The Cottage Next Door is a series of writings depicting stories of our family at Bass Lake. Written in a humorous essay format, The Cottage Next Door tells of the emotional highs and lows, both humorous and touching, our family experiences while living in the cottage next door to the other members of our Bass Lake family. Begun in the summer of 2013, each essay, or chapter, relates  a theme mirroring our family’s personal experiences.

    Two years ago, my wife, Biz, and I decided to purchase a cottage at the lake. We love coming to Bass Lake; it’s become home to us. It’s also the place where many of my wife’s family live and visit, including her parents. Before buying the cottage, we were the occasional visitor – ones who visited, then went home, wherever that may have been.

    Like the time when we visited before Becca was born. We arrived to find both of the spare bedrooms occupied. As we walked through the door and were greeted by my wife’s parents, we got the “Oh, and by the way. . .”

    “Your brother is in the blue room,” Mom told us five minutes after we walked through the door, “and your sister and her husband are in the upstairs bedroom.”

    As Biz looked around her mom, her brother poked his head out the bedroom door, put his thumbs in both ears, and wiggled his fingers while sticking his tongue out at her.

    He just got a job as an elementary school principal and after a year with kindergartners, spent the summer trying to shake some bad habits.

    We were assigned the sleeper sofa on the porch.

    Or, there was the time right after Becca was born. We arrived that summer, hoping beyond hope we would have the master apartment, aka the suite, upstairs, the one everyone fought over.

    “We can’t stay in the blue room,” Biz told me during the flight to Indiana. “With a newborn, that room isn’t big enough!”

    We walked through the door and . . .

    “You guys will be sleeping in the blue room!” Mom exclaimed as she hugged the both of us.

    Bizzy and I looked at each other in abject horror as Mom exclaimed that, once again, Biz’s sister and her family arrived, “just the day before!” and moved into the suite upstairs.

    “You need to tell Leslie to move out!” Biz exclaimed. “We have a newborn!”

    Mom calmed Biz down.

    “I have the perfect solution!” she said, as she escorted us into the blue room. The single beds were pushed together to make one large bed and in the space at the foot of the bed sat a doll’s cradle, painted, and stuffed with a miniature mattress, a small pillow, and baby blankets. All that was left in the room was a foot-wide walkway in front of the dresser, which was usually blocked when the bedroom door was open, or when my wife had strewn the suitcases about looking for something to wear each morning.

    We spent most of our time on the porch.

    At night, when we did have to go to sleep, I would get the side of the bed next to the wall, while my wife slept on the side nearest the baby, and the door, so that she would get up with Becca, who was four months old at the time, and feed her, or change her diapers.

    That first night, like clockwork, Becca began crying at two in the morning. My wife nudged me in the back, the one turned to her.

    “Charles, Becca’s crying.” I snored a little louder.

    “Charles -,”

    “I hear,” I said, giving in. “Are you getting up?”

    “I’m really tired,” she replied, “Can you see if she needs changing or a bottle?”

    I crawled off the end of the bed, took two steps, and stubbed my two on the doll cradle. Along with Becca’s crying, and my howling, nobody in the house could sleep.

    “Keep it down!” hissed my wife.

    “I can’t. I think my toe’s broke!”

    “Shake it off and change the baby’s diaper,” she hissed again. “And, keep quiet!”

    We managed to come up with a system in which everybody was happy. I slept on the sleeper sofa on the porch. Becca learned to sleep through the night.    

    When vacation was over, we always headed home, whether it was back to Arizona, or to Plymouth when we first moved to Indiana, or, when we finally moved to Knox, the 4.4 miles up the road to our house, because we no longer needed to stay at the vacation lodge by the lake.

    Buying the cottage was an excellent investment opportunity, one that helped move our lives toward the ultimate goal: Moving in next door to her parents so we never missed out on anything going on ever again.

    For two years, we’ve been working on our cottage, getting it ready for more fulltime living, and less missing lake life.

    It’s like my wife said as we stood on our shoreline admiring our new deck boardwalk we had just finished building last week. My wife mentioned putting deck chairs as close to the water as possible without actually going onto the pier.

    “Right here,” Biz said, “I’m going to sit right here and grow old.”

    We bought the cottage because investing in lake property seemed like sound financial planning on our part. There was, however a strong emotional and familial pull toward this particular purchase as well, much like when salmon swim upstream to their natural spawning grounds, to spawn their children upon returning home. We brought our child to Bass Lake, to spend her formative years tormenting, I mean, toodling, with the older family brood, and to become the next generation to live at the lake.

    The cottage we purchased, as well as my wife’s parents cottage, were Kingsbury cottages brought in and set down on lots owned by my wife’s grandfather, a Chicago contractor who brought his family, among whom was a young daughter who spent her formative years growing up at the lake.

    For years, my mother-in-law sat in her remodeled cottage, looking out at the lake, and felt like something was missing. Although having her family visit during the summer, and seeing all of her relatives, she would always look out at the cottage next door, seeing her own father’s handiwork, and could not help but feel like her heritage wore only one shoe, on the left foot, while the right shoe contained somebody else’s foot.

    She was friendly with her neighbors, and they were good neighbors to have. The people who lived next door were grandparents themselves, from the north side of Chicago, who lived most of the summer in their cottage, riding the lake on their pontoon boat, and entertaining their grandchildren.

    Then, the neighbor survived a nasty bout with Cancer. As the couple got older, their children visited less often. He and his wife decided to sell their cottage and stay closer to their family in Chicago.

    He made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. And now, our family has a complete pair of cottage shoes, tied to feet that have made deep imprints into the muddy shores of the Bass Lake community.

    My daughter, who just turned 9, now spends most of her days at Bass Lake, running between the cottages she calls home. We bought Becca a Schwinn bicycle, to ride and together we visit relatives, from the aunt down Elm Street, to the cousin down the shore.

    There is no shortage of people to visit while at the lake.

    And, when we decide it’s time to go home, we don’t have to go very far.

    We just go through the gate to the cottage next door.

    We took a cruise on the Riviera the other day. Not that Riviera. The one my father-in-law bought two years ago to replace the aging blue Titanic, which he ended up selling last year.

    The Riviera is a pontoon boat; rather, it’s a Riviera Cruiser. It had belonged to the owner of the cottage from whom we purchased and was part of a package deal.

    We got the cottage; Dad got the Riviera Cruiser.

    I’m not saying he got the better end of the deal, just that it didn’t matter who bought the pontoon boat, the family – all of us – still use the boat one way or another.

    When we used to try and take the Titanic pontoon boat for a ride, my wife Biz, and I never had much luck getting it started. Like the one time Biz took the keys when no one was around and we headed out Dad’s pier, running the length like a couple of high school kids taking our parent’s car.

    “C’mon, hurry up!” my wife exclaimed as we tossed the vests aboard while I began lowering the lift. As I cranked on the wheel, she sat in the pilot’s chair, inserted the key, and adjusted the throttle and gearshift levers. Just as the pontoon boat began floating free of the lift, she turned the key and cranked the motor over.

    And cranked. And cranked. At first, the motor seemed to cough to life, giving us hope for a cruise around the lake. I pushed the boat free of its lift . . .

    “Wait!” my wife screamed. “I don’t have it started yet!” I jumped aboard as the boat drifted away from the pier, and began to rotate in a slow, lazy circle. With no tide or wake, we just drifted 360 degrees while my wife frantically tried to start the Titanic.

    She cranked again, and again, and again. Finally, she pounded her fists on the steering wheel.

    “This thing will never start!”

    “Can I help you?” We looked up, and there stood Dad, on the end of the pier, his hands on his waist, a smile on his lips. I jumped out of the boat and into the waist-deep water, which was okay, because I was wearing my swimsuit and crocks. I pushed the boat to the pier so Dad could get on.

    He shooed Biz out of the seat while I climbed aboard. I held the boat steady so that it wouldn’t rock against the pier.

    Dad adjusted the levers ever so slightly, ran his hands over the steering wheel, in a gentle caress, and touched the key. With a slight jerk of the wrist, the engine roared to life. I pushed the boat away from the pier and jumped on as it idled toward deeper water.

    “Figures,” Biz said, sarcastically.

    “You just have to have the right touch,” Dad said, winking at his daughter, a smile faintly twisting the edges of his mouth.

    Later that evening, my wife gave me the ultimatum.

    “You have to learn how to start that boat,” she said.

    “Me? Why Me?”

    “It just doesn’t speak to me,” Biz said.

    “We know it runs,” I replied. “Dad starts it all the time.”

    “It’s a guy’s boat,” she said. “It only talks to guys.”

     “Un-huh,” I acknowledged, trying to understand the subtle implication my wife was trying to make.

    “If you could get Dad to teach you how to start the pontoon boat, then we could ride it anytime we want,” she said.

    The next year, Dad bought the Riviera Cruiser, and he was reluctant to sell that old Titanic, so we parked it next to our pier so that we could use it rather than borrow Dad’s new one.

    True to her word, I asked Dad to show me how to start it. With Biz watching, and after half a dozen tries, old Titanic started for me. It took some coaxing the old girl, but my wife and I took that Titanic out for several spins around the lake last summer.

    Each time we went out, however, that old blue pontoon boat seemed sad that Dad was not sitting in the driver’s seat. It seemed sluggish, slow, and all-around felt like an unhappy boat.

    Then, life intervened, and we jumped back on the jet skis while Titanic sat beside our pier, neglected until the water level decreased to the point where she would not budge off the lift. When we finally did get Titanic off the lift, it was time to put her away in storage. When next she came out, Dad sold her off.

    Last year was the first year without the Titanic, and Biz, ever in for a pontoon boat ride, took the keys to the Riviera, again. We climbed aboard the newer tan-and-red cruiser, with vinyl seats, a seating capacity of 12, and an actual canopy to protect us from the blinding Indiana sun. Biz sat in the soft, luxurious captain’s chair, inserted the key, set the levers, and cranked. Immediately the boat roared to life!

    “Now this is a girl’s boat!” she exclaimed, as I lowered the lift and pushed the boat free of the pier. We cruised the lake and had so much fun, riding Dad’s boat, just her and I.

    Until that day the storm came.

    Black clouds darkened the southwestern horizon. As the westerly wind blew across the lake, dropping an inch of rain in the first ten minutes, a microburst came out of nowhere. Thick branches fell into yards, trees toppled, and piers twisted. The power went out, and stayed out, for nearly three days.

    That heavy wind tumbled the Riviera Cruiser off its lift, flipping it over and back again, tearing the seats from the floor, and tossing them into the lake.

    After it was over, we went out to look for the pontoon boat. Biz, Becca, and Colton took the jet skis and found the Cruiser over by the wetlands. When it was dragged back, part of its metal siding was hanging loose, and it was missing three of its four seats, which we found on our neighbor’s meander land by the sand bar, just around the point.

    It took weeks, but Biz and Dad managed to make repairs to the Riviera. We put the seats back after draining and drying them out. We took the damaged metal skin off; we haven’t managed to put it back on, so, part of the Riviera’s side still look like a skeleton.

    But the boat runs. And we went for a cruise the other day. Dad drove, and several family riders filled the boat nearly to capacity. Dad looked happy as he captained his Cruiser around the lake, even getting it up to speed.

    The memory of that old blue Titanic is fading, but a new love for the Riviera Cruiser has taken its place in our hearts.    

    Anyone for a pontoon boat ride?