Just one more time around the lake, please Dad?

Today is Labor Day.

This year I am in California with my daughter. It is blazing hot and she has no air in her new home. I have suggested we pack a picnic lunch and simply drive around the city. She didn't go for it.

At home King and our grand daughter are getting ready for the start of the school year. They have purchased volleyball equipment as she has made the cut for the eighth grade volleyball team, and my sister has taken her school clothes shopping. I can't believe we have an eighth grader in our house again. I have listened as she excitedly told me all the outfits she has for the start of the year. Today King says he will cut wood and they may possibly go to the beach. It sounds like a typical Labor Day at home. Quiet and peaceful.

In the years before our (semi) empty nest, our daughter, youngest son and I would go camping with the horses at Yankee Springs Recreation area. Three full days of riding the trails with members of the local 4H club. Fond memories.

When I was growing up, Labor Day weekends meant we would be going to the cottage belonging to family friends from Chicago. It was a summer retreat at a small inland lake near Gobles, Mich. The weekend was spent getting things ready for winter. While there were still  plans for weekend gatherings and Halloween parties at the cottage, Labor Day was the time the dock would come in, the boats would be pulled out of the water, water toys put away and lawn furniture tucked in for the winter.

It also meant gas tanks had to be run dry.

I'm not certain how other families did it, but the weekends leading up to Labor Day we would slow down on our gas purchases for the boats (it was something like 34 cents a gallon then). On Labor Day the pontoon motor would be run until it sputtered and died. The same was done for the outboard motor on the small row boat. But the speed boat . . . that was a different story.

Dad, his Chicago friend and a third friend from Chicago had purchased a inboard boat one summer. Tradition called for it to be the last boat to be pulled out of the water on Labor Day. After a majority of the other summer residents had put their boats away for the winter, we would take turns pulling one another around the now empty lake.  Even Dad would don a pair of skis and my sister and I would take turns driving the boat or acting as spotter as he skied around the lake a few times. No other boats, no other skiers. Just us. We would spend the late afternoon skiing, salomon skiing and discing.

For the uninformed, discing is being pulled around the lake at break-neck speeds on a round, flat piece of wood. My sister and I would lay, knee or stand on it while Dad would make quick turns trying to help us over the wake and onto the smooth, flat water. At least that was the intent...Most of the time it worked.

Dad would keep a careful eye on the gas tank.

"Time is up girls. We are almost out."

"Just one more time around, Dad? Please? We can tow the boat in if we run out."

And we generally would run out of gas. My sister and I would unhook the ski rope from the back of the boat, swim around to the front, hook it to the bow and, as promised, pull the boat to shore.

The last time around the lake for the summer and off to school the next day.