Add to the beauty: memories

 

In the summer of 1975 (my seventeenth summer) I lived in a cottage on Lake Minocqua.  I had a job at DeByles clothing store and worked 5:00-9:00 Monday thru Friday.  The rest of my time was spent reading and tanning on the dock.  I fed myself ice cream and stayed up every night playing Yahtzee until the Star Spangled Banner came on the tiny black and white tv.  It was a little scary by myself but I bore it bravely.  I read Gone with the Wind that summer and remember reading until the sun came up and the loons called good morning.

Family (Nancy and Binky had a newborn and were parenting the twins, Cindy and Sue) and friends came and went that summer but I mostly remember being by myself.  

I drove a medium blue Oldsmobile 442 with an 8-track  in it.  (Hand me down car from Bink).  If you've ever driven a winding back lake road you will know the beauty of the dappled light flickering thru the leaves that cover the road like a canopy.  I had three 8-tracks with me.  This will tell you a lot about me.  First was Chicago.  Second was The Spinners and third was the That's Entertainment Soundtrack. 

When I hear the songs from that time I am transported back to that quiet, independent, winsome summer and those flickering drives on Country Club Rd.  

My seventeenth summer was different from Angie Morrow's. (book my Maureen Daly). (I did, however, five years later, meet and marry a baker who lived not that far from Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin. ) 

My seventeenth summer was slow and dreamy and hummed with lapping water, the wind in the pines and Chicago.

Much like Angie's.

~donna glyman boucher