I spent a lot of time walking the beaches of Lake Michigan in Milwaukee with my family, when I was a child. The main lakefront beach called Bradford Beach, was one my mom and dad would take me to on weekends to go swimming. Mom always worried about being able to see me in the water with all the kids on the beach so she made me wear a bright pink swim hat( back then it wasn't so odd believe it or not). Mom loved to sunbathe , I think it was the only form of relaxation my mom took for herself as she was always so busy at home and work, as she was the main "bread winner" of our family. Mom always called our trips to the beach- "going for a dip" in the Lake. I think this phrase came from the reality of the very cold Lake Michigan water and how you could only stand a few minutes of cooling off by running in and out of the lake( not really swimming). My mom would make me get out of the water when my lips turned blue- for real!!One of my favorite photos I have is of me and my mom at Bradford beach. Being the third child in our family, well there are not a lot of photos of me and mom, so this one is great as it brings back all those childhood memories at the Lake Michigan beaches.
We also had a family reunion with my mom's side of the family every summer at another Lake Michigan park called Lake Park, just north of downtown Milwaukee( near UWM). My Aunt Fern and Uncle Bob would drive from San Jose , California with their small silver "air stream" trailer to visit with us in Milwaukee every summer. I remember sitting for a group photo ( all of us with our bathing suits on after playing at the beach down below) that we would take every year at our reunion picnic , sitting on the picnic table right outside the "Lake Park Pavilion". This was a park building up on a cliff over looking the lake that served simple refreshments like: candy, ice cream, hot dogs, chips and soda- all kids favorites- yum! Lake Park still exists in Milwaukee but the Pavilion up on the hill is now a fancy restaurant called "Lake Park Bistro"!
Another beach our family went to was the one at Doctor's Park, the farthest north beach in Milwaukee County that i know of. It had a long steep winding path down to the Lake that i remember being fun running down but not that much fun walking back up! My dad was always looking for neat pieces of drift wood he could take home and put in the backyard by his flowers. My dad's main past time was gardening. At his funeral i said in my talk about his life that sometimes i thought he was more comfortable around his flowers than being around people( he spent all his spare time planting,watering and pruning his roses, fruit trees and evergreens in our yard).Anyway at the beach when he found a large piece of drift wood he would ask us to help carry it up to the car and sometimes even offered 75 cents to my brother and me to help ,as it was a long steep climb (and we needed some incentive to work as kids). He often did the same with picking raspberries or strawberries in our backyard gardens or even weed pulling in our yard.( Kids just don't have that work incentive!)The drift wood pieces were really beautiful in our yard and looked like pieces of art work , as when you get them away from the beauty of everything else on the beach you can really see this. I still have to this day an appreciation of the artwork in a piece of driftwood when i walk a beach.
When my grandmother came with us to Doctor's Park beach , she never went in the water but would follow the watermark on the beach looking for small palm size stones for her yard. At Lake Park the stones seemed to have a round polished look to them and Grandma Florence would line her garden and trees in her yard with a circles of stones for a pretty border. Sometimes she would find an especially polished stone with a shallow groove in it. She called these her "worry stones". She would rub her fingers on the smooth indentation when concentrating on a problem or worry. (I wonder if she did this when she prayed as she was strong Christian.) She kept these stones on a metal tv tray with her houseplants she kept by the window at her house . Now when i walk the beaches in Wisconsin or Michigan i too look for "worry stones" and think of my grandma. Isn't is interesting how these small memories of childhood come back in similar places we experience many years later to bring back special memories of the family members and other special people in our childhoods?
Funny how personal history has a way of repeating itself.... many years later( in the late 90's) my young nephew Aaron decided he wanted an outdoor wedding and chose Doctor's Park to hold his wedding and reception at one of the picnic areas.I don't know how he even knew of Doctor's Park, as he grew up Duluth Texas, and Tennessee?Perhaps his wife grew up in Milwaukee, and it may have been their special quiet place to walk too. But ,even those who live in Milwaukee would have a hard time finding this park as it is so far north of the city and "off the beaten path" at that.
All my memories of "driftwood, worry stones and dipping in the lake", came rushing back the day of Aaron's wedding many years later.
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