ahhh... the old days

I am thinking of the end of summer today

     I know, it is only July 27.  We have not even hit August yet, traditionally the dog days.
     It seems in my memory August was always Dewey Lake time in my family.   My aunt and uncle had a couple of cottages on the lake, which is near Dowagiac,  Michigan.
     We would usually go up and spend a couple of weeks, with my mom and the kids staying while my dad would go back to Chicago and work, coming up on weekends.
     Sleeping out on the porch, listening to the raccoons under the cottage, taking a bath in the lake with Ivory soap (because it floats) and reading comic books.   Sometimes a cousin would join us, sometimes a friend.  It seemed there was always family around.
     Just three cottages away was an Irish family from the south side of Chicago.   They had seven or eight girls and one boy.  Of course, three of the girls were around my age and the boy was barely one.
     Long games of Monopoly, afternoons playing in the water, sometimes a fire on the beach at night, and going fishing....although I don't think I ever caught a fish.  And I don't think we ever knocked....they would just come in our cottage, I would just go in theirs.  In a way, we too were family.
     We kids would walk down to the corner store, which was maybe a mile away.       We could play some pinball, buy candy bars, get a soda, which our parents never had in the house.
     A milkman named Stubby would stop in the morning.  If I was lucky, my mom would get an orange drink that was so amazing on a hot day....I don't think I have ever tasted anything like it since.
     My memory has us spending most of August there, but it could have been less.
     As the end approached, all of us knew that Chicago kids would be going to school the Wednesday after Labor Day, which was too fast approaching.
     To be honest, I miss those days.  If I could go back to one particular time in life, I would pick one of those halcyon stays at Dewey Lake.