𝓓𝓸𝓰 𝓓𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓢𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓮𝓻 ☀️

I always thought dogs had the right idea during these last, hot, lazy, days of summer, laying around in the sweet, cool grass basking in the sun. So maybe we are right in calling them the “dog days,” because they sure have the right idea about how to enjoy them.

Growing up we spent these last summer days at our camp house, which really was not too fancy or rather not fancy at all, with only screens on the windows and a giant upstairs room encompassing ten double beds and one single bed that I picked for my own. I had a big stand-up, old-fashioned fan at the end of my bed which provided a hurricane of air blowing on me so that I was never hot.

 The lake was a symphony of sounds from morning till night always waking us up with boats already pulling skiers early as that is when the lake like glass yields its best skiing. I love the sound of the boats and those sounds waking me up early. Bathing suits and pj’s were all we needed and sometimes shorts when we would go to the  McQueeney store and café next door to have the homemade pie in the late afternoon. 

My Mother would shop for groceries in that store with its old wooden shelves and floors, wide planks uneven with the wear of a hundred years. My Mother would let me buy 100 pieces of bazooka gum which I chewed for one hour, each piece only until the sugar was gone. It didn’t take very long. I always got chocolate pie meringue with little glistening dots of congealed sugar. I guess that was what they were. So good. My Mother, Betsy, would get coconut and my sister liked the old-fashioned buttermilk.

We drove back around the lake to our camphouse practically throwing off our clothes to get in our bathing suits again. We spent our days lazily swimming, fishing, rowing the small rowboat across the lake, and later in the day skiing when my Father, Rodger would get home. My Mother did not like to pull us on the skis behind the big, beautiful, wooden Century ski boat. I would wait on the pier in the evening for my Father to come home from work in town. Later as I waited, I would put on my skis, knowing when he finally arrived he would go in and eat dinner and only then come out to pull us on the skis. The patience, and impatience of it all is a great memory as the sun would be low in the sky when he finally emerged from the house and as the excitement mounted he would pull the boat from the boat slip and we would be off. In those days it was nothing to ski three times around the island and maybe way up the river where the civilization evaporated to chalky cliffs and screaming birds like the wild place it once was and making a quick turn around in the river when the dam came into sight swinging around fast hoping not to fall. Halcyon days were those last 𝓭𝓸𝓰 𝓭𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓮𝓻.

Kitty Keller