A Summery of Sommer Summers Past

 

A Summery of Sommer Summers Past

 

Family.  It has always been about family.  Appreciation for such a thing as family only increases with the passing of time and the gaining of wisdom, and at age 47, I’m well past the point of knowing just how lucky I have been in this life regarding that thing.  For OUR family, a major ingredient in our bond has been our ever-present home away from home.  Call it a cottage, call it a “summer home,” call it a lake house…the semantics don’t really matter, nor does the form or the location…it is and always will be…about family.

 

For myself, this memoir is both catharsis and a way to preserve the memories and feelings of my youth that I will carry with me throughout my journey on this mortal coil.  For everyone else, I just want to provide some laughter, a touchstone to our past, and convey the appreciation I have for those I hold dearest in this world.

 

IOLA

 

Wisconsin is and always will be my favorite state, thanks largely to the memories I’m about to recite, but also because of its unassuming homeyness, its plentiful gin mills, its cheese curds…and even the Green Bay Packers.  To this day, I just feel at home in Wisconsin…and that feeling was cultivated and took root in the center of America’s Dairyland (as the yellow license plates declared) …a town of 957 people, home of the old-time car show…Iola.

 

The neighboring towns of Scandanavia (population 292), Amherst and Rosholt could not boast of having an NFL quarterback in their palmares, yet Iola’s most famous son holds the league record for most interceptions…most of them tossed in the direction of Hall of Fame receiver Steve Largent in Seattle.  The billboard outside of town proclaiming Dave Craig’s birthplace was quite literally a sign for young Mike that the long ride in the blue van (later a yellow van), was coming to an exciting end.

 

And those van rides…we played the alphabet game (it was slightly easier when Zenith was still in business), the license plate game, Trivial Pursuit, and the ever-famous “WILL you kids shut UP!” game.  I remember laying under the bench seat listening to the exhaust after the muffler fell off on one trip and learning new and exciting words from Dad when 294 was backed up or under construction (which it inevitably was).

 

We’d get there in the dead of night (or at least it always seemed that way).  I recall having to shovel our way into the driveway way back when winters were winters.  We’d unlock the doors and Dad would have to make his way to the crawlspace to turn on the water and the heat, while Mom would get our sleeping bags out so Shelly and I could stay warm until the house heated up.  It was my first experience with late night TV…on a black and white television repleat with rabbit ear antennas.   All I know is that I couldn’t sleep because even though it was late, I was too excited for the morning.

 

Sleeping arrangements and general layout of the two-bedroom A-frame are a wonderful mystery to me even now.  The narrow staircase behind the fireplace, the kitchen with the calendar hanging on the pantry door with various species of birds on it (I picked the bluejay as my favorite, and it remains so to this day).  There were two stools with steps built in for us short kids to sit on a breakfast.  I always picked the Green Bay Packers glasses over the Bears when it came time to eat…although I remember the Smurf and McDonalds themed glasswear (one of the reasons my FAVORITE snowmobile bar…Wittig’s Point in Boulder Junction…has this esteemed status is because THEY HAVE THE SAME GLASSES!)   Pullout couches in the living room, and the two slant-ceilinged bedrooms somehow housed TWELVE of us when we were at maximum-Graf/Sommer populous.  At least by that time, Rose’s Roost was built, and when the weather was right, a bunch of kids could “sleep” in the loft (or, in my case, stay awake reading “Harry and Charlie” columns in BassMaster magazine with my cousin Phil.  For the record, I currently own and have read the entire archives (four volume’s worth) of H and C…and it’s STILL funny).  It’s tough to forget the insane amount of laughter that was generated when the trundle bed folded up on Phil.  At this point, I find myself wondering what ever happened to that awesome rug depicting the bullfight?

 

There are moments of legend and lore in our family that I did not personally witness, but this recollection would be incomplete should I fail to mention them:  Chiefly, Grandpa’s prescient invention of the Bass-O-Matic, and Mom’s infamous encounter with the stairs following an evening with Yukon Jack.  To this day…I’ve never tasted Yukon Jack…I wonder if Mom has had any since?  Looking back, I’m guessing alcohol might have fueled quite a bit of the adult entertainment…all I know is that my earliest recollection of a bar was it being referred to as a “gin mill,” and oh…it had the St. Paulie Girl poster.  To this day, a good northern WI bar is among my favorite places on the planet.

 

I’ve always been an early riser.  I remember staring endlessly at the tiny white alarm clock with it’s softly glowing orange face…just WAITING for the appointed hour when I could get out of bed and go FISHING.  Ideally…rising early going fishing with Grandpa was the ultimate plan…however, a solid 90% of the time, I’d be bounding down the stairs fully dressed and ready to rock only to find a snoring elder…so I’d have to make my way quietly past and head out to the piers to drown some worms until called in for breakfast.

 

Fishing was the end-all/be-all of my Iola existence.  We’d grab a couple tubs of nightcrawlers and a bucket of minnows at Sportsman’s in town…I’d always want a lure, but never got one (probably because I wouldn’t have known what to do with it, lol).  There were two piers, one with the boat lift attached and one in the center of the shoreline…the one by the lift was often too weeded up to fish off…but it had the distinction of being the place where Mom saved my life after I fell in.  The secret to fishing off the other pier was to bait the hook and cast…and catch a fish.  Every. Damn. Time.  If you wanted a BIG fish, you hooked a minnow and cast out to the lily pads…and waited an hour or so…then reeled in a northern.  It was pretty simple, really.  If you wanted perch or bass, you popped over to Dave’s pier next door.  I never knew Dave, or even SAW Dave, but I really liked fishing off his pier.  Bullheads were the worst.  If you caught one, you needed the spikey glove from Grandpa’s tackle box to get if off the line…and then you chucked it into Friestedt’s yard.  As a kid, I thought this served two purposes…1) to rid the lake of “uglies,” and 2) for some reason, we didn’t like Friestedt.  I’m guessing that ended up being some fertile land.

 

If you DID get to go out on the boat (after Grandpa woke up), you had options.  There was a silver v-bottom aluminum boat that seldom got used, a greenish aluminum v-bottom that, as I recall, had an Evinrude motor on it and leaked, and then there was the red fiberglass tri-hull with the 7.5 hp Johnson (I’m just now putting together where my penchant for red boats may have come from).  Give the bulb on the gas can a couple squeezes, hit the choke lever, and give the cord a couple pulls…that was probably the first motor I ever operated…and the first boat I got to drive.  The channel by the Norseman was always a hot spot, although I remember catching a bass on a Johnson Silver Minnow on the other side of Bird Island.  We’d go downlake towards Zeno’s house on occasion, but weeds were a big factor over there.  The final piece of the boating puzzle was the little green rowboat…tied to the dock.  Oh how you parents must have laughed at that little piece of entertainment…”Here kids, try the tethered rowing!  It’s FUN!”  Launching and “winterizing” were pretty simple…just pull the boats up on land and flip them over.

 

The Fish Dish certainly deserves it’s own paragraph…how I wish I still had the score sheet that assigned point values to each species and listed the places each year.  In retrospect, that Tony Graf was a pretty smart kid.  My scheme for winning played out to perfection when I caught bluegill after bluegill as others went for the bigger-point fish like bass and northern.  I won a “Genuine Georgia Cane Pole.”

 

What else did we do for fun up there?  Well, in the summer time, there was badminton, catch with the football or frisbee, bow and arrow (with an orange straight bow and a red compound bow), climbing up to the “tree fort,” and a memorable occasion when I was asked to cut down a dead tree…which I got about halfway through with the saw and then pushed over because the roots were all rotted away.  In the afternoons sometimes we’d walk to town…sometimes to just see the dam, sometimes to use the pay phone.  Another popular walk was over to visit Zeno and Irma.  I will FOREVER relish my time visiting them with Michelle early in our marriage…such wonderful people.  In winter, there was shoveling off the ice for some skating, a bit of ice fishing (BORING), and my two favorites:  sledding and snowmobiling.  As I recall, the hill at the end of the road by the boat ramp was at LEAST 200 feet tall, and our saucer sleds would nearly hit the sound barrier before launching off the ramp at the bottom and sending us flying hundreds of feet through the air and crashing to the ground in a heap of laughter.  The toboggan was at least TWICE that fast, as evidenced by Dad breaking his glasses on a headfirst run all the way out to the lake.  As for the snowmobiles, the ones I currently own will never be as dear to me as that 1971 Arctic Cat Panther 440 or the 1973 Moto Ski 340.  “If you can start it, you can ride it.”  Oh yeah I started it.  My career as the pilot of my own machine began after Mom ran us up an embankment and nearly tipped us over.  I remember every second of the near-miss on the way home from the bakery in town…running across the lake with Dad and Shel on the Moto-Ski and me behind…when suddenly the Ski stopped dead, as the bakery bag got sucked into the open air-intake.  45 mph was damn exhilarating…as was the sound of the metal cleat on the track breaking off in the tunnel!

 

Lots of memories seem to relate to food…perhaps it’s that usage of the senses that burn it into your brain.  For me, Iola was all about beef jerky and salami sticks all day, washed down with whatever pop was in the cooler.  Orange can was orange, purple can was grape, green can was ginger ale, blue can was cream soda, brown can was root beer.  Of course, one cannot omit trips to the stinky cheese factory, where my still insatiable predilection for string cheese and curds was birthed.  If we went out, it was to the Country Club across the lake, or, to the Triple O at the intersection of O and OO (I would DEMOLISH the crackers at the center of the table).  There were ill-fated trips to the Crystal Café (I think someone had bad food there once?  I DID eat there when I went up to Iola for a WORS race years ago and it was fine, lol) and The Coin…where there STILL may be people waiting to eat from 1985.  We’d go for ice cream at Gator’s Drive-In, or, head to the BIG CITY of Waupaca for some ice cream (Blue Moon, thank you) and a movie.  If we stayed home for the evening, hot dogs and brats over the campfire, followed by S’mores…and the occasion of Nick Graf walking into the lake.

 

It feels great writing these things down, but the oddest thing is happening now that my memories are tapped out…I’m feeling a great wave of sadness, just like I did when we drove away from that incredible place for the last time.  It hurt me to my soul to lose something I loved so much, I certainly left a piece of my heart in Iola.  Having that feeling still exist all these years down the road is a true testament to what that place meant to myself, and to our family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silver Lake

“What are you, stupid?”  This classic Uncle Larry line stated in reference to not knowing our own address on the very first pizza order to our new family gathering place just north of the IL/WI border will continue to live in infamy.  Silver Lake, WI was not the quaint, Northwoods hovel that was Iola, rather, a small vacation community with a sketchy town and a gorgeous 500 acre sand-bottom lake.  We now had double the amount of bedrooms and ½ the amount of drive time.  Strangely enough, even with the additional room, we never seemed to be up there all at once with the Graf family…most likely due to increased sport schedules for both families.  Even though Silver Lake was the shortest tenured of our second homes…in a lot of ways, it was where a VERY distinctive part of me was birthed and honed…specifically, the motorized watersport part.

 

I’ve been told that my mother hated the house from day one, and I’m not exactly aware how the decision to buy on Silver Lake was even made, but to me it was immediately two things…#1) NOT Iola, and #2) relatively weed-free.  Where Iola was a fishing lake, Silver Lake was most definitely a swimming lake.  A perfect shallow sand bottom extending out 200 feet from shore and an awesome sand bar not too much further out from that meant being in the water for DAYS.  My memories of the house itself include the bookshelf by the kitchen where I used to poach reading material from Uncle Larry and Grandpa, the awesome deck that overlooked the small front yard, the narrow tree lined driveway that was too bumpy to skate, the sauna attached to the downstairs bath (that I don’t think we ever used), and the “kids room” full of bunk beds.  The latter was rapidly decorated by me (I was in the early stages of pinning anything and everything to the wall) with a bunch of Porsche posters the previous owner had left behind.  I have fond memories of lying on the top bunk at night listening to Dr. Demento on my Walkman, and falling asleep to the sounds of INXS, Genesis, or Richard Marx.

 

I’m not even sure how or when the decision was made to purchase Jet Skis, but when we got two 1987 JS300SX stand ups, I pretty much immediately fell in love.  I know the very first ski I rode was at the Gillespie house on Bass Lake, and I know I had a LOT of fun on it…WAY more fun than water skiing or tubing or knee boarding…and that I was both amazed and excited to have the opportunity to ride our OWN skis.  This marked a very definitive end to my previously unassailable love for fishing…somehow going fast trumped sitting still in my mind…and still does.

 

Silver Lake was where I first ran afoul of THE LAW.  Firstly, it had the most ridiculous law EVER in that there was NO WAKE until 10am.  This is patently absurd when you are awake at 6am and have jet skis and a couple cans of gas to burn.  9:55am usually saw me, clad in my neon orange O’Neill wetsuit and Nike Aquasocks, in the water with my thumb on the START button.  I remember Dad riding with me at first, and occasionally Shelly, but mostly I was out there on my own.  I would mostly stick to the area closest to the house (but still quite a distance from shore due to the NO WAKE area), trying to learn new freestyle tricks and perfect my turning.  Falling off and letting go meant having to wait for the ski to circle back to you…in retrospect, probably not the greatest of design theories, lol.  The Water Patrol had something to say to me when I repeatedly fell whilst learning to tail stand …which I had to do by inducing a powerslide as I wasn’t really big enough or heavy enough to effectively sink the back end of the ski.  Shortly after, the DNR pulled me over and told me I wasn’t old enough to ride…which led to research into the rather ambiguous laws of the time…and eventually to a 6 week Coast Guard class…the lessons from which I still use today when I’m on the water.   Cousin Phil wasn’t as lucky as me, garnering a fine from the police after they determined that he had violated the NO WAKE area.  On occasion, I’d run the ski across the lake to the state park beach, or just do a loop around jumping wakes.  I remember burning through a couple tanks of gas per day…also going through batteries like they were going out of style.  Unfortunately…when the latter occurred, it meant a trip over to Lake Geneva for a new Yuasa.  It seemed that either one or the other of the 300s would not be running at any one time…and that experience taught me my first lessons on working on an engine…maintaining oil levels, changing spark plugs, swapping batteries…and eventually tearing down the motor completely, changing the head, adding an aftermarket pipe, impeller, intake grate, and new tray mats.  The addition of the 1990 550SX in the summer of 1991 was peak excellence in my young life…to this day I want another one.

 

The method of getting the skis in the water was to grab them with the beach caddy from their respective carpeted spaces in the garage, then roll them down the short grade and into the back yard, where they were bumped up to the section of pier we used to ramp down the railroad ties to the sand of the beach.  At night, we’d pull the skis up on the grass.  It was JUST hard enough that I could do it by myself but getting them back up to the garage was usually a two-person task.

 

Speaking of people, this was the time when we started bringing friends to the lake.  Shelly would bring Lisa, or Jill, or Andrea, I would have John, Alan, Jeff, Cory and Scott.  I remember having the whole XC team up there, and the handle pole breaking off the 550 shortly afterwards.  Also…one of the girls somehow managed to nearly sink one of the skis.  Teaching people how to jet ski was fun, as were the other activities we’d participate in…such as relocating the clams we’d find with tennis rackets, extreme canoeing (as invented by Phil and myself), and utilizing the pontoon boat for water skiing, tubing, and knee boarding.  Uncle Mike had gotten into golf prior to one of the Curtain family visits, and we spent some time hitting golf balls into the lake…he also quite infamously kept me away for an entire night farting on the couch.  We’d be up with Grandpa quite often, and occasionally he would be accompanied by the clergy…in the form of Sister Gabriel and Father Gillespie.  Is it at all strange that the mass I will forever remember was the one lasting a grand total of 4.5 minutes (replete with homemade host) on the deck on a lovely summer evening?

 

Evening fun usually included walks towards town to the public beach, but mostly to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard.  Tony, Phil and I had an excursion to the local gas station turn eventful when we encountered a local kid that had been slashed by a knife…we got out of there pretty quickly!  Excursions to Lake Geneva were commonplace, and dinner out usually meant a trip a couple blocks away to Packers (which is still there…and still decorated ½ Bears, ½ Packers), or Marino’s.

 

We didn’t make it up there too often during the winter, but I won’t ever forget riding the Arctic Cat on the lake and having the fuel line fall off the carb.  The sled died, and, it being a warmer day, the snow and ice started melting and before I knew it I was in 6” of water.  I tried and tried to restart the thing, and finally found the problem and got out of there…and I STILL have a healthy fear of riding a snowmobile on a lake.  So there’s that.

 

Finally…a memory that ended up having some serious repercussions on my later life…I first heard the sounds of a big block marine engine.  Papa’s Toy was a 24’ Liberator from just down the way, with open exhaust that could be heard every time the owner fired it up.  Top Gun was a 24 Baja Sundowner, and when those two boats would be on the lake at the same time racing…well…something triggered in my soul.  This was also PRIMO Miami Vice time in Mike’s life…add these things up and the completely irrational ideal that is offshore powerboat ownership starts to take shape.

 

I was more shocked than saddened when Silver Lake was sold…I think because it more represented a break in the family ownership dynamic with the Grafs.  From now on, we’d be on a Sommer summer home journey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paw Paw Lake Condo

 

The first time I visited Paw Paw Lake, something was very wrong.  The afternoon prior, I had been sitting in math class when I noticed a bunch of bumps on my hands and fingers.  When I got home, Mom did what Mom would do for such things…apply calamine lotion (does anyone use that stuff any more???).  I reported back to school and jumped on the bus to the Sectional track meet, where I was to run the 2 mile.  I had not been beaten all year in that particular event, and this was the final race which would advance me to the state meet.  I led for the first ½ mile, then all energy seemed to leave my body, and I barely finished.  Something was wrong.  In the car the next morning, as we approached our new condo, I looked at my hands and some of my fingers were swollen to twice their normal size.  The calamine lotion wasn’t working.  A day or two later, I was diagnosed with mono, and finished my senior year in bed.

 

When I regained my health and my strength, one of the first places I went was Paw Paw Lake.  I remember the doctor being quite serious about the potential to rupture a kidney or spleen or something, but I wanted to play beach volleyball and ride the jet ski, and that doctor nonsense wasn’t going to stop me.  The first “friends” I brought up were Michelle, Roxanne and Kevin for a post-prom excursion.

 

Initially, we had two of the three standup jet skis from Silver Lake…one 300SX and the 550SX…as our only means of being on the water.  We were also still using the same method of launching the skis with the carrier, as we didn’t even have a lift yet.  Our condo was pretty awesome…2 bedroom second floor unit with a nice balcony overlooking the biggest beach on the lake…plus a pool and tennis courts.  The fish mural Mom had decided on when decorating took a Mike-inspired turn with the addition of a huge shark on the kitchen wall…some of my finest-ever artwork, if I do say so.

 

The first FULL summer at Paw Paw, we added our very first boat, a 19’ Four Winns dubbed “Sommer’s Here.”  We also sold the 300SX and added a Sea Doo SP sit down, and lifts for all three watercraft.  We were officially in the business of full-tilt lake house…replete with water skiing, tubing, knee boarding and a LOT of jet skiing.  Dad was particularly happy pulling people on the tube, and his proudest moment as a captain is most likely when he came back to pick me up after a particularly spectacular wipeout and saw me puking in the water.

 

Exploring our new locale included trips to the ice cream shop down the road, checking out the nearby town of South Haven, and hastily driving over to the beach off Hagar Shore Road to catch the spectacular sunsets over Lake Michigan.  The lake itself was twice the size of Silver Lake, and much busier.  Boat cruises immediately became a thing, and I remember queuing up the perfect Jimmy Buffet songs on the tape deck of the boat when taking trips around the islands.

I was in college by this time, so my experiences at the lake were limited to the summer.  I had my college teammate John up once, in addition to Michelle on occasion, plus John and Cory…with whom I perfected some seriously stupid human tricks on both the standup and sit down skis.  I acted as a “chaperone” for Shelly and her friends following her prom.  Dad and I ran the Blueberry Fest 5k…I finished second, he got beat by the Blueberry and subsequently retired from running.  We’d spend time just watching “Crazy Grandpa” from across the beach go nuts on his Sea Doo XP, and I met the Paw Paw Lake ski club.

 

The training room at Ball State wasn’t the place I expected to forever alter my experience at Paw Paw Lake, but a random conversation with Kristy when I was being treated for one of my many injuries resulted in just that.  She had been going to Paw Paw her whole life, so hooking up with her and her friends that next summer was a LOT of fun.  And beer.  Lots and lots of beer.  In all honesty, I WAS hoping to water ski with the Paw Paw Lake water ski club, but I believe that only happened ONCE…they were MUCH more interested in drinking than skiing.  I’d head out on the standup and disappear for the day…spending some time just floating alongside whichever pontoon boat had the keg, or playing beach volleyball at Robin’s house.  The only hiccup was when evening came and I had to bid them farewell when they went to the bars in South Haven…because I was not yet 21.  It is to that group of fine individuals we owe a great debt, as they were the first to show me how to invert a life jacket to facilitate buoyancy sufficient to accommodate drinking a beverage in the lake.

 

I ended each summer with a full-throttle blast around the whole lake on each of the skis…well…except for that one summer when my enjoyment was severely truncated by a broken back.  The doctors apparently frowned upon jet skiing with fractured vertebrae.  No fun.

 

I really enjoyed that condo…but Mom and Dad had…BIG PLANS.

 

 

 

 

 

Paw Paw Lake House

 

My first impression was…WOW.  What a cool house, what a cool location.  This was also the first second home that I would have a bit more “freedom” to access…being as I had my own vehicle.  This was a whole new dynamic, as I was just graduating college and on the fast track towards marriage and “adulthood”…it was SUPER cool to be able to take off on weekends and indulge in my passion for watersports…especially considering the new 750SX standup I had bought.

 

Frequent guests at that time included our friends Aaron and Heather, John and Roxanne, an increasingly present Bob, and then lots of parental invitees, like Dan and Ana, Aunt Dee, Yolanda, Aunt Cindy and Uncle Doug, Kenny and Diane, and, of course…the “perfect family”…the Rosiers.  Michelle and I threw one absolutely righteous party one Saturday night, with a bunch of friends from home and the local ski club crew…funny but I don’t remember a lot of detail from that night.

 

When Michelle and I were married, our wedding present to each other was a 750ZXi sit down ski (and a two-place trailer), and we frequented 80/94 all spring/summer/fall with that package towed behind my Jeep.  Our technique for getting them in the water was pretty dialed, as I’d launch Michelle on the sit down, and she’d tow the standup back to the house as I drove the Jeep.  The 550 went down the road to Cory (only to come back a couple years later), and the Sea Doo SP was replaced by an SPi.  There were a LOT of good times had on those machines (and some bad…as a busted steering cable on the 750 standup was another of the mechanical “experiences” jet skiing provided, lol).  Mother’s Day weekend of 1999 or 2000 saw Cory and I out on the skis with air temperature of 40 degrees, and the water a balmy 39.  This was dedication to our craft…or possibly just stupid.   We invented a game involving tennis balls and the sit down skis that was almost certainly unsafe to a high degree.  I’m also pretty sure part of my current shoulder problems were the result of dragging behind the sit down with one arm holding on, and the other holding my shorts.

 

Out of the water during those years, we frequented the bars in South Haven at night, Captain Lou’s and the Idler being the favorites.  In town, the Friendly Tavern was always the best place to eat, and when we wanted to drink local, The Bend and the infamous Club Rocadero were the places the go.  The Rocadero was legendary in its own right…no glass bottles served after 7 pm to deprive the locals of weaponry during a fight, lol.  If we stuck around home, drinks in frozen mugs were the order of the day, Mom’s slushies in particular, and my penchant for rum was born around this time.  The “Dew Rum Run” combination of Malibu and Mountain Dew was apparently too much for my heart, however, resulting in the “Dr. Death” incident, where one little fainting episode led to an overnight stay in the Coloma hospital with the diagnosis of an enlarged heart looming overhead.

 

We expanded our presence at the lake with the purchase of a rental house (the scene of another AWESOME party that included Michelle and I, Jeff, Kevin, Tori and a host of others and started at the Bend and ended with skinny dipping).  Aunt Cindy and Uncle Doug had bought a house on the lake by then, and the pole barn was built shortly afterwards.  The main house was marked for all with the upside-down mannequin legs on the sewer cover…and they took an unsolicited journey to another shore just about the same time someone went into my Jeep and helped themselves to my wallet.  Between that and the recent incidence of little kids breaking the wine bottle display Dad created our issues with the local populous were minimal.  I mixed it up with them and other vacationers at the Peach Fest 10k…taking 2^nd overall and coming home just as everyone else was waking up. 

 

In 2001, things took a turn for us, as we set our sights on boating.  Dad went with me to test drive a 29 Powerquest in St. Joseph…and that event tipped off what is now a 20 year run of offshore boat ownership.  As a result, we didn’t get to spend as much time in the Coloma pad as we had in the past, but with Shelly, Bob, and the additions of Meagan and Nick, the house remained full.  Mom and Dad became social creatures of the lake and staples at the yacht club.  They formed lasting friendships with neighbors Scott and Janet and Doug and Norma.  The faithful 4 Winns went down the road, replaced by a Harris Kayot deck boat, named “Sommer Ours.”  When we DID make it up there, jet skiing was still a thing for a while, along with hanging out in the swimming hole, using the paddle boat, and one EPIC tube/squirt gun battle with the kids.

 

Winter was once again a “thing” at our second home starting in 2007 when Michelle and I bought snowmobiles.  We got to explore southwest MI via sled, with the best stop being the late Keeler Keg.  We got Dad out a couple times, but he had a bad juju with the sleds, and they always seemed to break with him riding.  Our extra sled “Polly” did not seem to care for him, and we had to leave her on the side of the trail once when the suspension broke, and another time it wouldn’t fire on all three cylinders.  We tried to rectify that one by putting him on BZ’s Apex…only to have that sled lose a bearing a mile from the trailhead.  He gave up snowmobiling at that point.  The one time my boating crew went snowmobiling in Coloma, both the Friendly Tavern and T’s Tap somehow ran out of Grey Goose, Dennis launched Brian into (and through) the wall, and I VERY fortunately woke up in time to direct BZ to the bathroom.  Probably a good thing this only happened once.

 

These past couple years, we’ve been getting up to Coloma a bit more.  The house is remodeled, the Harris has been replaced by a pontoon boat, the jet skis are all gone, so we’ve concentrated on other activities.  Biking around the lake has been replaced by some more adventurous road rides, and more recently by mountain biking at Yankee Springs, Fort Custer, and the SUPER close trail at Andrews University.  Kayaks and the standup paddleboard have replaced the jet skis, and resulted in some pretty cool experiences including being out on the lake at night in the middle of thousands of migratory birds and paddling the Paw Paw River.  Boat rides have become cocktailing events as opposed to watersport events.  In short, we seem to have slowed down a bit, but still, we’ve enjoyed every second…in our second home.

 

 

It’s really hard to write a conclusion to this compendium.  There are so many emotions at play, so many memories, so many good times.  The biggest issue is trying to wrap my head around just how big a role these places played in actually shaping me as a person.  In many ways, they taught me to love the outdoors, boats, wildlife, and the trappings of two great states.  More importantly, they served their intended purpose of bringing us all together as a family.  We all grew up together in these places, we all grew closer in these places.  I’ve gone from the kid who couldn’t wait to get out of bed and go fishing to the guy who can’t wait to have a cocktail or two with my parents on the deck, and it has been one hell of a fun journey to this point.

 

So, to Mom, Dad, Michelle, Shelly, Bob, Meagan and Nick, I want to say thank you.  I’m so lucky to have such an incredible family.  I love you all.  Thank you for all these years.  Cent’Anni.