Childhood Travel Memories

Summer Memories
by Kendra Lachniet

         When I was a kid, our family took lots of trips.  We visited historical sites, amusement parks, state and national parks.  I loved vacations, especially the ones in which we traveled with family or one of my dad’s colleagues and their families.  But I don’t remember much about those trips.  For some reason, the most memorable vacations were the ones that featured disaster or disappointment.
         Ask my Aunt Phyl what she hates most in life, and I’d bet her answer would be, “Bugs!”  In fact, I bet she imagines a scene in the Bible, right after God confronted Adam and Eve about their forbidden snack:  And God said, “Let the air bring forth swarms of insects, and let bugs fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.”  So God created the mosquitoes and every living pest that moves, with which the earth, waters, and air swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bug according to its kind. And God saw that they were bad; He said they were bad; and they were bad!  And God cursed man, saying to the bugs, “Be fruitful and multiply...by the billions.  Behold, I have given you these humans yielding blood, and every human with vulnerable skin and sumptuous secretions; you shall have them for food.”  And God said, “Let it be.”  And it was so. 
         On Labor Day the Lachniets, Fridsmas, and Eefstings took a trip to the Ludington together.  Aunt Phyl spent most of the time flailing about, swatting at insects, complaining about the tiny critters invading the table, cursing the ants and beetles.  She was miserable.  After lunch we all took a little hike along the shore.  We kids couldn’t resist the lure of the water and started to wade in.  Aunt Phyl, evidently believing that you will drown if you go in the water after eating, starting yelling at us in a voice not dissimilar to the voice of the demon in the Amityville Horror--”Get out!”  Her brother, Ken, more irritated by his sister than by the bugs and clearly unconcerned about the imminent danger to the kids, pulled his brother-in-law, Hank, aside and muttered, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”  Little did he know that Wayne, Hank’s son, had overheard this comment.  And he thought it was hilarious!  Uncle Ken swears!  It was shocking, and very funny!  So, all the way home, we got to hear Wayne repeating over and over, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” 
         Whether that same trip or another, I don’t remember, but my cousin Kim and I had our own little adventure.  We took my dad’s boat, just a small boat with a small motor, on the lake at Young State Park.  I guess our parents told us to stay near the shore, but we didn’t hear them.  We did circles around the lake until the motor quit.  We couldn’t get it started, and we couldn’t remember the direction of the beach.  So we guessed....wrong.  We got out of the boat and swam toward the shore, pulling the boat behind us.  Lucky for us, there was one resident still staying in the summer cabins there.  She helped us get back to our families, who were, by then, going berserk.  They had called the police.  Kim and I didn’t think it was that big a deal, but they sure did! 
         Several summers we took trips to Ontario with the Eefstings.  On one of these trips, we encountered a porcupine.  Hank decided he needed a nice close-up shot of the animal, but he didn’t really have a telephoto lens on his camera.  So he kept crawling closer as we all yelled at him to get away from it before it speared him.  He got the shot without incident, and we couldn’t wait to see the picture.  “Well,” he said, “I’m not sure it’ll turn out.  We’ve had this same roll of film in the camera since...when, Marge?  Our wedding, I think.”  Oh, twenty-some years.  We never saw the picture.
           We were always amazed at how Canada advertises their natural wonders.  We’d see a tiny, hand-painted sign on the highway pointing down a dirt road declaring “waterfall.”  After sometimes a long drive, we’d come to a little parking area, walk a long trail into the woods, and come to a gorgeous waterfall.  Canadians are less concerned with safety precautions like fences to keep visitors away from dangerous spots. My dad and Uncle Hank love nothing better than to torment their wives and set poor examples for their children.  So they climbed up the side of a cliff to get a different view of the falls while Lavonne and Margaret yelled at them to come down, and we kids tried to find good places to climb. 
         One summer, after visiting our favorite town, Wawa, we decided to drop by the bear camp near Chapleau where Uncle Ron (Ken’s brother) and Aunt Judy were hunting.  We had some vague directions, which is all my dad requires.  If we had known how far we had to travel down that gravel road, we might’ve turned around.  But you reach a point where you say, “Well, we’ve come this far.  I’d hate to have driven for an hour down a pot-holed gravel road for nothing.  Let’s just keep going.”  So, we went to the bear camp.  I had some naive notions about bear hunting.  I imagined men creeping through the forest in search of their elusive prey, coming across a fierce bear, being charged, and shooting to save his own life!  Ron and Judy’s friends shattered this fantasy.  “Well, we just lay out some meat.  Then we go back to camp, drink beer, eat junk food, and go back once in a while to check on the bait.  If there’s a bear there, we shoot it,” one man told us with a laugh, showing off his poor dental hygiene.  Oh.  I’m not impressed, Bubba.  Can we go yet? 
         But, no, news arrived--several bears had been shot, and the hunters were on their way back to camp right now!  So we stayed to see the two female bears and three cubs.  Several hunters emerged from the woods with a pole carried between them.  Two bears hung from the pole.    Oh, no.  It’s the babies!  They’re so small!  They’re so beautiful!  It’s so sad!
          “Oh, those are the mother bears.  The cubs are coming yet.”  No! 
         “Why did they kill cubs?”  I asked.
         “Well, the cubs won’t survive without their mother, so they had to kill them,” said Bubba with a smile.  I wanted to knock out Bubba’s remaining teeth.
          Then came a couple more hunters with three tiny dead teddy bears in their hands.  I wanted to cry.  Can we go yet?
         Much later than expected, we made our way back to the highway.  We weren’t near anything, and we needed a place to sleep.  We passed one motel, but the odor that emanated as far as the highway kept us from stopping.  We stopped for gas and asked someone about a place we’d seen advertised that wasn’t too far away.
         “Oh, you don’t want to go there.  That’s just a piss-pot of a lake!  You want to go to .....”  We kids weren’t listening to the rest.  Did he just say “piss pot?”  He did!  We liked that phrase.  We started to laugh.  My dad headed toward the fishing cabins the man had recommended, while we repeated over and over, “Piss Pot!  Piss Pot!”  Ha ha ha. It was hilarious! 
         “Stop it!”  our parents insisted.
         “But he said it.  We’re just repeating what he said.  Piss pot!”
         “Stop it!” 
         “Piss pot!” we whispered, giggling.
         We arrived very late at the cabins, but we still insisted on taking a dip in the lake.  It was a nice lake, not a “piss pot.”  Ha ha ha ha.  So we took a swim in the lake while our moms made the beds with the linens provided (at an additional charge). 
         When we got back to the cabins, our moms looked at us in horror.  We were covered with leeches!  Maybe we were being punished for using the vulgar phrase?  I guess Kim was the chief culprit since she had the biggest quantity of bloodsuckers on her.  Dyan was a close second. 
         We had a hard time sleeping: partly because of the diesel generator, which was VERY loud, but the owner assured us it would turn off at 11 o’clock and the small gasoline generator would kick in. So we were relieved when we heard the generator turn off--only to be replaced with an equally loud and higher pitched roar shortly after.  We could hardly sleep.  We obsessed alternately between the horror of the leeches and the hilarity of the now forbidden phrase.  Lavonne griped at the kids to shut up and stop giggling.  Aunt Margaret finally grew silent.  She was probably too mad to even speak to us anymore.  Actually, she slept like a bear and didn’t even hear when Wayne got up to use the outhouse, located a ways from the cabin, and fell into a ditch on the way. 
         On the way home, we decided to take a side-trip to St. Joseph Island in Lake Huron where Lake Superior enters.  The British had built a fort on the island, but abandoned it after the War of 1812.  (I had to look this up, by the way; I learned several things on the trip--but that wasn’t one of them.)  So, we went in search of the fort.  We followed the signs.  They led us east down a gravel road.  I was getting sick of this.  The island isn’t very big, so we were puzzled when we didn’t get to the fort right away.  We headed along the coast of the island-- south, then east, then south again.  Where was this fort?  After a long and boring trip, we came to the site of the fort.  And there was no fort.  We wandered around, finding bricks with signs indicating that historians thought this “might be” the site of some furnace or tower or dwelling for soldiers, or something.  Who knew?  It was hard to say.  There wasn’t much left.  Thrilling.  We kids decided St. Joseph Island was a good replacement for the word “hell,” which we weren’t allowed to say anymore.  “Go to St. Joseph’s Island!”  we’d tell each other.  Ha ha ha.  We found it hysterical! 
         Our vacation was coming to an end.  Leaving the fort, we found signs for the “direct route” back to the bridge.  The route was paved and headed directly north.  It was time to go home.  Leaving the island, we all said, “Let’s get the St. Joseph’s Island out of here!”  What a hoot!