Backstory

Backstory

I grew up on what is known in my family as simply “The Lake”. My parents discovered The Lake thanks to Wendy and Burt Plummer who were members of the Rolling Rhodies – an antique car club at the time. My father Kenny had a Model T Ford and the group spent many spirited weekends enjoying the Plumbers scenic lakeside cabin. When Ken and my mother Laura discovered that land was available for rent from Howard and Lillian Hopkins, they jumped at the chance for their own vacation spot.

The cabin itself was built my Uncle Bill. It was extremely simple, a small 20×20 box with no insulation or and open stud walls sheaved with novelty siding. The inside was divided into two very small bedrooms and an open kitchen living area with plywood dividers that didn’t even reach above the ceiling joists. Other than the lack of a second floor, the cabin was very similar to the Blair Witch House that is the subject of this blog.

A propane fueled wall unit provided heat on cooler summer nights and an open-air porch stretched across the side of the house facing the lake. A few years after the cabin was built, the porch was enclosed with the old storm windows from their winter home in the suburbs of Providence. There was no indoor plumbing other than a pump to bring lake water up to the house. All the drinking water was brought in from the winter house in large jugs (no Poland Springs in those days). As there was no plumbing, an outhouse served as the only bathroom, and the lake as the only bathtub.

Because there was no power at the time of construction, the entire house was precut back in the suburbs and transported by truck to The Lake. Once there, my uncle and a team of carpenters assembled the house on a simple cinder block foundation. As a testament to my uncle’s skills – even though it was prefabbed off site, the entire house was only 1/8” out of square (something Bill always blamed on the foundation construction.) Power was run to the cabin shortly before move-in day sometime in June of 1958. The entire house – doors and windows included cost my dad $2,200 or about $18,600 in today’s dollars.

Getting to the house was a bit of an adventure. The only access was a mile-long dirt road that was maintained only by the cars that used the road to access their summer homes. It was full of rocks, roots and was completely unusable during the winter. My brother Phil and I quickly named it the “bumpy road.”

The nearest neighbors were the Plumbers, who along with the Carry’s and a few other families lived across the cove from my parent’s new homestead. When my brother arrived earlier than planned in 1959, Kenny was at work so my mother had to run down to the dock and yell across the cove to the Plumbers to alert them that her water had broken. Shortly later, they got a phone which for years was a party line shared with the Plumbers.

The Lake was an amazing place to spend summers as a kid. As soon as school let out in June we would load up the station wagon and we would close down the winter house and make the (then) one-hour trip north. We would have hardly gone a mile when my brother and I would start screaming from the back seat “How long until the bumpy road!!”

We would spend the next three months in our bathing suits… swimming, fishing, and exploring the seemingly endless woods around the house. I often reflect on how much trouble I stayed out of by being away from the suburbs and my more reckless friends during all of summer break, a time when too many kids have too much time on their hands.

Sometime in the early seventies, a new modern road replaced the bumpy road. The major landowners on the lake were ready to divest their acreages to the audience of baby boomers who wanted to flee the suburbs and cities. Permanent houses were built along the road and some of the cabins were winterized. One of the families that took advantage of the new, easier access was the Johnsons who built the house I now own in 1973.

At the same time the Johnsons were designing their new home, Lillian Hopkins, now a widow, decided to divest her land. Rather than joining with the ranks of her fellow land barons and subdividing new lots for new owners she opted to offer nearly three acres of waterfront land to my dad. She adored my father (like most people) and offered him the land for $2,000 (with another $1,000 under the table so I’ve been told). My parents jumped at the chance and purchased the land in September of 1973.

Although I am sure my parents were glad not to be renters anymore, they changed nothing about the cabin. Unlike their neighbors they didn’t winterize, enlarge or install plumbing. Nothing really ever changed at The Lake and one summer stretched into the next… and somewhere in all that sameness I grew up.

By the time I was able to drive I had grown tired of the cabin. While I still loved the woods, the sound of the bullfrogs at night and the consistent stream of relatives and visitors, the cabin itself and the isolation throughout the long summer months had become a hindrance to my active social life back in the suburbs.

Like most older teens, I had become a night-owl but the lack real room dividers in the cabin mandated near silence after my parents had retired for the night which was usually just past 10PM. Most of all I missed my friends.

After a lot of discussion, promises and outright nagging, I finally talked my parents into letting me stay at the winter house for the summer. I’m confident that the high gas bills of me driving back and forth between both houses helped seal that deal. In June of 1980 I didn’t join the rest of the family as they moved north but remained in the ‘burbs – king of my own castle.

Although I would never have guessed it at the time – I would not spend another overnight on the lake for the next thirty-four years.