Vacations

My Aunt Doris (Mom’s sister) had a cottage on a lake in Maine we visited a couple times as a family. We didn’t have much contact with the cousins from Mom’s side of the family, at least that I recall when I was small, so it was a treat. The cottage was fairly rustic and the lake water was freezing, but I remember it being lots of fun there in the back woods of Maine. Dad caught a bass from the lake that he was extremely proud of. Just looked like a fish, to me. There was this game, of sorts, where my cousin Arthur and my brother Dennis would stand (balanced) on inner tubes out in the lake and Dad would throw a Frisbee out, hopefully close enough to one of them to catch it. I was too little for such, plus not being able to swim had something to do with it.

Dad borrowed somebody’s pop-up camper one year and we camped in a campground near Niantic, Connecticut:

I had never been camping, so picnicking and sleeping that close to the great outdoors was something special for me. Dennis and I kept hearing wild animal noises at night, though our parents didn’t believe us. It was proven to be true when one night we all were woken up by a disturbance in the screen tent (set up for eating). Dad shined a flashlight to reveal a mob of skunks after our food stash. Dennis & I felt vindicated. There was a beach nearby which we frequented, and a field next to us where we played football, frisbee, and such.

We would sometimes go into town and eat at a place call the Harbor Drive-In. They had the best milkshakes. Here’s me and Dennis waiting for our food: