Revisiting Mystery #7

Dearest Nook,

Where oh where are you?
Did you get caught up in the rapture?
Did you fall prey to the steady
march of progress?

We're sorry that we called you
Crook in the Woods
when your name was actually
Nook in the Woods ....

We were just uncouth, uncultured
kids from the ghetto
who had to babysit
teaming Catholic families of
six kids under 6 years old
washing their never ending laundry,
ironing their wrinkled beyond belief clothing,
walking their unmanageable dogs, and even
PICKLING their cucumbers
all for a lousy 5o cents an hour
and thought we were rich indeed,
only to find out that
everything at the Nook was at least a dollar.

We take back every thing we said about your
exorbitant prices and promise
we will be forever happy with
JUST LOOKING
which is Almost As Fun (voices of mothers everywhere)
if you will just give us one little indication of
where you disappeared to.



We miss (in no particular order):
The Hull pottery, now only available on ebay


These fake little tonic bottles




This gen-u-wine Indian beaded leather belt





These miniature little mailboxes



This Gwen Frostic timeless stationery




This owl windchime





These owl candles


And these mushroom candles
with a little owl figurine
(Owls were very big in the 60's, as were mushrooms.
No one really knows why.)
(photo from TheGinghamOwl.etsy.com)


At the end of an energy-leaching sunny day
it felt good to walk down the sandy road
and turn in at the wagon-wheel
and browse among all of these irresistible trinkets
while the wooden floor creaked underneath our flipflops
and the windchimes tinkled outside
and the lady behind the counter
watched us like a hawk.


Sadly,
we had to satisfy our
spending urges
with yet another
Blue Moon ice cream cone, or,
a big bag of beef jerky
from the much more reasonably priced
Blue Horizon.

Old Time Religion

This is my Sunday School Card
from Big Star Lake Chapel

And this is the flip side.

We had a lot of religion back then.
9:30am: Church
11:20am: Sunday School
5:30pm: Church

And did I ever mention that Sundays were
always sunny, and hot, and the lake was off-limits?
Some day this will be explained to me.
Please refer to Luke13: 14-17 for possible theological refutation.


Nevermind ....
this is really just a quick little post to say
that while we were up at BSL this year
we went to the Chapel
where we had a spiritually uplifting time
singing some of the old stand-bys
(hymn wise)

-thank you minister whoever you are -
(we didn't get a bulletin)

and suffered through two rounds of
"special music", which, as always,
was truly heartfelt but kinda awful.

At least the days are over
where the musicians would actually hawk
their cassette tapes at the back of the Chapel as you left
(or tried to leave) the service.

Below is the song that will forever remind me
of BSL Chapel and Uncle Art,
although I have no idea who these wholesome boys are.

BSL Mystery #5: The Mystery of the Triple Negative

Leaving the environs of Big Star Lake, if you drive north for a ways
and then drive west for a longer ways,
you will eventually come to the town of Ludington.
You can't go any farther than Ludington because it's situated
ever so picturesquely on the shore of Lake Michigan.

When the weather at BSL was unbeach-like
we often went to Ludington for the day
and with gas costing $.39 a gallon,
who could blame us. On the way you passed through (and still do)
several very small towns such as Walhalla, Custer and Scottville.

On this particular day our mystery unfolds in the town of Custer.

When I was little (the 1960s)
Custer was the home of
Johnny's Bandstand.
This was the place that all of the
bored, restless teens from BSL went to on a weekend night.
It offered live music, usually of this garage-band caliber....

.... the "Starlit Room featuring Steaks, Chops, Shrimp and Chicken"
and "Rollerskating every Wed. & Fri. nights."
In case you were wondering, Johnny's Bandstand was
"Michigan's No. 1 Teen Spot" and their motto was
"Bridgeing (sic) the Generation Gap".
(All of this info was gleaned from a full page ad
in the Big Star Lake Association Directory of 1971).

For me, it was exciting to cruise by Johnny's and imagine
what my older siblings and cousins and their friends were dancing or skating to
on a Friday or Saturday night.
Like most kids, I suffered from the delusion that
everyone else was having a lot more fun than me.

In addition to Johnny's, Custer had a drive in restaurant
of the Dog-n-Suds variety
where a carhop skated (or sashayed) up to your car,
took your order, then returned
with your food on a tray and hooked it to your car window.
This is what a carhop looked like, minus the good-looks
(at least in Custer).

Now on this particular day, Judy VH, me, Eunice H., Debbie H.
and probably others, were on our way to Ludington
and we decided to stop in Custer to get a bite to eat.

Sure enough, here came the carhop all carhoppy up to the car and
she took our order. When we finished indicating what we wanted,
she scribbled it down in her genuine clip-on carhop notebook
and then looked up and said,
"Don't nobody want no mushrooms?"

To a person, we all gazed back at her with what can
only be described as
the typical deer-in-the-headlights stare (ie, stunned)
and struggled to respond in some coherent manner
to this impossible query.

"I said," she said, "Don't nobody want no mushrooms?!?"
She then jabbed the laminated menu in frustration in case
we didn't know what a Custer deepfried mushroom looked like.

It looked like this.....

Well!
We were very aware of what a deepfried mushroom looked like.
What we couldn't comprehend was how to respond to
the Dreaded Triple Negative.

"Yes, nobody don't want no mushrooms",
or
"No, nobody don't want no mushrooms."

????

So there we sat like Lot's wife who had turned into a pillar of salt,
except that we were four pillars of speechless salt.

Or,
I know, I know
we were kinda like the cow of Bashan
that was struck dumb,
or wait, it was the ass of Balaam
and Balaam was struck dumb.

Whatever.
You get the picture.
We were speechless.

Now, to be fair,
there is an argument for our carhop.
Read what Wikipedia has to say on the subject...

"Today, the double negative is often considered
the mark of an uneducated speaker,
but it used to be quite common in English
... Chaucer made extensive use of double negatives in his poetry,
sometimes even using triple negatives."

blah blah blah
and, then, I love Wiki's anecdotal references:

"In the film, Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke uses a double negative
when he says, If you don't want to go nowhere.
A double negative is also famously used
in the first two lines of the song
'Another Brick In The Wall' by Pink Floyd, sung by children
we don't need no education
we don't need no thought control..."

Well, in that case, Wiki,
WE don't need no mushrooms,
thanks all the same!

Amazing Marv

Over the course of many BSL years

the VHs, a family of six kids,
and the Huizinghs, a family of five kids
spent several happy summer days together.
Our ages were roughly the same
and if you threw in random Hoogstrates (seven kids!),
it all worked out pretty well.

Pretty well for us, that is.

You see, the Huizinghs had quite a few things we had
a hankering for.

A cottage, for one thing. Not a cottage they rented.
A cottage they owned.
It was white and clapboardy and looked
exactly like what a cottage in Northern Michigan should look like
and it was perfect.

If that wasn't idyllic enough, consider the fact that
their cottage had a little wishing well in the back yard
all cozily nestled in a quaint piney-wood.
Underfoot was a cushion of springy pine needles
and the air was riddled with pine-scent
and you could wander over there and just drift away,
kinda like the Calgon commercial,
and it felt like you were in the
Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarves movie.
(The little well was nonfunctioning, but still.)

This is Luanne H. and me in 1966 in front of Strovens cottage.
Luanne was a year younger than me
and tall like her Dad.
She's the one missing some teeth.

And I know I'm getting a little side-tracked,
but below are our daughters, Audra and Laina,
30 years later.

They just loved them some Barbies.
Laina's Barbie is modeled after
Lady Luck at the Bowery.


Okay, back to the main story....
Another thing Huizinghs had was
a sleek shiny speed boat with lots of horsepower.
We had a rowboat with "the eggbeater".
And, fortunately for us Hofmans,
Mr. Huizingh was very generous with his boat.

I don't know how many BSLers Marv Huizingh
taught to ski but there are probably quite a few
adults out there who owe their mastery of water sports to Marv.
I do know that he spent many pains-taking hours
with our ghetto family, and probably gallons of gas.
I remember our parents admonishing us:
"Only go once around the bay, otherwise
you'll use up all of Mr. Huizingh's gas."

Marv truly had the gift of hospitality and there
was hardly a weekend that went by when he didn't
have some group or club or individuals up at his cottage
being fed and entertained and the day always
drew to a close
with his pontoon boat tour of Big Star Lake.

But........
this is another gift Marv Huizingh has:

Marv is an amazing skier.
He had a little routine he'd do every once in a while.
First he'd get up on a disc, which is no mean feat in itself.


He'd take a little spin around the bay, doing flashy stuff
on the disc, and then, while passing the dock,
someone would hand him this......


..... a stepladder!!


Amazing!!
And the best part of all....
Marv is 75 years old when he's doing this!

Gone Fishin'

Historically, Hofman's have spent a lot of time pursuing the wily fish.

If we were in a cottage by Mucky Harbor,
we had to fish way over by the Blue Horizon.
If we were in a cottage by Munising Point,
we had to fish across the bay at Pine Grove Beach.
In other words,
the fish were always biting
where ... we were not.
This ensured maximum exposure to the possibility of
running out of gas,
or madly putt-putting home
after the no-wake curfew
and hoping the sheriff didn't catch us.

Fishing was instilled in us at an early age.
It was a bare bones operation that often
required bare backs.

Some took to it immediately. To wit:
Dave VH and Faith Hoogstrate Ottenhoff
practicing in VH's backyard, 1953.

and.......

Scottie Seth just as thrilled as he can be
in August of 1977
with Jeff Vermeer (thanks Lynda!!)
and Stevie & Boo Phelps.

.... aaaaand

Don VH in 1955

Even later in life,
still lucky
Don VH in 1999 with
Annalise Alphenaar & Rachel Reid


Woohoo Arthur William....

Bill Hoogstrate, 1969

..... and then you have to clean them, Billy
(notice "pursed" lips in the "Eeeyew" formation).
Yik yik and triple yik!

Billy & Steve VH, 1969.

..... and another spectacular haul
Lies Rosema Kelder in 1988.
Once again, a bare-backed catch.

Hannah Van't Hof says, "The End!"

*to be continued*

Did somebody say something about ......

.....FOOD?
Ellen Van't Hof with her pipin' hot rolls in 1979.

And don't forget the protein
all you
carb-laden Hofmans!

Oh jah .... we definitely need a
vegetable
(Uncle Art supervising, Grace VH, Mickie VH,
Lies Rosema & Don VH corn husking in 1988).

And for dessert,
some finger-lickin' ice-cream.
(Stevie Phelps,
just as cute as he can be,
sitting on his Grandma Claire's lap in 1969.)

BSL Mystery #1: The Mystery of the Missing.....

.....Bikini Tops!

The year was 1968 (or maybe it was 1969, no matter), the location was Stroven's cottage on Chapel Road, the time was deep dark night and all the little Hofman offspring were sleeping with visions of canceled Sunday services in their heads, when out of the gloom and gloaming came an ancient car with a bad muffler, idling briefly behind the slumbering cottages and breaking the idyllic BSL-type silence, and then off it sped with it's stolen loot -- Bikini Tops!

The motive? Too weird to even contemplate!

But, hey! It was the 60s. In a way it was kinda groovy,
so Eunice and Judy wrote a song
about it.......


and Debbie decided to wear her
beach cover-up
for the final two weeks of summer vacation.

Although a lot of baiting with more bathing suits and Nancy Drewlike sleuthing went on, and our beloved Blue Horizon posted more photos of other purloined bathing attire, (or rather, denuded clotheslines where swimwear had recently hung), no perpetrator was ever apprehended, which is kinda creepy because that means.........

He's still out there!

Whole Lotta Hofmans!!

1967 (see below for who's who)

Wow! I think every Hofman family was represented here, at least in part, except John & Dot Hofman's wild western bunch. But don't worry, Uncle John, I've got some of you and yours to be posted later. Okay, I'm going to give this whirl and I'll see if I can get this even half right. Starting from the front lefthand corner and working around the picnic table I think these individuals are as follows: Marge Vermeer, Claire Hoogstrate, Wally Hofman, Edene Hofman (in sunglasses), Billy Hoogstrate, Jane Van't Hof, Don VH, Stephanie Barrows, Elly Barrows, Mickie VH, Joanie VH Rosema, Eunice Hoogstrate Hayes, Janice Hofman, Karen VH Reid (in front of E and J), Judy VH Alphenaar, Steve VH, and Tommy Barrows.

I'm not sure what the celebration was but I think it was probably one of those massive potluck picnics we had every so often. I was crazy about those picnics because we VH children were able to gorge ourselves on food we were never normally served. In particular I remember Aunt Edene's deviled eggs and baked beans served in a heavy brown bowl that meant some serious cooking had been going on. The closest we ever got to baked beans at home were lima beans and to this day I just can't go there. Aunt Claire made lasagna and I would eat so much I would be in pain.

P.S. I like how Aunt Marge's and cousin Tommy's black eyeglasses kinda frame the photo. This makes me think Uncle Art, with his artistic bent, probably took the picture. I guess Uncle Ade was bravingly manning the grill and flipping burgers.