From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

Sailboats float across the waves with their spinnakers unfurled. Gigantic cruisers appear, proudly parading tanned, buxom babes on their deck. Beefy captains with thick necks showing off gold chains steer the oversized boats. Delicate ultra lights with noisy motors skim just above the waves, and skidoos roar past the dock where I read a summer mystery. Echoing down the shore are high-pitched squeals of kids dipping their toes and splashing each other in the icy water. It’s finally summer vacation time on the lakes of Minnesota.

My folks didn’t have a boat: those sleek power boats were a luxury most kids dreamed about, but they were only for the wealthier folks. But I did have a few friends who had canoes. One or two families had a power boat, which we used to water ski behind on fat skis with rubber toe holds.

I loved canoeing with Jimmy or Lu on a sunny summer afternoon. Canoeing was so calm and peaceful, unless the winds came up and Lake Minnewaska became too wavy. Those choppy whitecaps could be very daunting. After all, we didn’t feel compelled to strap on those Mae West life jackets back then. Today, life jackets are mandatory.

We lived dangerously…according the today’s parents. But I don’t remember anyone getting hurt from not wearing bike helmets or pads on our knees and elbows when we roller-skated. We played in the woods at the ski hills without parents’ supervision and drank from the rubber water hose used to water the garden. Sometimes we even shared straws at the soda fountain at Setters’ Drug Store when we couldn’t afford two cherry Cokes

What were we thinking? We could have gotten sick, injured, abducted by some deviant, or drowned! We didn’t spend much time thinking seriously about those disastrous possibilities back then…

And paddling the canoe was so good for us girls. Remember those repeated exercises we religiously performed? For at least ten stretches, we repeated “we must; we must; we must increase our bust.” Well, the exercise worked for some fortunate gals…others had to settle for pancake breasts.

And the hundred strokes of brushing our long pageboy haircuts with a bristle brush every evening guaranteed that we too could become a “Breck girl” with lustrous locks. Of course, we used that sticky, turquoise gel Dippidy Dew with our brush rollers and plastic piks or the spongy pink rollers with the rubber clamp that always left ridges in my hair.

As we age, familiar stories of our delicious youth return as fond memories. What was deemed a disaster when we were teens seems funny or at least a good lesson for our present lives. My cousin Doris led a grief support group: she had her participants writing their memories in stories. Penmanship and grammar don’t matter; all that matters is that they write what they remember and how they feel about that memory. Sharing these tales can be entertaining in groups as well as comforting.

Remember being caught up in the pure “wonderfulness of you?” Some of us recall those gut-wrenching, painful insecurities of youth, especially the acne days. Treatment for those red pimples was stinky Noxzema lotion in the blue jar and tubes of Clearasil ointments. Many kids owned a pair of brown Penny Loafers and fed coins into the neon colored juke box to play “Love Me Tender” and “Twist and Shout.” You probably rolled cigarette papers filled with flaky tobacco, sealed with saliva, and tasted a pinch of Copenhagen tobacco. Did your mom sew sleeves on your strapless prom dress to prevent some adolescent boy from pulling that dress too low, compromising your virginal honor? Remember skinny dipping in the blackness of a summer night, then drying off by building little fires of driftwood? Did you lie on your back and gaze up at the stars, pondering your future? And remember slathering on tangerine lipstick and dabbing “Evening in Paris” on your neck and wrists? Remember your childhood hangouts of the Big Woods, Monkey Vine Palace, the Giant Table and Chair, Rockin’ Tree Canyon and the “Everglades” of First Creek? 

Think about writing stories of your childhood shenanigans. That can be therapy as well as brain activity: writing those stories will keep you remembering how terrific we felt back in those days. Let your kids read about playing anti-i-over, red rover, watching slides from a clicking slide projector and movies on screens of white sheets tacked up on the knotty pine walls of the basement. On a cold, rainy summer day, when your kids are bored, let them read your stories–give them a warm picture of Mom and Dad as twisting teenyboppers. Time flies…get out some paper and a pen or your computer. Start writing your stories. Remember, we need to keep our minds active!

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.