**Bob's Lake**

I have been thinking about this lake. My family knows it well. It is a long lake - maybe 15 miles long, in the Rideau Lake region of Ontario. There is several hundred miles of shoreline, which should invoke an image of lots of craggly coves. My family is going there for the 4th of July. It is too far and too expensive for me to join them this year. But it has been a couple years since I have been there. It got kind of hard to go when my brother - who owns the cottage on the lake and generously makes it available to all of us - would come with his latest girlfriend. That invariably involved small children, some his and some belonging to the latest girlfriend. There would be too much cigarette smoking. Now my brother has sworn off woman. I don't know what that means, but I hear reports that it is more pleasant to go there. So now the heart strings are tugging.

It must have something to do with the fact that my family grew up with "summer homes" to visit. My mother's family had a house in northern New Jersey. It was in the hills, with lakes and woods. There was an old overgrown pool at the edge of the woods and I remember a broken ceramic mermaid water spout at one end. We would walk with my grandfather through the woods. After his stroke, we would go back there on our own. There were good climbing trees in the yard and a grapevine trellis that you could walk through. My grandmother would pick dandelion greens in the back yard for the salad. At one point there was a wild animal park nearby.

My father's parents had a house on Long Island, right on the Sound. It was a very large rambling shingle home, with a big screened in porch overlooking the Sound from high up on the bluff. It was not winterized and was only opened in the summer. The driveway from the road wandered about 1/4 mile through woods saturated with poison ivy. Once, I thought I struck gold when I found a surfboard in the woods. Turns out it was my cousin David's board. At least that is what he said and he was bigger than me.

We would walk down this long boardwalk to the beach. Traversing the boardwalk without shoes was risky. Splinters were the price to pay. The top of the beach was sandy, but as you approached the water the beach became rocky. One summer pastime involved walking the beach and looking for polished glass. It could take years but eventually you could collect enough to fill a large vase. My aunt made a lamp base out of a container of this multicolored glass. Blue glass was always the most treasured and rare. I figured it came from broken Noxema jars. After a day at the beach, we all would shower in this makeshift shower in the garage - mostly to keep sand out of the house. Smart thinking when there were lots of little rugrats running around the place in the summer. I remember my grandfather feeding the raccoons and seagulls in the yard. I remember him getting us maraschino cherries from the cabinet. I remember my aunt making lunch cold cut trays with breads and condiments, set out on the long table every day for lunch. It would be the one time I would get to eat salami.

Well Bob's Lake brings back those memories. It is the summer cottage for our kids. We are hoping to all meet there for a week in August. If you want to see some pictures of the lake, I found this site.