Far Away in Time part one
Omg I've been trying to post this for seven fucking days and all I get are problems, so the big post is going to be many little posts:
So you all remember the classic 1980-ish hit "Echo Beach" by Martha and the Muffins? If you are Canadian and don't, I have nothing else to say to you other than don't let the door slap you on the ass on your way out of my life. However, if you are American, you've got some forgiveness coming your way because you people just don't know any better. so if you don't know it, YouTube it rightbnow. Go on, I'll wait. Don't expect me to post links and shit because this isnt The Ritz of blogland. Let's face it. Jenny Lawson and Gwenyth Paltrow are probably voice-to-texting while shopping for vole carcasses and vegan KY Jelly respectively. Me, I'm typing this in bed, in the dark, with a wife (mine) and an 8 year old next to me, on my fucking First-generation iPad since every other electronic in this fucking house is dead and/or has a broken charge cord. So fuck if I'm going to link shit. Play the song and get back here.
Welcome back. You took a little longer than I thought. Look at your fucking porn before you come here, ok? anyway, back to echo beach. I went there today.
Oh not THE Echo Beach old Martha sang about. I dunno where the he'll hers is, but mine tucked away in an obscure location on the prairies, and I finally got to go back to the Holy Land today.
My people weren't lake people. No, I'm not Black, but I like to say my people in place of my folks. It sounds more regal. Ok, so my people weren't one with water or nature. The two places I grew up? Both had an abundance of majestic lakes. Hell, you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a lake in either place. I know this because the odd time I'd tag along with a friend to a lake. The only lake I ever knew growing up was MY Echo Beach (I'm just going to call it that for shits and giggles). echo Beach is literally in the middle of nowhere. It's about 30 mins outside of a secondary city here in Stankprovince, and right by a town I'll call Slash Shiv. My folks lived in SS in the 60s before I was born and we would go visit every summer on holidays to the towns they lived in, including Slash Shiv. Their closest friends all had cottages at Echo Beach and so I'd get to go to the lake finally. Now this isn't your Great Lakes or your Ogopogo Stews. Rather, the lake is small, as in you could probably walk the circumference in an hour. It had a sandy main beach, clear sandy shallow water that went out to a dock and a diving board, and while the shallow area seemed huge, once you got to the dock, there was this huge hole in the lake and it gets to like 40 feet deep pretty quick. As the deep water also had huge weeds,I was warned never to jump off it or the deathtrap diving board, as my mother asserted that people get caught up in the weeds and drown. I dunno who these poor unfortunates were, but she warned me good to stay the fuck away. Anyway, by the beach was "The Booth", where you could by chips and chocolate bars and popsicles and smokes and the odd grocery item. and hamburgers and fries every few days. The booth had a speaker so you could page people or leave a msg for them. You'd hear random things like "Tom Bell to the booth for a message" all the time. Next to that was a ball diamond, change rooms, and a pay phone. All the roads were nothing more than dirt paths and you basically had to walk ahead first to see if you were going to meet someone on the road going to opposite way because you barely could fit one car on the paths. The streets were named after berries, and the cabins were actual cabins, with mismatched furniture and chotkes, and most had outhouses and no hot water and the phones were on a party line. It was real, working class people. They often had Saturday Night dances at the Hall at the golf course, with a band and everyone got piss-stinking drunk. Anyway, can you picture it?
Well, as I said, I'd wait with night before Xmas anticipation every summer to get there. Our closest friends there were Bob and Ethel who lived on a farm but had a cabin. They lived on the road closet to the beach, so it was a sandy 2 min walk to the beach. They had two kids, Jayette who was my oldest sister's age, 12 years older than me, and Benny, who was around the same age give or take a few years. We'd come to the lake and if we were staying at their cabin, Jayette and Benny would sleep in a tent and my folks would get Jays little room and I'd get Benny's. They had beads hanging in the entryway to where the rooms were and these folding doors for the bedrooms. I ain't gonna lie - when I got older I liked having Benny's room because I'd sneak from his stockpile of Hustler and Penthouse hidden in his little lake room, until he lost his room when the law came in saying everyone had to get a septic tank and Benny's room got turned into a bathroom, but that's ok because he married young and was out of the house by that time and didnt need the room. Sorry for the tangent.
More to follow.