Ah-mazing, I have at least a few minutes of “alone time” to record some thoughts during my lunch hour. Everyone left me alone here. :)
Today I’m vacation planning… the family vacation kind. This involves coordinating schedules, boat towing vehicles, and beds in campers with extended family who is also going to the same vacation spot during overlapping times. The overlap is good. You need two knowledgeable adults in each boat, and…. There’s only one of me. Unfortunately spaceman cannot attend. And my daughter… she’s expressing concern as the last time we were down there, we barely escaped a sinking boat. Yeah, joy. Wish us luck that we have no repeats of that fiasco, EVER. lol (But, Oh the memories! lol)
In all probable reality, this could be our very last trip vacation at Lake Cumberland, boating, swimming, skiing, etc. My father, who is 77 and has Parkinson’s Disease, is just not able to maintain the equipment and no one is stepping up to take it on for the longer haul. It looks like my oldest sister’s grandchildren will be the last generation (of 5) in our family to experience the fun and craziness of “family vacations at the lake”. It’s okay. Other sides of the extended family (my aunt, cousins) pulled out long ago. I do wish spaceman could experience this with us, at least once, though. So, if we can, we will try to do an extended weekend trip later this summer… just not looking good, schedule-wise. :( It’s kind of like me going down to Virginia to experience his home and filling in all those imagined stories with the REAL place, with REAL memories. Lake Cumberland is a place I grew up. Every summer (except one!), we were there having fun boating with extended family.
When I was an infant, all the way through early teenage years, we stayed at my Nana’s trailer. She had a lot along the river with direct access, down a super steep hill that we had to hold on to a dry-rotted, splintering ski rope to descend/climb. Back then there was no such thing as tubes. We had an old semi-truck inner tube we tied a ski rope through the center for “tubing”. There was no tube “bra”, and careful of that valve stem! I learned to ski on two skis at 6 years old. Papaw used to let my younger sister and I sit on the bow of the boat, feet dangling overboard, holding fast to the railing while we bounced over waves at full speed. That’s completely illegal these days. There simply wasn’t enough room in the boat except to send a couple people up front like that. In fact, half the family was invariably left to play off the dock until we’d swing back by and swap out people. Baths were always taken in the lake at the end of the boating day with floating Ivory brand soap and some shampoo, before ascending the hillside for supper. I can only recall using the actual bathtub ONCE, and that was after one of our famous 2-mile walks (AKA: “get rid of the kids for a while”) when we brought back freshly picked road-side wild flowers and were eaten up by chiggers by the time we got back. Such was life!
Back up at the trailer, we played a LOT of card games. The adults played penny poker or Rook. The kids played Rook or Uno… or WAR with a deck or two of cards. There was a mini-pool table in the patio-like add-on section of the trailer, but we rarely played it. Instead, we chased lizards around the propane tank out back or set off growing “snake fireworks” that left a permanent black mark on the concrete surrounding Pawpaw’s underground cistern. I can remember one year we went home to Ohio and stopped by the emergency room because ALL four of us kids had inhaled poison ivy smoke from the fire where we burned all our trash.
Nana always had friends and relatives that would visit while we were on vacation. They would sit and play poker or team up and string ungodly amounts of green beans and can them. I can still remember the old fridge that sat out front on the patio, curved corners and a lever that needed pulled upwards to unlatch and open for a cold can of Coke.
Nana sold her trailer, lots, and gave my parents the boat when Pawpaw got too bad with his Alzheimer’s disease. Funny we are in the same sort of situation now with my dad and his Parkinson’s. I miss that place. Once a year, we usually boat up the Cumberland River just to drive by the old dock, point to it and tell our kids a few stories from days long ago. I can remember one day I decided I could swim across the river to the other bank all by myself. It’s a long swim for a child, and boats speed through that river not expecting to find a lone swimmer suddenly in their path. I got a good yelling at for that one after having to turn back half-way there. But, I’ve always been the one who is “most likely to get lost” in any crowd. lol I get ideas that pop in my head and BAM! I’m gone. It happened at King’s Island once, a popular amusement park in Cincinnati. *sigh* As an adult, my “wandering” requires more planning. ;)
After Nana sold the property at the lake, we took to camping in our travel trailer at a nearby state park for a few years. We even tent camped one trip (never to be repeated lol). In time, we found a “new home” at a private camp ground where my parents have 2 trailers (one travel trailer, one fifth-wheel camper), both with a permanent deck or patio and facing one another. That’s the only spot my kids have ever known at the lake… and that’s what we are considering giving up after this season. It’s a big deal. Part of me knows it’s time to move on, that change can never be stopped, and all life occurs in cycles. But part of me hates the idea of not having that place anymore. I’m 42. I’ve been vacationing at the lake for 42 years. It’s safe to say I’m going to miss it and that I would really like spaceman to know it, experience it, at least once. It’s just not necessarily in the cards. :(
