It was a warm early July day, and ten or so of us Limekiln Lake kids were sitting around the front porch and lawn of Moffit’s camp shooting the breeze after an early morning swim.
During the conversation Dave mentioned he had a large quantity of water balloons…as did the rest of us.
Plans immediately began for a water balloon war and we set off in all directions to our houses to collect them.
Before long we were under an outdoor spigot filling hundreds of multicolored rubber water bombs.
In assembly line fashion, we took turns at the spigot, knotting the balloons and placing them into plastic buckets until they were almost too heavy to lug around.
As was the case in most of the games we played as kids, we picked teams and divided up all our weapons of water destruction and separated ourselves across the small Turner stream bridge.
Each of us hid our buckets on the count of 100, then took two or three water grenades in hand to start our war.
Within minutes howling laughter filled the air along the beach.
Our war cries must have startled some of the lake’s summer camp residents though not one adult attempted to stop the hour of balloon throwing mayhem.
Our small war was waged around many of their camps, lean-tos, and pump buildings as we criss-crossed small trails and back lots, waterfronts and front yards looking for the buckets stashed by our opposing teams.
The remnants of red, green, blue and yellow explosions littered a 10-acre section of properties as we chased, threw, ducked and screamed our way through battle.
And when our balloons were gone we filled the buckets and chased each other around as if we were putting out a fire.
At the war’s end we sat exhausted on the rock break wall and beach between Gibson’s and Moffit’s cottages regaling each other with stories of the battle.
There wasn’t a group of kids around that had more uninterrupted fun then we did that morning on the shore of Limekiln Lake.
—
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com