Bear Lake
Our Holy Grail was Bear Lake, Michigan.
In the 1930’s my grandfather began going there on fishing trips and it became a regular vacation spot for the Dayton crowd. In fact they formed a colony of sorts by the Little Bay and called it the Dayton – Bear Lake Outing Club.
It was the go-to vacation spot for my grandfather and many of his friends and business associates. While I’ve seen slides of a trip to Florida, and I believe my grandparents actually owned property there, it had none of the mystique of Bear Lake and was soon enough sold and relegated to no more than a fading fond memory.
My grandmother was raised by the Hinkle’s and they became my Aunt Belle and Uncle George. If there was a familial connection, I never figured it out. But my father always wondered how his mother came to live with someone other than her own mother who ended up living in nearby Columbus. It’s a genealogical mystery that would be exciting to unravel. In the end there might be an answer we’d rather no know.
Soon, on these fishing trips, the Hinkle’s joined in and though my grandmother and Aunt Belle were hardly fishermen – they were cooks and bottle washers – my grandfather and Uncle George took to the lake like, well, … fish.
They often rented the same cottage, the first one in line at the colony, and it almost became a second home. Certainly a couple of weeks in the spring (mushrooms and fishing) and a few in the fall (tree watching and fishing) cemented their attraction to the place.
When it went up for sale, Uncle George bought it. This was in the 1930’s, I believe. And I always thought it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. But who buys a cottage on a whim? And being a sometimes-grocer (who my Dad only knew as a retired man), where did he get the money?
Dad, of course, had the full benefit of the place and as a young man there couldn’t have been a finer place to be. Though he was never interested in fishing, he liked the backwoods atmosphere and often shared it with his cousin, Bob.
If there is a place that is custom made for each of us, Bear Lake was it for our family. It soon enough generated an aura that sent a tingle up our spine whenever it was mentioned. In those early years it had not yet been “discovered” by the Detroit and Chicago crowds and it was little more than a run-down fishing village. Once it was the site of a saw mill and a nearby port on Lake Michigan but by the time my family dribbled in, there was little left but for the lake itself.
The outing club still sported bits of an old apple orchard but those trees succumbed to age steadily and by the time I was introduced, they were no more. And yet slides my grandfather took in the late 1940’s still show a few growing there. I’d like to have been there in apple blossom time
I didn’t miss the apple trees by much. I was surely taken there in the early 1950’s and Bear Lake quickly became as much of me as it had my family. About 450 miles north of Miamisburg, it required an all-day drive to get there. Those were the days before super highways and the back roads, threading through Indiana and into Michigan, weren’t designed for high-speed travel. Unlike I-75, which cut the travel time to less than seven hours, the older routes seemed to pass through every small town on the way. And every driveway spit out onto the two-lane blacktop and so slow-downs were normal.
One favorite early memory of mine was accompanying my grandfather on a fishing trip in his homemade wooden boat and heading to the “west end” where he caught his favorite Northern Pikes and Muskies. At some point in the afternoon the sky began to darken and soon thunder threatened as it approached from Lake Michigan (just three miles distant). Though we high-tailed it for home, the storm caught us while still out on the lake and my grandfather had me crawl under the front cowling while the storm beat down. He was drenched when we arrived; I was dry.
But like the time I was safely on our front porch in Miamisburg while a storm rages, safe and dry, again the same experience found me and I suppose it’s why I love storms today.
Thunderstorms seemed a specialty of northern Michigan. Many years later, as I lay in a sleeping bag on the enclosed porch, I woke to hear a storm building out over Lake Michigan. The rumble carried incredible distances over the open water and you might hear one rolling east for hours before it arrived. I woke again as it bore down on us. High winds lashed the cottage and a waterfall gushed from the shutters. I could feel the wooden floor vibrate with every explosion of thunder.
Of course we hoped for a week of fair weather when we were there and we were often lucky. I’d wake and look for the glow on the pull-down shades. It was hard to tell whether it was filtering a cloudy day or sunshine. Rolling them up each morning was a revelation of the day ahead.
Even in the summer nights could be cold. We had a simple oil stove that kept the place pleasantly warm except on the coldest nights. I loved to light, crank the “oil fire” knob up, place a match at the edge of the dark expanse of oil dampening the bottom of the burn chamber and then sit back and listen to the rhythmic clicks as the metal expanded as it warmed.
Just getting there represented a grueling trip, usually made in the summer, and without benefit of air conditioning. We’d usually leave before sunrise and hope to get to Bear Lake by late afternoon. A few times Dad decided to get only a few hours sleep before leaving and we’d be up at 2 AM. I could sleep a few more hours in the car, of course, but I was usually too excited by this point.
When Bob and I made too much noise at that hour, laughing at something, dragging some last minute luggage to the trunk, we’d hear Mom whisper “Shhhh, we don’t won’t to wake the neighbors.”
By 1956 when my brother was born I was already an old hand at Bear Lake. I’d go with my grandparents or be driven half way by my Dad where we’d be met by my grandfather at some picnic spot beside the road. I’d start the trip with one driver and end with another.
One year, when my young father was traveling with Uncle George and Bob, they were eating at a similar picnic table. Nearby was a railroad. When the need to use the bathroom affected all three of them at once, they walked to the nearby railroad track and dropped their pants. Of course that’s when a passenger train approached. Though Dad and Bob at first scrambled to finish quickly, George told them not to worry. “They’ll never see these asses again,” he said.
I seldom missed a year of vacationing at Bear Lake and I believe my brother was first taken along within a year or two of this birth.
Like Dad, neither of us were fishermen but we loved the lake and canvassed our favorite spots in my grandfather’s aluminum row boat. We had a couple of outboards so we were able to cover some distance quickly. We learned every inch of the nearby woods, enjoyed snatching a frog or turtle at the water’s edge, or my brother and Dad enjoyed target practice at a nearby dump.
I’d often take a short hike at night or even row across the lake. The stars seemed incredibly close compared to how I could view them at home. There were no large cities nearby and the sky was dark, the stars within reaching distance.
I’d take a pillow and lean back on the gunwales and listen to voices coming across the open water from the shore. It was delicious eavesdropping. You could almost hear a casual conversation word for word. Screen doors would slam shut. A radio or a TV might broadcast muffled sounds across the water.
Just taking a hike on the roads was an adventure. A huge bull guarded a field a mile north of the club and we’d visit “El Toro” regularly. A nearby neighbor’s dog stopped by for a quick handout. One morning as we readied to leave for home, Bingo arrived for his daily treat but he had been freshly sprayed by a skunk.
We regularly hiked around the lake, though the village, perhaps two miles away, was the practical limit. No roads encircled the lake in those days It was fun to look in other cottages as we passed, some still closed, others with children sharing our own form of summer ecstasy.
My brother and Dad liked renting bicycles and increasing their range. I more preferred lying on a dock, listening to the waves lap beneath me and soaking up the sun.
Mom could usually be found on the beach. She’d seldom get in the water but she enjoyed the sun. Much of the time she was in the kitchen and found Bear Lake only a little different from being home. But she enjoyed eating out and shopping and both were offered in ample doses to satisfy her.
In later years I asked her if she enjoyed it as much as we three guys. “No,” she said, “It was just the same work for me at a different place.” I suppose I was enjoying it too much to care when I was younger.
Sadly, when I had graduated from college and both Bob and I had jobs, the cottage in Bear Lake created a constant expense and one we could not enjoy very often. Did it make sense to pay all the bills for upkeep when we could be there only two weeks a year? We decided not and sold the place.
It was one of the worst mistakes we ever made.
It was nice to deposit a share of the profit but it left a hole in our lives that has never been filled. Now that I’m retired, and Bob not far behind, we could spend as much time there as we want. Why did we not think ahead? We’ve looked for another place – even once found our old cottage for sale – but it’s never worked out. And frankly, it’s now too expensive.
Ah, the lessons hindsight provides!
© 2021 William G Schmidt
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