Longing for Lake Days

The frosty orange goo rising magically above the cardboard tube enchanted me. It had come from the store on the hill on the other side of the lake--the one we had never been to. For some reason unknown to me, today going there had become a priority.

Perhaps my father had run out of beer. Maybe we needed some more baitfish; or it could have been Mom hadn't packed enough hamburger buns. Whatever the reason, in the store, I remember the murmur of customers as I wandered along fingering the dive masks, tugging on the straps of brand-new neon orange life jackets, and hoping I'd get a chance at a candy bar or pack of Lifesavers from the rack by the check-out counter. Today, the prize for tagging along with Pop was going to be even better--an ice cream freezer hopefully stood guard right by the cashier, and Dad looked like he was in the mood for an "eskimo pie."

"Here," he grinned, his thick fingers brushing across a tube that reminded me of the one back home in his caulking gun. "You're gonna like this."

As we stepped out the door, shards of light bounced off the lake and hurt my eyes. I looked down at the tube, trying to figure out what to do with it. It looked like it was wearing a little paper hat. Dad sensed my confusion and deftly ripped off the top paper. "You do it like this," he said, pushing up on the stick a bit. I was tickled to see the orange color peek up over the top; being in love as I was with all things fruit-flavored, I could hardly wait to try it. And it...was...awesome! Just like you'd taken some orange juice and whisked it together with Coolwhip and frozen it. I was enjoying my treat so much, I hardly paid attention to the burning soles of my feet practically sizzling on the blacktop of the parking lot. 

My father and I edged our way down the part-rocky, part-grassy hillside. It was steep, and he'd lift me (mostly gently) by the arm the couple of times I had stumbled and was about to fall. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but that creamy orange sherbet, magically tumbling out of the tube at my whim and command. By the time we made it to the shore, it was just about gone. 

We didn't say anything to each other. We just took our places in a pair of lawn chairs he'd set there after we'd tied up the boat at the bottom of the hill. Mom had burgers just about ready, and she hadn't forgotten the buns; there were plenty there. My brother was laughing with one of his friends as each was trying to push the other off of the back of our houseboat. Our boat certainly wasn't anything fancy. It was, in fact, rather old, and even sort of ugly. But for me at that place and on that day, a homely little houseboat had become a little glimpse of heaven.

Many, many summers have slipped by me since. When we're driving close to the lake, when it's hot-as-blue-blazes (though our car a/c is working fine), I roll down the windows a crack, so I can smell that lake water and woods, and a happy hint of early campfire smoke; and I close my eyes, soaking in memories of a summer at seven, with my Pop, watching a red-orange sun sink back of the hills, late-summer evening lowering her inky curtain into sparkling water.

Photo by Ryan Bruce.

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