Brother Bob and I vacationed
together recently at Rice Lake in Ontario, Canada. Our families have been going
there since the early ‘80s, along with our sister Nancy and her family and a
few friends from our college days. We usually go every two years, and there’s
anywhere from two to three dozen of us. It’s a tradition that began with the
Schmitmeyers in 1957, when my husband Steve first went there with his family.
(He’s 65 now.)
Preparing for a
Rice Lake vacation is no simple matter, as we coordinate bringing a week’s
worth of food, bedding, and fishing and play equipment—shovels and buckets when
the kids were younger, but a sailing kayak and jet skis now that they are
older. Steve also takes his 14-foot fishing boat, powered by a 1958 Johnson
motor, similar to the kind his dad had when he was a kid. Before going, he puts
it through several performance tests to make sure it’s still working, first in
a 50-gallon drum in our back yard and then at a nearby river. After weeks of
preparation, we haul everything 400 miles north to Rice Lake.
These vacations seem
like elaborate affairs compared to the Kerber family vacations of my youth, when
each year we headed to Lake Loramie for a day, a far simpler tradition but one no
less anticipated by my siblings and me than my kids looking forward to Rice
Lake.
Dad only had a week
off each year from his job as a baker, and most of that time was spent doing home
repairs, painting the house or some inside remodeling project mother wanted. He
was busy throughout the week except for Thursday, when our family “vacationed”
at Lake Loramie, a small man-made lake 20 minutes from 828.
Vacation day always
started early, with Mom waking by 3 a.m. to fry chicken and pack coolers with potato
salad, pickled beets, baked beans, and lemonade. Mom and Dad brought play
equipment, too, baseball bats and gloves, sand toys, and fishing rods and a tin
can with worms that Dad and the older boys dug from his garden. As the sky
lightened in the east, we’d be on our way in our red and white ’56 Pontiac
station wagon, loaded for a day’s worth of fun.
I loved being
outdoors as the sun rose, listening to the sounds carried on the moist morning
air, birds chirping, water lapping on the beach, cars making their way along
Route 362 as people headed to work. Vacation day always felt special, open-ended
and carefree, so unlike the purposeful manner in which we usually lived.
Once there, Dad
would fry bacon and eggs over a charcoal fire. When breakfast was over, he’d sit
at the picnic table and read the newspaper while my older brothers went fishing.
Under Mother’s watchful eye, we girls and some of my six younger brothers would
search the empty beach for unclaimed treasures—broken shells, a forgotten towel,
and if you were lucky, a shiny coin.
There was always a
morning baseball game as we waited for the lifeguard to come on duty. We always
ate “dinner” (now we say lunch) early, so we had the necessary hour between
eating and swimming.
But by three o’clock,
we’d be packing up and heading home; several of my brothers had paper routes,
and even on vacation, there was work to be done.
The Kerber family “vacation”
began and ended within the span of a half-day, a far cry from the planning and
preparation that goes into our week-long stay at Rice Lake. Our annual outing at
Lake Loramie is one of many fond childhood experiences that came about through
the ingenuity and hard work of my parents, for surely they put a great deal of effort
into planning the day. How wonderful that they could create something so
special from something as simple as a day trip to a local state park.
—Linda
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