Beach Girls

There are times when you see or hear something that just makes you go back in time to a place where you were young and happy. The mini-series Beach Girls that is currently being shown on the Lifetime channel and based on the book by Luann Rice is one of those things.

I woke up this morning finding myself in a farmhouse next to a field of tall corn stalks and looking across the road at a sea of soybeans. I was wishing though that I was back at Champion Beach now known as Van Riper State Park in the upper penninsula of Michigan. We didn't have an ocean that roared at us, but we had a lake, Lake Michigamme whose waves gently lapped the shore.

My time as a beach girl was the mid 1960's. My co-horts were my sister Jean, my best friend Jean, and our other friends, Diane, Sandy, Susan, and Julie. When we got older and weren't dependent on parent's for transportation, we would also make our way over to Marquette and the shores of Lake Superior where we would find bigger waves, and older boys. But for me, no place was more special than Champion Beach.

Champion Beach was our summer home. We often took a picnic and spent the whole day there. We got up early and got our chores done. We helped mom while she prepared the meal to take and we helped Dad pack the cooler with soft drinks. There was Coca Cola in a can for me (the kind where you had to use a "church key" to open...tab tops were just coming into being, but mom said they cost more) and orange pop for my sister. We made Kool-aid for the boys in one of those Coleman jugs with a spout. We packed up the Rambler station wagon and headed out for the 30 minute drive arriving late morning.

We hauled all of our stuff up to the picnic area, and once we had mom and baby brother settled in, we were free to go. First stop was the changing rooms. Back then Champion beach had these old style bath house changing rooms. They were large and could accomodate a whole family. We used to love the wide swinging wooden doors and being that the floor was concrete...the place had an echo you wouldn't believe. Once we changed into our suits, we stored our clothes back in the station wagon. It helped to have flip flops to manage the gravel of the parking areas and the hot sand.

Early in the summer the water was still quite cold. They used to take the temperature of the water hourly and post it on a blackboard so that you knew when it was comfortable or freezing! Sometimes we just couldn't wait and ventured in gingerly...wading in bit by bit....taking each step only after our body had "gotten used to" the cold water up to that point. Getting past your waist was the hardest...sometimes your patience would just wear out and you just leaned forward and started swimming hoping the movement would help to keep you warm. Brave souls just jumped off the edge of the dock. But you had to be old enough and a good enough swimmer to attempt that.

After the initial swim, you came out of the water with blue lips, shivvering running for your towel to wrap yourself in to get warm. Hopefully the sun would be shining and that would help to warm you, but more often than not, the sun would play peek-a-boo with the giantic clouds. You were left standing there wrapped in your towel waiting to dry.

Then we would build a pillow in the sand, and place our towels to make a "bed". We would lay there for a long time....talking quietly, and feeling alive. You either started to feel hungry or someone would come to get you for lunch. No one bothered to change. By this time we had dried off, so it was off to the picnic area for a lunch of hamburgers, a salad, and a dessert.

Then came the dreaded 30 minutes. At Champion Beach they had a really nice playground. They had swings that could accomodate adults as well as children and a teeter totter that was one of the highest I have ever seen. Thirty minutes passed before we even realized it.

By now the water had warmed up sufficiently to make the second venture into the water far more easier. We would swim out to the children's raft....and when we got to be better swimmers out to the diving boards on the bigger raft. If we were lazy, we would simply float on our airmattresses. Of course the waves, would keep brining you back to shore, so you had to keep getting off and carrying your floating matress further out.

That's what it was like when we were youngsters. Then adolescence hit and it wasn't so much about the water anymore. It was more about the beach...more importantly who was on it. What lifeguard was on duty. How many cute guys were there. Any new guys. Any campers temporarily crossing our paths. Sometimes we came with our own guys. Guys from town. Brothers, cousins, and their friends....later boyfriends. But sometimes it was more fun to meet new guys and flirt to our hearts content knowing full well that when the day was over, we would never see them again...no matter how sincere our promises were to write.

I became a woman at Champion Beach. I remember getting my first two piece swimsuit and growing the chest to fill it out. My suit was yellow and white which probably didn't look all that noticeable starting out the summer....but once I got a decent tan and with my long dark hair, it was certainly noticeable by summer's end. I had a couple of summer romances and had my heart broken.

Later when we camped there, we would build a campfire and sing songs hootenanny style. One night going back to the campground, we skipped across the beach holding hands singing the Herman's Hermits song "I'm Henry the Eighth I am"...with nothing but the moon and the stars to guide us. I can still see the moonlight on the water and hear the joyous laughter of innocence. Awww...Beach Girls. What wonderful summers we had.