Saturday, August 6, 2011

Lake Gogebic—a Real Live Time Machine

I look at the couch in the living room and see my dad teaching me how to tie my shoes for the first time.
Out the back door there’s Old Man Ketola (who was in his nineties) telling my dad (who was in his fifties) that he was just a youngster.
Suddenly I’m flying in the air, but my dad catches me. He had unexpectedly thrown me up as he was carrying me while we were taking a family walk to Sandy Beach.
There I am spilling water from the two buckets I’m carrying that I just filled from the old water pump to take down to the camp.
In the kitchen I watch in fascination as Bill Nylund rolls a cigarette while telling us in his woodsman's voice about his latest bird hunt.
Now we’re flying through the water as Mr. Bedner takes us out for a ride in a real speed boat.
I see myself sitting around the campfire at the Webers with all the kids in the neighborhood telling ghost stories. Silently my brother and his buddy Phil Wirtanen sneak up behind us letting out a scream, scaring us half to death.
I look out into the woods and see my mom and my sister and I berry picking. I hear a strange hum above my head and see a hummingbird for the first time.
Now it’s time to put out forest fires! I watch as Ralph Wirtanen and I build airplanes out of firewood and come to the rescue.
There’s Jane and I and Mark Ketola hiding on the front porch. We had just knocked on our neighbors’ door (who we didn’t like) and ran and hid. Mark was laughing so hard he gave us away. The neighbor demanded that we show ourselves and apologize for what we had done. My sister said, “Don’t get up! He won’t come get us!” I felt so guilty I got up and confessed that we had done it and that we were sorry. Now I was in trouble from both sides.


I see myself, my brother, and sister carving our names in the old wooden steps where our cousins, aunts, and uncles had been carving their names for over 20 years.
There we are rowing to Merriweather to hike up to Seabold’s gas station to buy a candy bar or some groceries for the cottage.
Ten years later I see myself looking out the window with my father at the Weber twins who were just becoming adults. I commented, “It doesn’t seem that long ago when they were just babies in their crib.”
My dad responded, “It doesn’t seem that long ago to me when their mother Janet was
a baby in her crib.”
That was over thirty years ago. Now new names are being carved in the old wooden steps.
Fast forward a couple decades and a new generation is at Lake Gogebic with their own experiences and making new memories.
There’s Aunt Leoma saving the sauna from burning down.
There’s the outhouses that were left behind for the new flushing toilets.
There’s Tom and Todd and Tim and Ted helping Grandpa Waldo pile wood and shovel gravel.
There they go swimming across the Lake.
There’s Amber angrily responding to her cousins who had just told her that Grandma Silberg was their grandma, too. Amber yelled, “She’s my grandma, not yours”.
There’s Max being slowly lowered into Lake Gogebic by Aunt Jane for the first time. Unbeknownst to his mother, who was looking away, Max was turning blue and was sucking in all the air from Ontonagon County from the impact of Lake Gogebic’s “balmy water temperature”. He was so cold he was unable to express his concern to his mother—or maybe Max was just speechless with delight.
There’s Adam in Grandpa Waldo’s arms waiting for the cuckoo clock to cuckoo.
New names are carved in the old wooden steps.
There’s grandpa taking a walk with his friends, the chickadees. 
There’s grandma making a couple of loaves of cardamom seed bread.
There’s grandpa riding in his red tractor.
But some things are timeless:
Like . . .
Rowing down the Merriweather River.

The Hoop and Holler
A trip to Sandy Beach
Climbing Alligator Eye
Climbing the Bluff
Not catching any fish.
Looking for night crawlers.
Taking a sauna.
Chopping wood.
Swedish pancake eating contests, pasties, and apple brown betty.
Lake Superior.
Smashing pennies on the railroad tracks.
Indian head signs.
Coyotes howling at night.
Trips to Bergland.
Trips to Ironwood.
St. Paul’s Lutheran church.
Suomi College.
Hot games.
Wolves howling at night.
The Keewenaw.
The Paavo Nurmi Marathon.
Grandma walking across the Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day.
Flying squirrels at twilight.
Grandma Anna’s forget-me-nots
On and on and on . . .
There’s Catherine and Kelsey posing for Aunt Leoma with their first babies to be.
Now look:
There’s Hamilton Silberg (the first of a new generation) having the first Silberg art show on Lake Gogoebic.
All of a sudden there's a yard full of new Silberg kids: Hamilton, Truman, Hawthorne, Cameron, Conner, and Cassidy all hunting for quarters.
New names are carved in the old wooden steps.
There’s Tom II’s fire works on the fourth of July.
There goes a jet ski or two or three or four whizzing by with Silberg’s at the helms.
There we go on a boat ride around the lake with Ed and Mary Lou.
Now we’re having a pancake breakfast at the Collicks.
Now we’re playing croquet at the Berndts.
There’s grandma walking across the Mackinac Bridge.
There’s Amber swimming across the lake.
There’s Todd winning at Jeopardy.
There’s Jane winning at Jeopardy.
There goes Mary Lou to Watersmeet.
There’s Ed winning at Jeopardy.
There’s Jenny winning at Jeopardy.
There’s grandma walking across the Mackinac Bridge.
There’s Amber winning at Jeopardy.
There’s Mike and Leoma and Adam biking in the Tour da Lake.Whoops Aunt Leoma got kidnapped by the Berndts half way and they’re forcing her to drink champagne.
There’s Tucker winning at Jeopardy.
Now we’re in the car taking a trip to see the Paulding Lights.
There’s Ted and Heather and Trent on Plymouth Rock.
Theres Amber biking around the lake.
Time to put new names on the old wooden steps. Let’s see, Silbergs have been carving their names on these steps for almost 80 years now.
There’s grandma walking across the Mackinac Bridge.

Now it’s nighttime. I see a bunch of us sitting around the campfire. We’re looking for shooting stars or satellites passing by or even the Northern Lights. We’re solving the problems of the world with our neighbors, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends—just like Silbergs have been doing at Lake Gogebic for a hundred years.

Before you know it, another summer has come and gone. The leaves are falling. The geese are flying. Winter’s in the air. There goes grandma heading south. Tom and Tom II are closing up the cabins.
How quickly these days come and go. How quickly our friends and our neighbors and our families grow and move on and life changes. But somehow they stay with us. Somehow they remain in our hearts and become a part of us. The lake is always there. The cottage seems like it will always be there. Some things don’t seem to change. Some places are stuck in time. Must be a God thing.

So, if you’re visiting Lake Gogebic sometime in the future and you're awakened early on a cold morning in the old camp by some clanging around in the kitchengo back to sleep, it’s just Grandpa Waldo putting a fire in the stove.