Each year when Memorial Day rolls around, I think of two things. My first memory is of the Memorial Day parade I was in during ninth grade in my Wisconsin hometown. The second is how Memorial Day weekend always signaled The Beginning of Summer.
In ninth grade, I was one of three girls selected to represent my junior high school in the Memorial Day parade. We rode in a beautiful car along the parade route and then visited a cemetery where we sprinkled flower petals on a few of the veterans’ graves. Each of us girls needed to wear a pastel-colored dress, accessorized with wrist-length, white gloves. Looking back, I remember that Memorial Day experience very fondly.
But while the first memory is more solemn, the second one has consistently been more joyous. Memorial Day weekend was simply when summer began – when family and friend get-togethers happened up at the lake, when there was more freedom to have fun. It could be said, in fact, that Wisconsin summers in those days were bookended by Memorial Day weekend on one end and Labor Day weekend on the other.
Of all memories, going up to our cottage on the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend was pretty exciting. Our cottage was situated below a frontage road, which was below Highway 32. We were about sixty miles northwest of Green Bay.
Most of the night, we could hear traffic whizzing by on the highway nearby. Sometimes we could hear that traffic until 3 or 4 am. Oftentimes, people from Chicago or other parts of Illinois were traveling to cottages which were still farther north of us.
While Illinois has 2,900 fresh-water lakes, Wisconsin has over 15,000. Since there were many more opportunities in Wisconsin for water fun, many Illinois people found themselves traveling northward on a regular basis. I’m guessing that that’s still the case.
Here is a photo of our two-bedroom cottage back in the ’50s after my parents bought it. It was actually unfinished at the time of purchase, but it became their paradise. Mom loved to fish and Dad loved getting away from his business for a bit. We all loved having a lot of company on the weekend. My cousins and friends were (and still are) the best!
Our cottage was always painted yellow when we had it and the new owners continued the tradition. The photo at the beginning of this post and the one right above show the cottage a year after we sold it. The three women in the photo are my mom, the new owner, and me. You can see how close the cottage was to the lake. What you can’t see is the large yard we had.
Because of the short Wisconsin summers, Memorial Day weekend was always a highlight of every year for me. Technically, it wasn’t the beginning of summer, but, nonetheless, it meant the beginning of fun and warmer weather.
Memorial Day, though, was intended as a time of reflection for those who passed in the service of their country. That reflection is probably something we don’t do often enough, in fact. But with this weekend come other possibilities. Stay safe!