Party On The Beach

My youngest brother Tim and his three sons traveled this past week from his home state of South Dakota to Hubbard Lake in upper Michigan for their annual vacation. My mother then called to invite my wife Wendy and I to join them for a weekend. My parents would be there as would be my sister and her husband.

But when I found out my sleeping quarters would be inside a tent pitched on their property (they had an extra single bed for Wendy in my sister's adjacent cabin), I balked. My parents' cabin sits a stone's throw away from the beach, owned by a collective of property owners. Weekends always finds parties on the beach, often going late into the night.

And since this was the weekend of the annual property owners' association meeting, there would be an especially big alcohol-fueled affair. It would be like pitching your tent and trying to turn in for the night on the 50-yard-line during the Super Bowl.

"Your dad says he will stay out in the tent with you," my mother offered. It would be a good father-son bonding experience, she said. Oh, well. Guess we would be joining the crush of Michiganders on the road driving north this weekend. A four-hour one-way trip for us, but a rare chance to visit with my brother and his family.

And so we did. We played a nice family volleyball game, geezers versus the goobers, where the older generation with no one younger than 47 swept three games from my brother's teenaged boys and some teenaged friends from the area. My father at 77 still can hit some nifty volleyball shots. My brother thanked us more than once for coming up and joining in the fun.

The property owners association met, elected officers, discussed the beach, then gathered for a potluck at the waterfront picnic area. As Wendy and I left for a drive around the lake to scout for deer, they were passing around shots of Jaegermeister. We returned after seeing five deer including a fawn.

Meanwhile, the party on the beach continued on, growing in volume. After chatting and toasting marshmallows in front of our own campfire, I was ready to turn in. Tim said he would go down to the beach to tell the revelers to "keep it down." Then he would join me and two of his sons in the tent--dad had dropped out and was now sleeping inside the cabin. So much for father-son bonding.

But inside the tent, it still sounded like those on the beach were trying to talk to someone on the other side of the lake rather than the person standing right front of them. After a while, one of the voices sounded familiar. It was my brother Tim. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right? Oh, well. I was so tired I fell asleep anyway.

Some time later I woke up to voices sounding more excited than usual. Somebody's boat was floating off into the lake. Fell back asleep. Later, woke up again. This time it sounded like I was at a county fair tractor pull; some car engine was gunning full throttle. Looked out the tent and saw that somebody had failed to successfully navigate out of the beachfront parking lot and had backed into a ditch.

They tried rocking the car, pushing it--somebody even sprawled himself over the hood to put more weight on the wheels. The spinning tires just carved a bigger divot into the sod. Finally, they located a chain in my father's shed, hooked it to a bigger vehicle, and pulled it free. I heard it all happen. My brother Tim came into the tent afterwards, his shirt speckled with mud from when he gallantly tried to push the errant vehicle free.

Inside my parents' cabin, my mother thought she heard other noises. Small noises, like a critter might make. She wondered whether one of her grandsons had left an outside door open letting a racoon inside. (Perhaps to take cover from all the racket outside.) My dad checked however and found nothing.

Next morning I wondered whether the property owner's association might take action to curb some of the excesses of these celebratory gatherings. Maybe show some moral leadership. Then again, maybe not. The guy who backed his car into the ditch? He's the new president.

P.S. I always have my wife Wendy preview my blogs before I publish them. Here was her comment on this one . . .

"Good story. And I slept thru it all. Snug as a bug in a rug."