my brother pulled himself up out of the water to find his local girl friend and his college girl friend both there waiting for him. He just swam away.

Besides the frogs that kept our city visitors awake, and the turtles, there were fish. Sunnies and perch and pickerel, catfish, and once in a while bass. From the Little Dam we could see the nests where the fish had swirled a clean circle. Between having to clean what we caught, and dealing with the million bones, and putting worms on hooks, I decided fishing was not my favorite thing.

The lake was just as much a part of our lives in winter as in summer.
From our end of it we could see The Club, and the big field stone school (grades K-9, then off to a bigger town), at the far end. The night the clubhouse burned we watched for a long time. My father was with the Fire Company. They worked all night. We wondered what would happen if there were a big fire like that during the day, when there were no men left in town except the man who drove the fire truck, the grocery store owners, the garage man, the postmaster, the druggist, the doctor, and the Police Chief.

We could also see The Flag from our end of the lake. Chief Dennis tested the ice and put the flag up at the edge of the schoolyard, on the lake, when the ice was safe. Two boys had drowned riding their bikes across the ice and going through. After that The Flag came into use and in my experience no one of any age would set foot even close to the shore, unless the flag was up. It was white with a large red circle. A lot of times we were positive the ice was thick enough, and surely it was cold enough, but we waited for the flag no matter what. Walking to school on the ice was probably harder and certainly colder than going on the road which circled the lake, but the ice was more exciting, and seemed shorter.

We all learned to skate, first with double runners strapped to our shoes, then single blades fastened on like roller skates, with the essential key not to be lost, then the great luxury of shoe skates. You had to keep out of the way of the hockey games, and the older people gracefully skating backwards. You had to avoid the areas where the wind had blown sand off Island Beach while the ice was forming. You had to have courage where the ice looked black and bottomless, and you had to have faith when the noise of a crack made you wonder if your parents were right that this just meant the ice was really thick. And if the flag went down, you got off the ice without arguing.

I've canoed and rowed and sailed on a lot of water since, even kayaked, on bays and reservoirs and rivers. No place brings back the feelings of independence, capability, peace, adventure, all in a circle of homes where I could name every family, where I could turn anywhere at all for help, that the Big Lake offered me through all the years of growing up.