Sunday, May 18, 2014

Lions Dock

It's so HOT!  I've been weeding in the garden for so long, I feel like I was planted there myself.  Mom says we have to each weed a row of the garden before we can go swimming, which doesn't seem right since it's only Paul and John and Francis and me here in the garden.  I just KNOW that the other boys have already gone swimming, gotten away free without having to do any weeding.  It's not fair, but there's no use whining about it now.  We're stuck here among the beans and carrot tops, the peas and radishes.

I've got a row of carrots to weed, and its hard to tell the weeds from the carrots till I pull some out and see if there's a small orange bit of carrot or not.  If I do, with a quick scrub on my shorts to get the dirt off I have a nice little snack.  Paul has a row of beans, and since they're already good sized plants, he's just zooming through his row.  You'd think that would encourage me to go faster, to keep up with him, but somehow it doesn't - probably because of the way he is teasing me.

"Oh, the lake is going to feel so GOOD, so nice and COOL," Paul says loudly, eyes closed and smiling to himself for our benefit as he reaches the last few plants in his row.

John and Frances are sharing a row of radishes, which I have to admit are at least as hard to weed as my row of carrots.  But their little fingers are making short work of it, and they're just ahead of me.  I think I must be paying too much attention as I try to separate carrots from weeds.

Paul finishes first and makes a mad dash away from the garden, calling over to the house,"Mom!  I'm done! Going swimming!"

He snaps a towel from the clothesline, pins popping up like popcorn with no lid into the air after him.  He slings the towel around his neck like a scarf and hops on his bike.  He's doing loops in the yard though, so I suppose that Mom has called to him  to wait for the rest of us so that we can all go together.

Finally, John, Frances and I finish our rows.  Racing to the house, we pause briefly at the garden hose and take a long, cool drink.  Some days we'll play with the cool water for a while, turning it on and off while another is trying to take a drink, to see if we can make the water go up their nose, but not today.  The beach is waiting!

Although Paul is on his bike, the rest of us are walking.  We don't all have working bikes, it depends on what Peter, Pat or Phil have been able to fix up.  We're like a mini parade on the way to the beach:  John is wearing his towel like a swami's hat, Francis has his towel tied around his neck like a cape, and I've chosen to wear mine the same as Paul's - like a hot scarf.

We walk down the road towards town and the beach, following Paul. I can feel the heat of the pavement through my flip flops. We can smell the tar as the heat waves the scent up from the pavement.  The tar is hot enough in some patches that we leave a print.  Watching the melting tar on the road reminds us to walk carefully; usually at least one of us stubs a toe on this walk.  Once I even stubbed my toe right through my running shoe!

"When I get there, I'm going to run right in without stopping!" says Francis.

"I'm going to run right up the Lions Dock and jump in at the first ladder!" says John.

"Yeah," I say, "And I'm going to run up the dock too, and jump in at the second ladder!"

We've been to the Lions Dock so many times, we know how deep it is at each ladder and where it's over our heads.  We have all taken some swimming lessons, but I'm only at "advanced dog paddle" as my brother Pat would say.  I won't jump in from any ladder past the second one, because beyond there the water is way over my head.

We leave the heat of the road for a trail through the bush.  Paul has waited for us there, in the shade with his bike. The bush trail is a great shortcut that will take us the rest of the way - it comes out at the Trailer Park, right across from the beach.  The shade is so much more comfortable than the bright, hot sunshine and we slow down a little, to cool off.  On the path along the way we see big splats of blueberries that Paul tells us is bear poop! After first checking the nearby bushes for bears, we laugh and laugh, joking about the poor bear with his watery blue poop problem.

We finally arrive at the beach, hot, dry and even more dusty, a quick look both ways before we cross the road then throw our towels down on the sand, kick off flip flops and launch into the water.  Each of us enters the water as planned, with plenty of whooping and laughing along the way - the relief of the cool water evident in our increase of activity.

Lions Dock looks like a big, flat lollypop on the water, with a big diving tower at the end. The big boys like to stand at the end of Lions Dock and wrestle, pushing or pulling each other in, or running and sliding off the slippery boards right into the water, or daring each other to do a flip or dive or something from the top of the big tower. One time I even saw a kid ride his bike right from the beach to the end of the dock and into the lake!  I don't know if he ever got it out.

I once asked my mom why it was called Lions Dock and she said it was named after the group of men who built it, the Lions Club.  I don't really understand why a group of men is called a Lions Club, but it's a neat name for our dock.  I think there should be a sculpture of a Lion at the dock, a Fierce Lion, fierce like the boys that climb up the tower at the end of the dock and are the King of the Dock until they get pushed off by a new King.

I'll go to the end of the dock to watch if my older brothers are there, Pete and Pat usually in the crowd of boys.  Philip sometimes, too.  Paul goes too, but like me is always watching to be sure he has an escape route back down the dock.  We don't want to "accidentally" get pushed in!  I like to think that my brothers wouldn't let that happen, but I know that I'd better take care of myself.  We don't acknowledge each other - there at the end of the dock everyone is on their own.

Once the initial cooling-down period is complete, we settle in to beach activities.  Frank and John do some beachcombing.  I like to do that too, especially if they find anything good, like money.  Most of the time though, they are just chasing minnows, or searching for neat rocks. I do the same, but don't last as long before I have to dive into the water again, then back on to the towel to recharge with the heat from the sunshine.  Tom is here too; he's got his towel spread out and he's busy reading a book.  He is prepared for an afternoon.

Across the road from the beach, there's a little concession stand.  At the concession you can watch as the lady behind the counter makes cotton candy!  It's magical.  As we hang over the counter to watch, we can hear a snapping sound as the candy starts to build on the paper spool. We love the sweet smell of the sugar, the bright pink colour of the candy as she waves the paper spool around and around in the big spinning bowl, slowly building a sticky spider web globe of cotton candy.   That wonderful, sweet taste as the spidery threads melt in your mouth.  We don't get it often, but if we are lucky  enough to find some change on the beach or along the roadside that's how we'll spend it.

As the sun drops a little, my dad arrives there at the beach on Rabbit Lake.  We are all as brown as golden marshmallows from being in the sun all day - in the garden, laughing and playing in the water, and running up and down the Lions Dock.  We run over to see him and try to get him to come in for a swim, but he never does.  He watches as we show off for him, calling out for him to watch this, Dad! as we practice some of our better moves from dock into water.

"Your mother has supper ready," he finally tells us, "Go and let your brothers know it's time to come home."

Paul takes the job as it gives him a chance for one last jump in the water.  I take my dad's hand and we cross the road together, back over to the parking lot near the concession stand and to our big green station wagon.  In no time all of us walkers are in the car, windows rolled down in the hot still air of late afternoon, damp towels spread over sticky hot car seats.  Paul, Pat and Peter have picked up their bicycles and started a race back through the trail to see if they can get home before the rest of us in the car.

They do.