Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Recalling a day at the beach...

 August 3, 2022


Last week, our daughter took her grandchildren to the very same beach that, when I was a child, my father took us.

It’s a beach on the south-western shore of Lake Ontario, and from what I can tell—from Jenny’s descriptions of what it was as like—it certainly has changed since the last time I saw it, which would have been at least thirty years ago.

In its heyday, the beach was more than just sand that ended at the water’s edge. There were concession stands, where one could purchase French fries, footlong hotdogs, cold drinks and the inevitable souvenirs, including beach toys. There was a small amusement park, with about a half-dozen rides, and those rides were geared for the under ten crowd. I recall from my childhood a busy place with lots of people and traffic. Since I would have been only about seven or so the last time Dad took us there, I’m pretty sure there were other attractions that I wouldn’t have noticed at the time.

We usually went to a beach about twice a year. Once to Lake Ontario, and once to a park that was on the shores of Lake Erie. The latter was for a picnic hosted by the company my father worked for, Studebaker-Packard, a picnic that took place at Crystal Beach.

I barely recall the times at Crystal Beach, but oh the memories I have of our days at Lake Ontario! The water is colder at this lake than it is at Lake Erie—something that really surprised our daughter. I never thought to warn her, but it’s always the case, because Lake Ontario is a whole lot deeper than Lake Erie.

Now, as then, the beach and the parking are free. Back then, there were five of us. We never had much money to spare, so my parents would make a proper picnic lunch, with a little something extra. There would be lots of sandwiches, not just PBJ or bologna or egg salad, but sometimes salmon salad, and they were the best sandwiches ever. As well, dad would pack his Coleman stove, and would have brought all he needed to make pan-fried potatoes—the something extra.

My mother once told me that the aroma of those potatoes cooking in bacon fat made everyone around us drool. I remember that my parents would bring a big thermos of ice-cold lemonade, or Freshie (another brand name for Kool-Aid) for us to drink, but sometimes we’d be treated to soda, purchased at one of the stands.

In those days, you didn’t burn in the sun as easily as you do now. We didn’t have “sunscreen”, so much as we had “suntan” lotion. We’d slather it on and hope not to get too badly sunburned, and even after several hours in the sun, we usually weren’t. At the end of the day, before the sun set, we would do something else at the beach that surprised my own kids years later when I told them about it: we’d wash up. Yes, you took a bar of soap into the lake and washed. It wasn’t just us, either, because as you looked up and down the beach you saw many people indulging in this—and some folks even had shampoo in the water too.

That, my friends is the down side of what they call the good old days. And yes, indeed, I am at this moment most definitely rolling my eyes thinking about it. I was just a child, but one would have thought that science would have progressed far enough in the early 1960s to say “don’t do that”.

By the way, my daughter informed me, as I read her this, that not this time, but the time before when she went to the that beach, she saw a couple of families with soap in the water.  So, science has progressed, but I guess not everyone got the memo.

I’m not particularly bothered by the fact that I seem to be at that part of getting older when I’m recalling how things were, “back in my day”. Actually, just the opposite is the case. I suppose the longer one lives, the more experiences and memories one has in the brain. It’s hard to find them when you’re just looking around for them. But hear of something that could be considered a clue, and sometimes, those sweet moments just pop back right up to the surface. I think that’s one of those unwritten bonuses one gets for getting older.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury


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