If the truth be known, Patty was his hands-down favorite, and since handsome Jim Wedding across the lake was a few years too old and otherwise engaged with another lake beauty more his age, I accepted my losses like a guide cutting bait and set my sights on lake neighbor Brian Wahl. Unfortunately for me, he was more interested in driving his new ski boat. Who could compete with that? In unspoken agreement, however, neither Patty nor I owned up to the kissing question.
Since our cabin was the party place, my sister and I were assigned cleaning duties; as experienced cabin girls, sweeping and dusting were now our specialties. When those chores were completed, Woody sent us off to the woods to gather pine boughs to decorate the cabin windows.
On the day of the party, Patty’s actual birthday, the sun shone warm, the sky beamed blue, and the dock was ready to dance. Our friends and siblings, ranging in age from eight to nineteen, arrived in a flurry of excitement, surging into our cabin’s narrow hallway and spilling into the living room with swimsuits, towels, and an assortment of presents festooned with ferns and pinecones.
Sitting side by side surrounded by this circle of love and friendship, Patty and I opened our gifts, which—along with the obligatory fishhooks and bobbers—for once included some feminine treasures such as silver charms for our bracelets, tiny china forest critters for our collections, and even perfume from Lucile.
Sixteen must have been the magic number to finally nix the fishing theme.
After enjoying one of Woody’s beautiful buffet lunches adorning the cabin’s log table, we kids all charged down to the lake for the main attractions of the day: the swim party and games. Before we jumped in, our friends and siblings gathered around our cake on the dock and sang “Happy Birthday” to us as wind whipped our hair and sunshine warmed our backs. Turning sixteen couldn’t have been sweeter.
Then it was on to the water games. The favorite was the watermelon seed–spitting contest orchestrated by Woody—an ironic choice from my very proper, etiquette-minded mother. Not only were we allowed to spit, we were encouraged to do so as far as we could.
Patty Hobart and I display our sugar-cube corsages at our joint sixteenth birthday party on our dock, 1965.
Shooting our seeds out into the lake in a long-distance competition, it wasn’t long before all hell broke loose. Party decorum disappeared and major water shenanigans and horseplay quickly replaced any manners that were left.
We must have been crazed by sugar and hormones.
The old dock had never held so many jumping, hopping, scrambling kids before. We chased each other over the top in an effort to push and shove each other in; we linked hands in a long line and, in a resounding springboard bounce, leaped into the big waves like a spray of skipping stones. We jostled and splashed and dunked one another in a merry madness that bordered on a wild disregard for safety.
No doubt Woody tried to corral us, but none of us heard; her reprimands disappeared into the whoosh of waves and wind.
It didn’t take long before the deep end of the dock began to sag. In a matter of seconds, after one heavy group bounce from its trusty boards, the two end sections collapsed into the lake and, as the white-capped waves washed over its planks, a perfect slippery slide was created.
It was pandemonium from there on out.
Like crazed otters, we threw each other and ourselves down the sloping dock, slamming into the water and onto swimmers below. Scrambling back up again, we took running starts, shooting ourselves feet first down our new runway. Woody quickly realized that saving the dock was a lost cause at this point and gave in to the fun.
There wasn’t a kid in attendance who didn’t go home with either a banged-up shin, a dock-painted swimsuit, or a splintered backside—party favors extraordinaire. When my father arrived a few days later, he could only stare at the dock’s remains and mutely shake his head. But for Patty and me, our Northwoods Sweet Sixteen birthday party was a spectacular success.
Unbeknownst to us, it was our last hurrah.
Only a few years later, the resort was sold, birthday dinners at the lodge were no more, and friends grew up and moved on to college and careers.
Gratefully, I was able to continue my Northwoods birthday dinners with beloved family and lake friends on our cabin porch where, amazingly, my mother’s wildflower cakes and even a surprise silver dollar or two from Dick Seitz blessed our gatherings together for more than four more decades.
It was not to be so for dear Patty.
Tragically, at only thirty-one-years-old, she was killed in a car crash out East, where she lived with her husband. Her parents, Franklin and Vera, received the shocking news in the early morning hours of their wedding anniversary. I last saw Patty on her wedding day, a talented and beautiful young woman filled with a sweet spirit of kindness and joy, happy and bright just like she was at our Sweet Sixteen birthday party, and beaming with the promise of all things stretching out before her.
Just a few years ago, when we were Up North together, Vera shared a tender story. After Patty’s death, they had found among her treasured keepsakes her birchbark invitation from our Sweet Sixteen birthday party. It made me weep to think of it, but I was not surprised.
Mine still hangs on the cabin’s living room wall, thumbtacked to a log. Whenever I look at it, I flash back to that day, the friendships and beauty of our youth epitomized by those joyful leaps off the dock.
For a birthday is not really about us, but about the life we have been given and the people who have graced it. To celebrate that gift with family and friends in the Northwoods amid forests, stars, lake, and sun is to recognize all the more one’s blessings.
These days, on soft summer nights, my family and I often gather down at the dock to watch the heavens unfold. On those lucky evenings when a full moon, round and bright like a silver dollar, slides up from the silhouetted forest and into the evening sky, I am reminded of and eternally grateful for the circles of love and friendship that sustain and gift our lives.
And on Patty’s birthday, August 12, when the annual Perseid showers peak and a myriad of shooting stars split the darkness with their fleeting splendor, the fragility and preciousness of life once again are underscored for me.
Romance in the Woods
A Summer Sweetheart Finally Arrives, 1965
“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony.”
—Shakespeare
Lucky for me he loved the lake.
Some do not, you know. Too many mosquitoes, too much rain, too hot, too cold, too many flies and spiders and bears—oh, my!
But for those who love the Northwoods, no place is more romantic. So, naturally, I longed to have my boyfriend Dave join me for a week at the cabin. I’d given up snaring my guy friends on the lake, and I was tired of watching my older sister and her lake friends have all the fun. When my strict parents acquiesced to my request to have my high school sweetheart come up for my sixteenth birthday, I about fell off the dock.
Riding shotgun with your girlfriend’s father for a nine-hour drive Up North would not exactly be the desire of most recent high school grads heading off to college in a few short weeks, but this guy jumped at the chance. In fact, he drove most of the way so my father could rest. I’ll never know if it was the Northwoods or my fifteen-year-old self, but the moment Dave arrived, he was smitten.
More than his handsome green eyes, engaging smile, or lean athletic build was the fact that he was funny and kind and sensitive. I couldn’t wait to show him all that I loved about the lake.
He took to it like a fish to water.
Arriving in time for my Sweet Sixteen dinner party at the lodge, Dave was immediately initiated into the epitome of Northwoods ambience, fun, and friendship. From there on out, we hit the dock running.
We sunbathed and swam, sailed around the lake, canoed through the water lilies, hiked the road through the virgin forest
to Eagle’s Nest Lake, attended the Indian powwow in Hayward, walked to the bridge over the thoroughfare, picnicked on the islands, skied behind Dick Seitz’s 35-horsepower ski boat, ran around with lake friends, toured the souvenir shops in town, dined on doughnuts and cold milk at the Lumberjack Hall in Hayward, and buzzed about in our 7½-horsepower fishing boat, almost always in the watchful company of family and friends.
Under such prying eyes, snatching a kiss became a problem.
Suggesting a 9:00 p.m. garbage run to the dump—a local hot spot for lovers—would have been slightly conspicuous. Going for a walk and clutching in the woods meant more mosquito swapping than kissing, and heading off for an early picnic breakfast on the island, a rather creative solution if you ask me, was swiftly nixed by my mother at the moment of our departure. She insisted we could not go alone and sent along my little sister Mary who, like a diminutive spy, was often silently catching us in a cabin kiss anyway.
My then boyfriend and now husband Dave Mamminga drove up from Illinois with my father in time for my sixteenth birthday party dinner at Moody’s lodge, 1965.
So much for romance.
Not to be thwarted, we asked permission for a date night at the outdoor movie theater in Hayward. With my father back in Illinois working, my mother seemed to think it was all right as long as we were home by my usual curfew of midnight.
We hit the road for the 20-mile trip to town in my grandmother Clara’s 1955 tank of a Buick—which my siblings and I had aptly christened the Big Black Bomb—under the August night sky, ecstatically happy at our freedom and crazy in love.
Parking amid the speakers that stood like sentries guarding the gravel field, we settled in for a night of popcorn and Cokes, and, of course, a bit of innocent snuggling. Not surprisingly, neither one of us remembers the movie, but that was because the drama of the evening was yet to occur.
Sailing on the Enterprise was one of the Wake Robin activities I introduced Dave to during his first visit in 1965.
Actually, I think the film must have been fairly good because we do remember being disappointed that our curfew was fast approaching and we wouldn’t be able to see the end. There was no point in hunting down a phone booth to call for permission to stay out later since the cabin had no phone, so we pushed our time limit to the max.
Finally, with the Buick’s luminous green dial clicking closer to midnight and the 20-mile return trip looming, we knew we had to give it up. After all, being grounded was the penalty for missed curfews in our home, and who wanted to be grounded in the Northwoods?
Despite our best intentions, a missed curfew was the least of our problems.
Leaving the scattered lights of town behind, we sped out onto the darkness of the forested highway in an attempt to ease the severity of our lateness. We had not been on the road for long when the familiar thump-thump-thump of a flat tire accompanied the whistling wind through the windows. We could not believe our bad luck.
Were we in trouble now or what?
Carefully, Dave glided the car onto the weed-ridden shoulder, where it slumped to a halt. For a moment we sat in the intimate darkness we had longed for, but this was no time to kiss.
Out we hopped into the black night to survey the damage. We could barely see, yet it was obvious that the front left tire was flat as a pancake. With not a light in sight except the stars (my father’s usual flashlight under the front seat having mysteriously disappeared) we set to work.
Actually, Dave set to work. Using the headlights to at least illuminate some of the shadowy night, we popped the trunk, pulled out the jack, and cranked up the mammoth old Buick as if she were a black beast rising out of a swamp for a nocturnal wandering.
My only job was to roll the spare tire to Dave when he was ready. Never adept at aiming, my misguided effort sent the tire sailing past him. In the light of the headlights, we watched in horror as it picked up speed, rolling and wobbling down the entire length of a long, steep hill until finally hitting a rock, ricocheting off the road, and slamming into a pine tree.
No movie could have had a better ending.
If an owl had been watching silently from a nearby treetop, he would have observed two teenagers laughing hysterically, stumbling down the road and, having retrieved the tire, stumbling back up, changing it bolt by bolt and nut by nut, and then roaring off down the road and over the hill at a high rate of speed.
“Whoo-whoo-whoo was that?” he surely sang out in the ensuing silence.
In the meantime, the clock in the old Buick was ticking away.
Because we were now really, really late, I suggested to Dave that he take what I thought was a shorter route to the cabin on one of the less frequented back roads. Not familiar with the way, he nevertheless kept his foot on the gas in order to keep me out of the hot water that I was no doubt surely in.
The headlights suddenly illuminated a hairpin curve to the left. Braking frantically to slow the Big Black Bomb, Dave spun the steering wheel hard to the left in an extreme effort to navigate the curve.
It was too late.
Like the orneriness of a fighting fish, the weight of the bulky Buick sent us careening in the opposite direction. In a flash, our speeding car flew off the road and slammed into a low embankment on the right. The impact threw us across the car seat, crushing our bodies against the right-side door.
It was not exactly the embrace we had been looking for.
For the second time that night, we sat in stunned silence, the clings and clangs of the Big Black Bomb echoing through the night as it lay on its side in the ditch. Shocked and stuck together by our entangled limbs, we could hardly move.
“Are you OK?” Dave asked.
“My arm and hip hurt from the door handle,” I said. “But I think so. Are you?”
“I’m all right,” he answered.
“Could you get off me then?” I snarled.
“I’m trying!” he answered.
There was no hysterical laughter this time around.
Suddenly like a scene out of Edgar Allen Poe, there came a tapping, a soft and gentle rapping, a tap-tap-tapping upon our now dusty and darkened door. Spooked beyond belief, we looked up from our upside-down view toward the window where the ghostly outline of a wide-brimmed hat peered down at us. Frozen in our entangled position, we could not have moved if we wanted to.
“Is everyone all right?” asked The Hat.
“We think so,” Dave said as I looked on in wide-eyed terror.
“I heard a big bang from my farm just down the road and thought someone might have crashed,” continued The Hat. “Came by to see if you needed help.”
Amazed, we were stunned at how quickly our farmer friend had arrived on the scene. He must have moved faster than the speed of light, for it seemed to us that he was there within seconds of our sliding off the road. Struggling to untangle ourselves from our tilted angle, we gratefully thanked this midnight Samaritan for his offer to help push us out.
“Let’s see if you can drive her out of the ditch first,” The Hat suggested.
As though scaling a hill, Dave slid up the high slant of the seat to the driver’s side. Putting the car in neutral, he carefully turned the key. The engine roared to life. Better yet, when he put the beast in gear, she rolled right out of the ditch. Daring not to stop now that the Big Black Bomb was actually moving down the road again, we honked to The Hat and a dark hand waved back. With no time to lose, we peeled away to resume our journey.
Rubbing my sore hip and arm, I glanced at the glowing clockface with dread. Fast as the blink of a lightning bug, our curfew had come and gone long ago. It was now well past 1:30 in the morning. But our troubles on this oh-so-romantic date were not over yet.
My mother’s wrath awaited.
At last, the Big Black Bomb crunched down the cabin’s gravel driveway and came to a halt. In the faint glow of the back door light, we circled the car and surveyed the damage. Astonishingly, there was only a slight dent in the right front bumper and a few min
or scratches on the side. Giddy with relief that the car and we had somehow survived the harrowing mishaps of the night, we quietly waltzed into the cabin’s narrow hallway hoping my mother had gone to bed.
She had not.
Dressed in a black velvet robe, Woody sat rocking back and forth in the kitchen by the dim light of a kerosene lamp, her arms folded against her chest as though struggling to contain the anger within.
“Where-have-you-been?” she asked in a voice like chalk on a blackboard.
“You won’t believe what happened!” I said as we greeted her.
By the looks of things, no, she probably would not.
Sincerely apologizing, we explained all the events of the night as best we could without bursting into laughter. Seemingly satisfied that we weren’t “necking” in the woods all this time, Woody graciously forgave us and called it a night.
My father, however, said, “Not so fast.”
A verbal explanation was not enough. When he heard the news back in Illinois of the flat tire and crash Up North, he ordered a typed report from me upon my return back home at summer’s end, which was to include the answers to such questions as: “What was the name of the movie? When did it end? How fast was the car going? What were you doing on that stretch of the road?” And, my personal favorite, “Were both of the driver’s hands on the wheel at the time of the crash?”
I believe it was my first effort at reporting—an interesting journalistic assignment if there ever was one. But I was so insulted by this “punishment” that I hammered away on the keys of my father’s manual typewriter like a crazed detective on a deadline. All I needed was a cigarette and a hat. No report could have dripped with more sarcastic detail.
And, yes, the driver’s hands were on the wheel!
Fortunately the facts of my “crime report” apparently won over my father, and the matter finally faded away. All that remained were the Big Black Bomb’s dent and Dave.
Like I said, lucky for me he loved the lake. And so I married him.
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