My
family is the third generation to have the Fulbright cabin on the south shore
of Dry Lake. Right at the end of Trapper’s Bay.
We’d
spend our summers there - from the day after school’s out to the day before
school’s in. And then occasional days after that until just after the first
serious freeze-up.
Our
Thanksgivings have always been held there. Everyone who’s able gathers to
celebrate stuff. Birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, divorces, school
graduations, the birth of Selma’s annual litter-mongrels all. Our family
lumps everything into one gathering –‘to save the Fulbright’s all the bullshit
of this and that throughout the damn year,’ according to Gumpa Senior - our
family’s curmudgeon extraordinaire. Now only a memory because Senior’s up there
in the clouds or wherever will have him, bitching loudly about what he liked to
call – ‘the whole god damn ball of wax.’
Senior’s
daddy Frank ran a winter trap line around Dry Lake’s south shore back when the
only road in was dirt and gravel, hacked out of the bush for three point five
miles from Rural Route 21, which ran from Moseley in the east to Triumph in the
west.
Frank’d
work as a sales clerk in Eaton’s down in the city, Monday to noon on Fridays. He’d hop into his old beater right from work and make the four-hour trek to the trap line, where he had a tent, an old wooden rowboat, and a drying shed for the furs. Mink, beaver, rabbit, the occasional wolf, and the even more
occasional martin – anything that moved on four legs was fair game for Frank’s
traps. He wasn’t one to care much about ‘them god damn city slicker rules about
what I can hunt.’ Come sundown on Sundays, he’d trek back to the city, arriving
just in time to punch in at 6 a.m.
Family
legend has it that Frank made arrangements with his boss at Eaton’s to shower
and shave in the locker room, washing away the smell of the dead animals and
woodsmoke. In winter, Frank would go part-time at the department store to spend more time tending to his trap line. He’d drive to a pull-off along
Route 21 and snowshoe the rest of the way into Dry Lake.
In winter ‘44, he began harvesting timber, rough cutting it into planks,
and building an all-season shelter. No more living in a tent for him. Once he
had the necessary four walls and a reasonable roof, Frank began adding a bit
here, a larger bit there. In a few years, he had what most would call a cabin.
Frank’s wife Rita – my great-grandma – would take their kids up for the summer, and her husband came up on weekends.
And
thus, a family summer tradition was born. Passed down through two more
generations.
And
this is where my story really begins.
The
summer I was twelve, almost thirteen, there was a mystery to solve at our place
on Dry Lake. Stuff started disappearing. Silver-plated fishing lures. A bright
red spin top. Yellow pencils. Twine by the yard. Fresh cedar shavings from
beside the whittling stump. My sister’s favourite hand mirror. And then, food.
Apples, nuts, half a banana, cookies left out by mistake, orange slices. One
time – ok, maybe it was a couple of times - an entire family-size bag of potato
chips. You get the picture.
We
had our suspicions but had no real proof.
My
sister was more freaked out about the disappearances than me. I was more
interested in Eliza across the bay, a summer-long guest of the Fitzpatrick’s.
Fifteen years old with nothing to do but lie on the dock in her black one-piece,
read trashy romance novels, and write bad poetry in her journal.
I
made a habit of paddling our old Peterborough canoe to the east shore, then
along just in front of the Fitzpatrick’s dock whenever Eliza was sunning there.
By then, I’d have my shirt off so she could see my teenage muscles rippling
with every stroke of the paddle. I’d wave. She’d wave. Sometimes, she’d slowly
stand up, stretch long and easy like a cat, and then wave. Oh, boy, that always made
my long paddle worth it.
We
never said a word to each other the entire summer. But a thirteen-year-old hormonally
powered boy doesn’t need real words as long as he has imagination. Oh, the
conversations we had! Eliza was my first true love. On Fitzpatrick’s dock. In
the sunshine. In that sleek but deliciously rounded black one-piece. Writing me
passionate and sexually explicit love poetry in her small journal with the stiff
red cardboard cover.
But,
to get back to the mystery.
From
the day my fresh waffles started disappearing, I decided to get serious about
solving the mystery.
Mom
would always be up by six. She had her routines at Dry Lake. Make some coffee
and head down to our small dock just as the sun rose above the eastern
shoreline. The dock always quietly creaked up and down under her weight.
She smoked one, sometimes two, cigarettes, blowing the smoke above her head. Sometimes, if the morning air was still, she’d blow rings within rings that would lift, expand, break apart, and disappear. I often wondered what she
thought about in those private times out on the dock.
Her
life wasn’t easy married to my Dad, a tough, no-nonsense ironworker from the
smokey mills in Hamilton. She’d reluctantly married into the Fulbright clan.
Some would always say she ‘married down,’ but a baby waits for no man or woman,
so a quickie civil ceremony was arranged at Hamilton City Hall. I appeared
seven months later. Instant family. And a ‘summer house’ on Dry Lake as a
wedding gift.
Mom
would make a plate of six waffles, smother it in syrup brought up in gallon
jugs from the city, set it out on the long table, and call at me – ‘Your
waffles are up, Ritchie. Rise and shine. The day’s half gone.’
Some days that’d work, and I’d crawl out of bed, wrap myself in a sheet, and dig in. Most days, however, I’d leave the waffles getting cold until later in the
morning. For breakfast, the only thing better than hot waffles is cold waffles.
By
early July, Mom had figured out I had a thing for Eliza over at the Fitzpatricks. I suspect my sister told her, but she denies it, even to this day.
‘I think I see that girl out on the Fitzpatrick’s
dock,’ she’d yell at me. That got me going the first few times, but I knew from
watching Eliza through binoculars that she never made it onto the dock until close
to noon. Like me, Eliza was a late riser. I often wondered what it would be
like to be lying beside her when Mom would call out about the waffles.
After
Mom set my waffles on the table, she’d do her chores elsewhere in the
cottage or outside in the veggie garden she was struggling with between our
back door and the outhouse. My sister loved to garden, and she was always out there with her. My plate of steaming waffles and syrup was left
unprotected. They began disappearing, day after day.
The
Fulbright cottage always remained rough-built. It was another of those family
traditions held sacred by the men of the Fulbright clan. If you have to fix or make
something at the family home on Dry Lake, build it quick, build it rough, build
it to last. It didn’t matter if boards were a tad short, a bit too thick.
‘Don’t worry over it too much, Ritchie,’ my Dad would always say. ‘This is Dry
Lake, my boy. It ain’t Forest Hill. That board’s good enough.’
So,
I’m understating it to tell you that the place had a few spaces in the walls,
floor, and ceiling. Great for letting in mosquitos, stink bugs, and some of the
largest, meanest-looking spiders you’ll ever come across in cottage country.
When you combine those holes with a plate of delicious waffles smothered in the
sweetest maple syrup – well, it spells nothing but an opportunity for a mother
red squirrel and her brood of four little ones.
We
called her Hoppy. She hopped like a rabbit but climbed trees. At Dry Lake,
almost everything is not what it seems. Hoppy was raising her hungry little
family inside a large cavity in the fork of the ancient spruce between our
cottage and the dock. She’d sit on a solid branch that stretched out toward the
window above our sink. From her perch, she could easily look right into our
place. She didn’t miss a thing.
So
it was that Hoppy didn’t miss my waffles. Her nose told her a pile of stuff in
there was worth investigating. It was an easy jump from the end of the bouncing
limb to a hole beneath the shingles, along the attic rafter to one of those ‘good
enough’ holes in the ceiling above the bedroom door, down the wall ending in a
longish but not impossible leap onto the table. One cautious hop, pause, then another
cautious hop, pause, and then - dig in. Hoppy made short work of those waffles.
She’d eat some, save some for her kids, retrace her hops back to the nest,
drop off chunks of the waffle to the squealing little ones, and then return
quickly to the waffles. She’d repeat this each and every day that I didn’t beat
her to those waffles first.
Now
that I knew how she got into our place, I could’ve quickly boarded up
the holes. But the Fulbright home on Dry Lake has more holes than solid board,
so what was the point?
That
summer, Hoppy and I made a deal. ‘Some mornings, it’s yours; other mornings,
it’s mine.’ Early bird gets the worm and all that stuff.
I
knew that Eliza would love the story of Hoppy and the waffles. She’d surely
write a poem about it and read it to me over the dying embers of our campfire
on a deserted beach on Shudder Lake—only in my dreams. I never told her.
A poem was never written. Another opportunity lost.
Oh,
there’s one other thing.
I’m
sure you’ve been wondering about this little ‘Fulbright Fact’ since you started reading my story: How can a lake be called Dry Lake? I mean, almost
by definition, aren’t all lakes in Ontario full of water? Lots of water?
Family
legend has it that when the first Fulbright discovered the lake in 1940, he and
Jack Daniel were very close friends. One day, while under the spell of Jack,
great-grandpa Frank chopped off a big toe when he should’ve chopped a chunk of
wood. He nearly bled to death but packed the injury with tree moss, poured
liberal amounts of Jack on the wound, and swore he’d never touch a drop again.
When he was sober, he called the water all around him Dry Lake.
At
least, that’s what family legend says happened.
First Published. January 16, 2024, in Canada's 'CommuterLit'.
The Backstory. This is one of those story ideas that just pops into one's head for no true rhyme or reason. I remember that I enjoyed writing the early drafts. When I was a kid, I dreamed about the young woman in that tight, revealing black bathing suit appearing on the neighbour's dock on a hot July afternoon in the Kawarthas. Maybe that's where the idea for this cottage story had its origins.
Legal Rights. I own the rights to this story. Please don't 'borrow' it from this blog and publish it somewhere without my permission. Ask me. Tell me what you want to do with it. We will probably be able to work something out.
