People have been texting me seascape photooos all day. South Carolina and two locations on Gitchee Gumee, which is not a sea, just a great big lake. There is a difference. And the moominbeach is not technically on Lake Superior. It is on the upper St. Marys River at the point where it widens and heads northwest into Whitefish Bay (listen to the Gordon Lightfoot lyrics), which IS part of Lake Superior.

Anyway, this is the moominbeach back in the day with a big storm going on. See that little towheaded kid there? That’s yer fav-o-rite blahgger! She is six years old! She had two bathing suits that summer, one a blue abstract floral pattern (she liked that one), the other a kind of red/white/black thing with huge buttons. She wasn’t crazy about that one, at least not the buttons. Back in those days we were always told not to swimP. “It’ll ruin your bathing suit!” It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that that old saw came from my parents’ childhood when bathing suits were often made of wool or something. Guess what? We swimPd ANYWAY. Why bother getting out of the water to go up and use the stinky old outhouse?

Another Fake Rule we were told over and over was that we couldn’t go swimming for an hour after each meal. Why? We would get a “cramp”. I know this is also false and I suspect the hour was to give the adults a little break. Because a Real Rule that we had was we NEVER went swimming without an adult watching us. And we never did. But I can’t remember EVER having an adult turn us down even on the days they had to wear winter jackets to sit on the beach without freezing to death. In August or whenever. Once on Labor Day when snowflakes were in the air…

This surf may look dangerous for a young child to swim in but it was really not (as long as there were adult lifeguards on shore). The moominbeach bay is shallow and there is a sandbar system close to shore. Until you get to the second sandbar you can’t get anywhere near over your head and there are now no riptides or undertows. My six-year-old self is probably not even at the first sandbar in the pic.

I have lost my train of thought. The GG is with his twin brother tonight and we porterized ourselves via facetime. I picked up Plum Market and Whine Castle curbside orders today and picked away at my chore list, which includes carving out a new office space since I cannot slouch on the Green Couch forever as much as I like to watch the birds. But that also means flinging and that is hard at this point because I am dealing with stuff that belongs to other people. Anyway. I have eggplant/pattypan squash parmesan in the oven. There’s enough for a few meals or sides or whatever.

Photo from the Sherman Archives.

G’night. KW

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