There's a bee that lives on my balcony who likes to make frequent trips through the hole in my screen door. On these indoor vacations, he swirls aimlessly around my living room until he eventually dares further into the apartment and discovers the kitchen counter. He examines the trail of crumbs from my morning slice of toast until the whiff of something sweeter lures him to the trash can. After he's thoroughly inspected the garbage and finds little more than the remnants of a ramen noodle, he gets thoroughly pissed off and begins to swoop at my head. I've been told the best defense against a bee is to hold still, but the threat of his stinger is greater than reason, so I grab a pillow and try to swat him out the door. As I flap my arms around like a deranged mental patient, I think about a big blue light that hung over my head as a child and protected me from ever getting stung.
The bug zapper was enormous. It was plugged into a long line of Christmas lights that dangled haphazardly from tree branches around my childhood summer cabin. Mom would plug in a long snake of extension cords and suddenly the front yard would be illuminated with cheery colored bulbs. In addition, the beacon of death would come to life and lure insects from miles around to a quick and violent demise. The zapper had a tube up the middle that glowed a spooky blue and was surrounded by a mesh of cross-crossed metal. Its eerie hum buzzed in the background as I jammed croquet wickets in the dirt or hurled horseshoes at a post. Suddenly, ZAP! The deadly machine would claim its first victim. As if nothing had happened, I would continue with whatever game I was playing and Mom would begin to set the picnic table for supper.
ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!
Within minutes, the zapper would be swarmed with stupid insects that all wanted a taste of electricity. With each zap, a small spark would fly from the glowing tube and each casualty would be flung against the metal exterior. Occasionally a large bee or small bat would sneak its way in and we'd be in for a ten minute fireworks display. Soon the zapper would become a cage full of carcasses, except for the odd bug that would ricochet off the metal and land in a bowl of pork and beans. But Mom would simply scoop up the scorched corpse and we would continue eating under the zapper as it crackled away like a bowl of Rice Krispies.
Our little red cabin at 717 9th Street stood at the peak of a hill, atop a few moss covered cinder blocks. I spent every day of my childhood summers there, in the middle of the woods on an Indian reservation. While most kids my age collected baseball cards or canceled postage, I collected beaded moccasins, webbed dream catchers and feathered muck-lucks. A winding road sprouted from the driveway in multiple directions, all leading down to White Bear Lake. Every path held its own surprises and I took it upon myself to explore them all.
During the early days of summer, before the rest of my family arrived at White Bear, my brother Curtis and I would embark on daily adventures through the brush, collecting flattened stones and entire families of wood ticks. When we arrived at the lake, we would skip the stones across the water or, if the waves were too choppy, bury them under piles of unmarked sand, never to be found again. We'd come back with pockets full of frogs to be held captive in overturned margarine containers and then count the ticks on our bodies to declare a winner. To free us from the clutches of these blood suckers, Mom would hold the tip of a needle over a flame and then singe their backs until they finally let go. They made excellent frog food.
As the days passed and June turned into July, the rest of my family would begin to arrive at their cabins and stock their cupboards with marshmallows, graham crackers and bars of chocolate. Green AstroTurf was unfurled on front steps, squeaky lawn chairs were opened up and decks of cards were rescued from drawers. Flinging open the door of an outhouse after a long winter was always dicey, but after the initial whiff and badger inspection, toilet paper would be placed on the roll and everyone was good to go. Literally.
Both sides of my family had cabins at the lake, but somehow my summers were more of a Hayward experience than a Davidson one. Most of my memories of my mom's side of the family take place at the church in Oxbow or on frequent road trips to Estevan. The Haywards, however, are a lively bunch and when we all get together in one place it's almost impossible to recall anything else. Our personalities are so large that we practically need a neighborhood unto ourselves, which might explain why I spent so much time across the lake on a patch of land we used to call Squaw Point. The area has since been given a more racially acceptable moniker, Good Birds Point, but regardless of the actual name, I still think of it as Hayward Point. Unlike White Bear, there was no fee to enter Hayward Point, so oftentimes family gatherings were at one of two cabins occupied by my dad's relatives.
Many cabins had wooden signs out front that not only advertised its residents, but also clever property names. While none of these ramshackle abodes could have been called Graceland or Tara, it was not uncommon to see things like "Randy's Retreat" or "Comfy Cozy Cottage" nailed to tree trunks. "Shakers Acre" was the name given to my Uncle Bill and Aunt Anita's cabin. Painted gray with red trim, I always thought it was one of the fanciest cabins on the block. Not only was the color choice inspired, but it was an A-frame cabin with a high peak and slanted walls. Inside, you could always find Anita completing a cross stitch or a crossword and Bill mulling over paperwork at the kitchen table. There were piles of Danielle Steel novels everywhere you looked and when finally I decided to give one a try, I discovered that no matter how high her books are piled, they never get any deeper.
After spending a lazy hour or two at Shakers Acre, I would embark down the road with my cousins Melinda and Courtney and head toward my Grandma Hayward's cabin. If the Haywards are anything, it's loud, and before I even opened the door I could hear my Auntie Bev's laughter coming from the kitchen. Inside nobody ever really knew what was funny, but every word tickled a rib. I don't recall a TV being there, but even if there was, getting reception in those parts was tricky at best. If you were lucky, you could catch a fuzzy broadcast of "Prairie Home Report," but who needed TV when there was so many more exciting things to do? Uncle Gordy would deal me into a game of spades, although my cousins Alexis and Laura wielded their trump cards like weapons so I rarely ever took a trick.
Speaking of spades, the Haywards call one when they see one. An outsider might be shocked at our honesty, but I know that every cutting remark is entirely out of love and when it comes to metaphors, any one of them could be declared the poet laureate of Squaw Point. Shakespeare may have written in iambic pentameter, but I prefer the rhythm of brisk evenings that are "colder than a witch's titty" and belt buckles that are "so big they look like a tombstone for his dick."
Lake days were my favorite. I didn't know then, nor do I know now, how to swim. My fear of water is likely the result of Mom's insistence that I wear a life jacket at all times. All I had to do was mention the lake and she would engage every zipper and buckle on my fluorescent orange vest as though the stories of children instinctively knowing how to swim were silly rumors that could never be debunked. I'm surprised I was allowed to take a bath or do the dishes without wearing something buoyant. Perhaps she drowned in a past life and just wanted to save me from a similar gulping fate. Regardless, I looked forward to the days when we would pack up the van at daybreak and head down to the water until sundown.
Our boathouse was a hotbed of activity and the whole family would arrive with stocked coolers for a day in the sun. I'd run up and down the dock with my cousins for hours on end, while the adults lounged on the beach and soaked in the rays. This was before anyone had cell phones or iPods or portable video games, so the only source of entertainment was boisterous conversation and the lake itself. When the sun had made its way across the sky and hit the treetops, someone would be dispatched to make a trip to Kentucky Fried Chicken. They'd return with buckets filled to overflowing with piping hot breasts and drumsticks. Together we'd eat this greasy meal, occasionally peppered with sand, and although nobody ever said grace, we were definitely thankful.
I'm still thankful, but a part of me wonders what the hell happened. When my dad died, I stopped going to the lake entirely. It was the one place he seemed genuinely happy and I chose not to weaken those memories by creating new ones. Every Sunday he would take me, just me, out for breakfast at the crack of dawn to the restaurant of my choice. He'd smear peanut butter on my toast and cut my bacon into chunks. Normally these were things he would have insisted I do myself because I'm a man and "men butter their own goddamn toast." He may have not always been easy to talk to and there were times he scared the piss out of me, but I know he secretly relished being a father and thanks to those little packets of peanut butter, I have all the proof I need.
Not long after I abandoned White Bear others began to follow suit. The little red cabin was sold and weeds began to sprout up around the boathouse. My cousins grew up and spread across the country, so the cabins that did remain in the family were upgraded to muffle the quiet caused by their absence. Septic tanks replaced outhouses and satellite dishes were installed on every roof. The decks of cards that once felt warm hands became cold and forgotten. Even the lake diminished in both size and splendor. Islands appeared in the middle of the shrinking body of water and all the docks that were not abandoned had to be pushed further down the shoreline.
Part of me thinks I was born to the wrong generation. I don't have a cell phone and hopefully never will. As far as I'm concerned they don't bring people closer together, but rather drive us apart by giving us the illusion we're keeping in touch. I prefer actual touch. I use the internet as a necessity of life, but I hate it. And I don't think we're far off from climbing into our television sets and calling it a day. Call me old-fashioned, I don't care. Then again, if I were born earlier, I would have an entirely different batch of memories. I never would have smelled the stink of our musty cabin, tasted Tang out of a mismatched glass or heard gales of laughter more memorable than the joke.
Every time I shoo a bee out of my apartment and onto the balcony, I'm reminded of my wonderful summers at the lake. Hanging on the rails that overlook Toronto is my most cherished possession – the wooden sign that used to hang above the front door of our cabin. The days of wood ticks and sandy drumsticks may be long gone, but that sign reminds me every single day how fortunate I am to be one of "The Haywards." Then I think to myself, "Hot damn. I should have also taken the zapper."
