Our back yard is the Tippecanoe River. We don’t actually own it but we can borrow it any time we like. There are two dams on the Tippy as it flows through our town, and we live on Lake Freeman, formed by the lower dam which was completed in 1925. It’s not a majestic body of water, nor particularly scenic. To be fair, it’s a wide spot in the river, but the view is what sold us on our house.
Freeman and its sister lake upstream make our town a little special. When we lived in New England we experienced the summer rituals on Cape Code and Maine where city people with money go to be boorish, free-spending, privileged jerks. That’s how the endearing term “Massholes” came to be attached to the people who come up from Boston, trash the beach, undertip the wait staff, and then go home.
The appeal of New England is varied and enduring, and most of the locals, in our experience, are genuinely great folks. Lakes, mountains, historical sites, and the ocean are all within an easy drive. Sunrise over the Atlantic is breathtaking regardless of the season, whether viewed from the rocky coast of Maine or from the sandy beaches of Provincetown. There’s a different experience with every season and in autumn the “leaf peepers” come from all over the world to drink in the stunning vistas. It’s hard to duplicate that feeling you get seeing crocuses blooming through the snow in the spring.
Autumn was a different experience in Los Angeles. Our boys were fans of the Charlie Brown television specials and enjoyed recreating favorite scenes. The first year we raked up all the leaves from our neighbors lawns to make a pile for jumping we had an audience of kids unfamiliar with this ritual. Why would anybody want to have all those leaves in their front yard? Our sons were quick to demonstrate the joy of leaf pile jumping and delivering the immortal line, “Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker!”
Southern California always felt rather unreal to me, artificial and contrived. Almost none of the trees and shrubs we associate with residential landscaping are native to the area but I enjoyed riding my motorcycle year-round. There were only a handful of days every year when rain made it impractical. The most singular experience we had as a family was playing in snow in the morning at Big Bear Lake and then driving in the afternoon, with buckets of snow, to the beach. Not many places you can duplicate that.
Our twin lakes have a different appeal, one that is the cumulative effect of many little things. In the summer, our area is a mid-scale get-away for people from Indianapolis and Chicago who mingle with the locals for some fun in the sun. It’s always amusing to see urban drivers bring me-first driving habits to our town of five thousand souls. Stop sign etiquette is commonly breeched and insistent wrong-way driving on one-way streets is common. We forgive them because they spend money here. I advise you to avoid grocery stores on Friday afternoons in the summer. The parking lot is full of cars stuffed with kids, water toys, dogs, and cranky dads waiting impatiently for mom to wheel out an overloaded cart of supplies so the fun can begin. But this is a seasonal complaint, a spasm of activity in an otherwise placid setting.
Freeman is about 1,500 acres of water and has about fifty miles of shoreline. On the weekends in summer that averages to about fifty square feet per jet ski, ski boat, pontoon party boat, kayak, canoe, and sunfish sailboat. There are many ancillary attractions here, too. Our sister lake boasts Indiana Beach, a family amusement park that’s been delighting visitors for nearly a century. The Madam Carroll is a 135-foot-long party boat that cruises partiers, food, drink, and live bands around the lake with the serenity of a giant swan.
So, why, after living in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston would we want to live in such a modest, quiet, slow-paced little town on such a meek, ordinary little lake? Partly because it’s not New York, Los Angeles, or Boston, and doesn’t want to be. Partly for nostalgic reasons. My wife’s family has had a cottage on Freeman since the 1960’s and she spent her summers here. When our kids were little, we’d bring them to the lake for a month and we have great memories of splashing, boating, skiing, and fishing as a family. We took our kids to the same mini-golf course, drive-in movie theater, and ice cream stand that my wife went to as a kid, and they’re still in operation today. And, partly, because our sons are grown now, have kids of their own and live on opposite coasts. Our choice was to claim our own quiet little cottage in the middle and travel, alternately, to the east and to the west.
We knew we had adapted to lake life when we started grumbling about all the “weekend people,” but honestly, we have the lake to ourselves during the week and, without question, the weeks between Labor Day and Halloween offer some of the most enjoyable experiences on the water. Hard to beat kayaking on a fall morning with fog shimmering over the water, the sole water craft in sight. We get a different lake in the winter when it freezes over. Snow on the frozen water is a pensive look for a lake so busy in summer.
Spring and Fall offer us lakesiders a kind of travelogue, not of places we’ve been but of birds who are on their way somewhere else. We see all manner of birds that aren’t native to the area stop and have a cup of coffee before flying on to wherever it is they think is a better fit. Today we have a flotilla of about thirty white pelicans on the lake, looking to refuel before flying on. Baltimore Orioles should be arriving soon for a quick snack. We also can boast a few mating American Bald Eagles who claim our lake as home and are always fun to watch zooming down on the lake and flying off with a fresh catch in their claws.
For me, the greatest single feature is the view across the lake to the East from our deck. We get an unobstructed view of the sunrise all the year. I post my sunrise photos on Instagram @lakefreemansunrise. I’m not quite as bad as the rooster who believed that his crowing made the sunrise, but honestly, if I don’t take a picture of it, did it really happen?
Life on our lake isn’t for everyone. Some would rather move to Florida and I would rather they do it now.
What Then? 