(published in the Lake Beulah Yacht Club 1893-2018 25 Year Memory Book)
When I tell people that my parents live on an island on a lake they don’t believe me.
I say, “There is a little bridge to get you across.” The island would be the furthest point on Oakwood Lane on the second of the Twin Islands — my dad calls it frog island because of all the hopping amphibians from the marsh it boarders — and my family knows it as “Paradise”.
Its’ point marks the start of the channel that connects the main lake with long lake. Currently, there is a beaver wreaking havoc on the trees. It’s the site of the old Swayze cottage that became the Stein cottage in 1987 and the Stein home in 2004 when our new home was built. My brother, Andy, and I grew up at the cottage in the summers.
A bonfire on the point; the embers shoot up and join the stars in the sky, and the stars shoot down and join the fireflies on land. The sun dances and makes “lake stars” that sparkle in the daytime. This place is truly mesmerizing. For a daydreaming kid, it’s magical. I’m a water sign, Cancer, so naturally I’m drawn to bodies of water. I have been all my life (currently, I live next to Lake Michigan). It’s a wonder that I wasn’t a water birth. But I was born on a hot day, on the fourth of July. Every year, it’s an instant party! A picnic, games, fireworks – all for me! I’d rather be at the lake than anywhere else for my birthday and I have celebrated there for most of my life. Water is life and life is Beulah.
Can you love a place like you love a person? Probably not, but it’s the people that make the place. We grew up with a tight knit group of friends. We would always be at each other’s house in the evening or watching MTV at the Dorn’s because they had cable. We made “movies” on Mom’s camcorder. We sailed. We drove our motor boats like cars. In 1993 I was just moving out of cub boats and into adulthood. I was in an awkward place where I wasn’t yet a man and was no longer a boy.
I’m a graphic designer now. You can see a logo I did for the club here.
One of the most soothing images is a gradient. You know, one color blending into another color (a modish trope for hipster designers in 2017). Sunsets and tie-dye are a good example of a gradient. If you look at the lake and the sky, it makes a double gradient, bright blue fades to light blue on the horizon then reverses going into the sky. A ripple of wind will make darker streaks on the lake like a mad painter with wild brush strokes. Reading the designs of puffs and shifts has always been a pastime for sailors–truly an art. The most exhilarating for any sailor is seeing the dark gust coming toward you, like the shadow of a whale just under the surface, and bracing for the impact on the sail. “Hike! Hike! Hike!” My skipper would yell, to get me out on the hiking strap and over the side of the boat before it hit. Hiking is not so much a core exercise, but a torture invented in medieval times. When the blast hits your sail you somehow know that your little body is doing very little to stabilize this craft and it’s up to the machinery, the navigation and gods to keep it upright. When the gust passes it’s like a punch to the gut (especially if Mr. Lehnert slaps your tum while your hiking) The air falls, your body adjusts to the teeter-totter of the boat and you are right back to watching for that underwater whale.
Tie die reminds me of when we dressed up like hippies and decorated our pontoon to make a peace boat for a parade. Someone else had a war boat and in a twist of irony we got into a water war with squirt guns. The war boat won as we were only armed with flowers.
Tie die also reminds me of Kurt Berens. He started a legend called the Tie Die Killer and had us all be a part of the slasher home movie. We then did a sequel, or was it a remake, at our cottage. The premise was anyone that wore Tie Die would die mysteriously in a gruesome death. Most of our movies, edited in real time, went straight to video. We made a fishing show with prat falls and stupid stunts. We filmed mash ups like “Conan the Barbarian” and the “Search for the Holy Grail”. There were parody’s of “Star Wars” and “Clue” and many “Saturday Night Live” inspired sketches. And as far as I know, the tape was accidentally recorded over, buried under an episode of “Doogie Howser” and “The Wonder Years”.
““What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me an ear and I’ll sing you a song. And I’ll try not to sing out of tune, now. Have a little help from my friends…””
The friendships made on the lake were like something from a movie. Each generation has their own group of buddies. Frequently, the generations mix and hang out. Our group was Katie and Jenny Dorn, Kim Knopf, Andy and Eric Stein, Heather McNulty, Mark Grubis, Ryan McKay, Tate Curti, Chris Nelson, Mikey Flynn, Jessica Thompson, Brian and Kevin Brickler, Zack Clayton. The older generation just above us was Joe Bitter, Brian Jarecki, Matt Grubis, the Knopf brothers, the Berens, Mike Greeson, and Mike Atkinson. Sailing school instructors became our early heros: Christy Will, Joe Sko and Joe Burns, Peter Katcha, returned as a guest instructor and Matt Haeger and Anne Humphrey hired me in one of my first jobs ever as an assistant sailing school instructor.
I lived on the lake in 2006-07 in my Grandmother’s cottage, just down the road from my parents. This was the height of the ground water-high capacity well concern. I could have stayed there as a hermit in that cottage like Thoreau on Walden. But the big city called to me and I left for Chicago.
Beulah-land and the people around it shaped my early life and made me into who I am today. Many of us who grew up on the lake have similar stories, some not appropriate for a serious history book. But each generation has a similar sparkle in their eye when they think of the lake. The fresh clear spring water flows through our veins.
