Once upon a time, some sixty years ago or so, there stood a white painted old wooden boathouse. Just a faded memory now, it stood at the southern base of that old dock with the willow tree. It was my Granddad, C.R. Anderson's boathouse and dock.
In the boathouse, there was one fishing boat for Granddad and one rowboat for the grand kids. A boarded walkway stood in front of the boats, a center walkway between the boats.
I was one of the incredibly lucky kids who was fortunate enough to experience this part of my Granddad’s world. But we had to be a bit older, maybe 10 or so, to actually use the kids boat and the kids outboard motor.
So the boathouse was locked with a four number sequence combination lock so that strangers and family too small didn’t go for unapproved journeys in Granddad’s prize boats. After you reached the magic age of ten, or maybe even a bit more, Granddad would swear you to eternal secrecy and entrust you with the precious combination to that Master lock. And it would be years till I turned ten.
But the always locked door made it even better for a secret hiding place. A hiding place for not just me but many of my cousins and just a few very close friends.
Long before, maybe even years and months before, we had tired our small growing fingers twisting and turning the rusting dial of that aging faded brass Master lock. We’d spin it slowly back and forth for what seemed hours. Trying, trying ever so hard to figure out, to master, the combination to the darned lock. But always in vain. Always frustrated. Never succeeding, but never giving up.
So we did the next best thing. We scrambled out on to the little wooden dock located a few feet just south of the boathouse and just north of the elderberry and raspberry bush jungle that separated Granddads property from Dennis Beach (now called Firemans Beach).
The ‘little dock’ was for other family members fishing boats. There we climbed into the water and ducked and swam under the four foot wide swinging boathouse doors that opened over the water outward to the lake. These were the doors the rowboats used to escape their cobwebs and voyage on great expeditions.
Hidden inside with the spiders, cobwebs and goodness knows what else, we laughed and giggled and took down the fishing poles that hung on the grandkids wall. The opposite wall was for Granddad’s fishing poles and we wouldn’t dare touch those.
Using night crawlers carefully gathered the night before, we fished for turtles, sunfish, perch, crayfish and even dogfish. The last two of which weren't fish at all. And it didn’t take too long to learn to recognize a snapping turtle from a turtle we could feed bread to and play with.
Struggling for hours with granddad's two handled fishing nets which were bigger than us, we tried to catch tiny silver striped minnows darting around the boats so we could fish later, sitting in the shade of the willow tree, off the end of the ‘big dock’ with real bait. But to get the best minnows we had to ride with granddad in his old black La Salle car, loaded with minnow buckets and special twin bamboo pole minnow nets, to narrow fresh flowing wandering streams hidden deep in the Pennsylvania countryside.
Come August we dried freshly picked Indian tobies on the edges of the boathouse roof where they couldn't be seen (or so we thought). When dried to a brown tobacco like color, we smoked those same horrible tasting tobies that we had silently and ever so carefully borrowed from uncle Wes's catalpa trees.
Of course we did much of this during granddad's nap time. Else we'd have been in more than a heap of trouble, we would have been chastised. We didn’t want to lose granddads respect or disappoint him. So the threat was never a spanking, but a quiet but very stern and firm scolding. To be scolded with ever so softly spoken words from a granddad who loved all of us more than anything else on this earth was just plain torture. And unacceptable.
I know this because of more than the tears he shed during the war when the first of my cousin's was killed and later when grandma died. I guess it was all the time Granddad spent with me. His careful choice of quietly spoken words and his careful expression of those words in teaching and sharing with me much of what he knew and believed in.
His hopes and heart rested in his hand and he was going to share them. And that hand often rested gently on my shoulder. To disappoint him would have been unbearable.
The rowboats made creaking and rocking noises as waves bumped them around in their stalls. And I'm quite sure we must have made some noise that could have been heard outside the boathouse with all the fun and whispers and laughs as we frolicked and played and made believe.
Photo: Granddads Boathouse And Dock (about 1953)
Mindless TV and hype and political correctness hadn’t been invented yet and when they were, our exposure was strictly limited.
Instead, our senses were built on the scents, tastes, and touches of earthworms, seaweed, elderberry bushes, kindness and the daily example of the Christian morals and values that our grand parents lived.
At times, as little kids, we managed to haul down the old 1/2 horsepower Evenrude motor from the worn wooden 2x4 on the wall and mount it on the back of the kids boat. Then pretend we were on a adventure going up the lake. Of course we were still too young and had no gasoline and couldn’t really start it back then.
And of course Granddad probably knew we were playing in the boathouse and never said a word.
But a few years later when we were about ten and had the secret combination, with a lot of pulls of the rope, the old Evenrude did start. With granddad's blessing we’d be off to many an adventure up by the islands with dreams of pirates and excitement beyond belief.
Several times we would run out of gas then make the long journey home again with something called oars and more than occasionally, slightly to very blistered hands.
Sometimes one of us would swim alongside the boat to see just how far each of us really could swim.
When I finally turned ten, I made it clear across the lake and was very proud.
After tiring of the boathouse and while Grandma was still alive, we’d often venture into the elderberry and raspberry bush filled field just south of the boathouse and pick 1/2 peck baskets of berries. There were humming birds hovering and buzzing around those elderberries and wild yellow finches darting about our heads. Grandma would see to it that there was hot elderberry pie for dessert or sometimes an afternoon snack.
Photo: Our family still uses the dock over 50 years later!Then we’d even wander among the bushes a little further south to a little sandy beach called Dennis Beach (Now called Fireman’s beach). Between Fireman’s and town was a marshy swampy area. In later years they’d fill the area toward town and make roads, boat docks and parking lots.
I remember getting very sick one of those summers, maybe from a well gone bad, or perhaps too many Indian tobies or too much elderberry pie. That happened one late August day, during or just after the war.
Especially I remember a young family doctor, Jim Martin, stopping by every day to see how I was doing. He stopped late every afternoon because late afternoons and evenings were when he made his house calls. A few years later one August in about 1952, I suffered a very high fever and later some seizures and Doc Martin was always there for me. He even loaned me his thousand power microscope one summer when I was just starting high school.
There was no health insurance then and his doctors fee was a dollar or two or a piece of pie. Maybe that’s why he would often show up at dinner time.
Growing up in the America of my youth meant growing up in a world where life was simple, and people and feelings were real. The pressures and jumble and jangle of technology and plastic people living in a plastic world were things that fortunately didn’t exist yet and didn’t encumber the richness of our senses and experiences.
Looking back on those days is a wonderfully pleasant experience for me, for our lives were full of such incredible people and fun experiences and we had so much and none of it was measured in dollars.
The old boathouse by the lake is gone now and so are those rowboats and most of the fine people who once rowed them. Doc Jim Martin too is gone. And so are many of my cousins who shared those unforgettable experiences.
But the lake is there, the dock and willow tree is still there, and so are great memories of growing up in and playing in an old wooden boathouse in the very special country we call America.
Footnotes:
I last saw Doc Martin about 30 years later when he was in his 70's and still making house calls. But by then he was still charging $2 for house calls to favored patients when everyone else was charging $50 or more or no longer made house calls.
Doc Martin gave me a lift one day in about 1976 in his pickup truck. We had to stop on the way home at one of his patient's houses or I would have never known just how little his fees had changed. He told me he had enough money and didn’t have the heart to take much from his patients. He also said that he didn’t want to hurt their pride, so if he felt they couldn’t afford to pay at all, he’d ask for a piece of pie or cake.
By then Doc’s hobbies included ping pong, wood carving, checkers and chess. I spent many an evening at his farm home playing ping pong in his garage and he was very good. When tired I’d play checkers or chess with him while listening to his tales and experiences as a young MD. He never had even a trace of the ‘air of superiority’ or bloated ego that so many modern M.D.s have. As down to earth and as compassionate as any human could be.
In 1977 or so I cut down our black walnut tree which had somehow survived after the blight and Doc came over and hauled away the wood which he used for gunstocks and other carvings.
I moved away and never saw Jim Martin again but my wonderful recollections of him and his dedication to people and to old fashioned real medicine will live on alongside my memories of my very special grandparents and Conneaut Lake.
