Mooring Fever

July 21, 2015

Dear Mac Parker,

So here we are -- at the exact 50 year mark, the date I first set eyes on The Mooring, and first set eyes on you. Here's what I remember. After arriving at the Wee Scott, I went inside to change into shorts. Then my cousins Luke and Matt insisted that we walk down to the beach, where we would meet some of the other kids. I wasn't keen to meet a whole bunch of new people, feeling pretty well done in from my 12 hour bus trip, but off I went. I did want to see the beach.

The sailboats had been put to bed, but the beach wasn’t empty. There was a gaggle of middle schoolers, some of whom were mock pummeling an older boy. You. Trying to fend them off and looking bored with the whole scene. Luke took me in hand and made the rounds: "Dane, this is my cousin Carol." "Susie, this is my cousin Carol." You walked over. "Mac, this is my cousin Carol."

And you said, "Well hel-LO, Cousin Carol!" Whoa. The boys I knew back home were nothing like this. Chickie, you’re not in Webster anymore.

July 1965. On Pine Creek Bay with cousins Matt (L) and Luke.

Fast forward to today. This fiftieth anniversary obviously looms large in my mind. Maybe I expected to see twin suns on the horizon? I don’t know, but the day is too quiet. It calls for an observance. What can you do, though, 50 years hence? I can't get to our beach; somebody lives there now. I don't yet have a sailboat. Some of our fellow Mooring alums live right nearby, but they are busy going about their daily lives.

I decided to do the same. Walked the dog, ate lunch. With some concerned neighbors, investigated dumping on the road-end park property across the street. Drove with H to buy a box of blueberries, and then to a new (to you) overlook on the north side of Lake Macatawa. There we enjoyed watching a small fleet of young sailors learning their craft, heeling like mad in the steady west wind. This is a perfect Michigan day, by the way: penetrating sun, sharp air, piercing blue skies.

I did act on one commemorative impulse. Last week we made an unexpected short trip to St Louis; while at our house, I went through the carton containing all my high school and college correspondence. There I found your letters, which I brought back to Michigan with me, and I have enjoyed reading them this afternoon. What an ideal way to observe the occasion. They reinforce my memories of a very bright, precociously witty guy who could entertain me almost as well on paper as he could in person. Giver of creative, thoughtful gifts (I cringe when I think of the tie-tac you got in return), smoke-bombing saboteur of high school football games. You and your giant slingshot.

Anyway, in 1965 you had amassed a Mooring rap sheet--a sardonic, in-your-face tough guy not to be messed with or even approached. Not that I particularly wanted to, at the beginning. You were an old-timer here, now staying all summer long as Mooring staff,  you and your brother and sisters and your Mom, the formidable Jackie Parker. Her job was to take guests out in the big sailboat, the Pomie. Yours, as "waterfront director," was to oversee the little boats, monitoring the rigging and putting them to bed every evening.

My first Pomie ride was captained by your mother and crewed by you. The Pomie is an interesting craft, modeled on a Snipe but half again as big (21.5 feet), built by Bob Horner's father in the '20s. She is the perfect day sailer: stable, swift, with a luxurious large cockpit that accommodates at least six passengers. We set sail that day in a brisk wind. I still swear that Jackie, despite all that cockpit space, put me on the low side of the boat, just to see what this landlubber Cousin Carol was made of. Well, hah -- I loved it! No matter how many waves crashed over me, I was ready for more, and didn't give a rip when you told me I looked like a drowned rat. I was secretly admiring the way you scrambled on the bow, raising and lowering sails, leaning out to grab the dock when we got back to port.

I was intrigued, yet perplexed. What had I done to make this guy so combative? Then I got annoyed, and grew a little combative myself.  Where could this possibly go?

               ***

Next: Dear Mac Parker, part II