by Mitch Lee
It was a mid-July day in 1978, and as I did every day after baseball practice, I stepped up to the window at Northern Lights to order up a cheeseburg and a Teem lemon lime soda.
The man behind the counter with the stout chin and dark complexion and the apron tied tight was the owner, Marshal.
Marshal was my go-to guy at approximately 11 a.m. every weekday.
All my lawn mowing money was spent at that counter or at the Chalet Pie Shop on fireballs and half-moon cookies.
With most of the days quite warm you might think ice cream would be the better choice after scuffing around on the sand-filled ballfield.
But my fondness for those cheeseburgers was immense.
I piled mine high with pickles, relish, mustard and whatever else I could find on the counter.
It ended up being an eight-napkin burger that had to be consumed while standing up and leaning over a bit so the drippings would miss my sneakers.
The entire process of eating it and washing it down with an ice cold soda that made my brain freeze all occurred in less than three minutes.
Even though the rest of my afternoon was free I never really stayed downtown.
Rather, I would slide my glove over the handlebars of my bike and make the long two-mile trip back to Limekiln Lake.
The air was sometimes chilly when I pedaled through the morning fog enroute to practice.
But by midday when I made my way back home the heat would be radiating from the pavement by the time I reached the top of the saddle edge of Seventh Lake Mountain.
With sweat running down the sides of my face I pointed my bike back down into the valley that held Fawn Lake, Limekiln Lake, and Third Lake creek.
I rushed downhill as fast as my tires could scream, raced right past my house and down to the lake.
Tossing my glove, hat and shoes to the sand I rode my bike right off the end of the dock.
The water was as warm as it would get all season and I just floated for a few minutes till I felt cooled off.
Then I dived underwater to retrieve my bike and tried to pedal it out of the lake. I laid the bike on the sand and plopped myself beside it.
From the beach I could see and hear the bustle of the Lake: children laughing, boats hauling skiers, and every so often beach chairs littering the long half-mile spit of sand in front of the cottages.
Two kids were trying to canoe across the sandbar. It looked as if neither of them had ever paddled a canoe before as they were headed in no particular direction.
A bright-eyed Golden Retriever was padding around in circles in front of the boathouses to my right.
And not 30 yeards away, a two-year-old child was wading ankle deep along the shore under the watchful eye of her mother.
Around her waist was a small bathing tube with a frog’s head and arms sticking out of it.
I kicked up a pile of sand with my heels and just sat there letting my clothes dry for a bit.
Before long the heat of the day started to creep back into my body and I was back in the water bobbing up and down.
I spent the rest of the afternoon popping in and out of Limekiln Lake as my baseball mitt warmed in the sand.
—
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com