"Goodbye Summer"

 Labor Day weekend has traditionally been "the end of summer".  Corporate America goes back to work (well, that remains to be seen in 2020!), schools are back in full swing (for how long remains to be seen!), and those vacations and summer activities are but memories (2020 will be long remembered, right?).  

In an earlier blog, I wrote about long-ago memories of Battle Lake and the many summers spent at our cottage.  Labor Day was the weekend when Clyde and/or Ashton would journey to northern Minnesota to remove the dock, store it in sections on the lawn, and bring the boat lifts far enough inland to avoid the ice that would inevitably come to rest on the shoreline.  Obviously, they brought a crew with them.

Another major activity during Labor Day weekend was "boarding up" all the windows, shutting off the water, and "winterizing" the cottage.  It was important to plug any openings so that animals wouldn't "invade" our living areas during the long winter.  There were horror stories of what raccoons or other animals could do to the interior of lake cottages.  Luckily, we never had a problem like that.

In later years, snowmobiles became very popular; looting was a major problem for cottages that were isolated, like ours.  Since it was a private dirt road, there was no way to access our cottage once the ice and snow started accumulating.  However, beginning in the mid-70's, snowmobilers could traverse the lake, stealing and/or and inflicting damage to property.  We were fortunate.  

For our family, a major change occurred in 1963.  Grandpa had retired, and he wanted to spend more time at the lake.  Ashton and family were moving to Colorado, so their trips to Battle Lake would be minimal, if at all.  Kathy and I were married that year, and soon we were expecting a baby.  My folks, along with Kathy and I, decided to buy a cottage just down the road from the original one.  We would still be close to Grandma and Grandpa, yet we would have more space.

With 100' of lakefront, and a separate guest house, it provided not only more room; but we could also be more flexible in time spent there.  No one knew at the time, of course, that Dad would pass away just 18 months later.  That changed everything!  Mother was working full-time so her vacation time was very limited; David was an infant and I had just started teaching.  We did enjoy summers there, at least from 1964-1972.   (Below is a photo of David in the 18' foot Crestliner boat that came with the cottage.)

Do you see those side windows above, outlined in red?  Well, it so happened that audio speakers fit just perfectly; and those were the first items to be unpacked from the car when we brought our friends there in the late 1960's.  (Our neighbors were actually pretty understanding, at least that's what they said!)  We also made several "beer runs" to the town of Battle Lake in that boat, sometimes over pretty choppy waves.   However, in 1972, it was just not cost-effective to keep it anymore.  Grandma and Grandpa had already sold the smaller cottage, David was getting more involved with baseball and his friends in Iowa. It was time to move on.  We said a teary goodbye to the cottage on Labor Day, 1972.

The below picture shows what progress can do over a period of 60+ years.  Take a peek back at the top photo, of the original cottage in the 1950's.  The photo below is what it looked like when we visited the beach in 2010.  (Connie, would you have believed that it would actually ever be a 2-story house?)

Another funny story is that during that same visit, Kathy and I continued down the dirt road to find "our cottage".  Though it had been over 35 years, we were sure we could find it.  We drove by it twice before we realized that it had been torn down, and a million-dollar home pretty much took up the whole 100' of property!!  We are sorry now that we didn't take a photo; we were too stunned, I guess!  We were happy that Mother could join us on that last visit to Ferncliffe Beach and Battle Lake.

Lake memories continued, though, when Adrian and Helen bought a place on Spirit Lake.  How many of you remember the picture below?  It was taken in July of 1992, when the family gathered to celebrate Mother's 75th birthday.  Seems like only yesterday, right?  😀 

Now, the bigger question is, "How many people can you identify above?"  Let me know your answers, and a prize awaits the winner.  (This is also a way to tell how many people are still reading.  (Just kidding.)  Anyway, in a final salute to summer fun, here are a few more family photos that remind us of summers gone by.  Have a great Labor Day weekend.  Be safe and stay healthy.

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Clyde Ferguson Coppock, who at 47 died way too young.  He loved to fish; but more than that, he enjoyed the peaceful times at Battle Lake.   R.I.P. Dad.

DAC 9/4/2020