If I could live anyplace on earth, I would live on the shores of a lake in northern Michigan. Maybe it's because that's where we vacationed when I was a boy, or just because I've always loved being in, on, or around water. Whatever the reason may be, that's where I'd live. There's something about the calmness of being at the water's edge, especially in the evening, listening to the waves splash as they gently roll up on the shore, surrounded by the sweet fragrance of pine trees.

I started loving "going to the lake" when I was very small. My parents owned a small travel trailer. They parked it on a sandy lot at a resort next to Big Star Lake near Baldwin. It probably wasn't much bigger than an average bedroom. Mom and Dad's bed was in the back, there was a stove and icebox amidships, and a dinette up front folded down to make a bed for me. Uncle Bill and Aunt Marion had one parked two lots down, and Grandpa and Grandma parked theirs two lots up. We'd leave for the trailer early on Saturday mornings in the summer. My folks put my pillow and some blankets in the back of the old Chevy wagon. Before sunrise we'd get up and have breakfast, and then we'd get in the car and I'd lay down in my nest and go back to sleep. A few hours later I'd wake up in my bed in the trailer, ready to put on my swimming suit and hit the lake. (For those of you who are appalled at the thought of a three-year-old sleeping unrestrained in the back of a car, remember this: It was almost fifty years ago.  There were no toddler seats, side-curtain air bags, or even seat belts. Deal with it.)  I'd run barefoot across the hot sand toward the lake just so I could cool off in the wet sand at the shore.  Great entertainment back then involved laying on the dock and watching schools of minnows as they sunned themselves in the shallows. Hundreds of little silver fishies turned this way and that in unison as I waved my hand over them. Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle Bill fished during the day, returning to camp as evening came. After tasty suppers of freshly-caught bluegills, bass, and sunfish, the grown-ups sat outside in folding chairs while I dug in the sand until sundown, when the colored lights on dozens of awnings came on. Mom would slip back in the trailer and turn the kitchen table back into my bed, and then it was time to go inside.

The trailer was sold when I was about four.  I needed an operation so Mom and Dad let it go. But that wasn't the end of our lakeside days. Not long after, Grandpa and Grandma found a place to camp up on Silver Lake, south of Traverse City. The new campground was smaller than the resort on Big Star, but it lacked nothing in northern charm and coziness. A cherry farm with a white barn stretched out along the road across the lake. Three tiny cabins lined the path back to the trailer camp. A fourth nestled among the pine and cedar trees on a hillside. In ten years' time we stayed in all four of them, but the one in back, the big cabin, was our favorite. It had one great room with a kitchen in one corner by the door and a woodstove at the other end. There were two bedrooms at the back, and a full-length screen porch ran across the front. I slept on a bed under a window down on the wood-stove end of the cabin. A gentle, balmy breeze blew over me, turning gradually cooler as the nights deepened. I fell asleep to the sounds of bullfrogs and crickets. Every boy should have the privilege of camping in a place where he can sleep on a screen porch.

For me, though, the highlight of that campground was the lake. It was murkier than Big Star, and the swimming area was smaller. But that didn't diminish the fun of hitting the water, and as we grew older my friends and I found we could swim off the end of the dock instead of being confined to the area near the shore. The truest sign of young manhood was when you could swim out past "the drop-off" without an adult yelling from the shore that you were out too far and you'd better come back. And once we could swim that far, all kinds of new adventures opened to us.

One summer when I was about 14 my friends Doug and Leslie and I spent an afternoon swimming off the drop-off when we decided what we needed was a raft to jump from. The nearest thing we had to a raft was one of the rowboats that came with the cabins. No one was using ours, so we unpacked the seat cushions and fishing tackle, piling them neatly on the shore. We towed the boat into the lake out near the drop off, where we planned to swamp it and then we'd have our diving raft. The plan was a simple one. On three, we'd all jump up on the side of the boat, and it would flip over us, at which time we'd let go and swim under it. An easy plan, nothing complicated about it. We all grabbed the gunwale and rocked the boat as Les counted. "One...two...three!"

Doug jumped. Les jumped. I jumped. The far side of the boat rose.

My suit remained at the waterline.

I let go of that boat like it was on fire! I dropped back in the lake, much to Doug and Les's disappointment. "You were supposed to hang on!" Doug exclaimed.

"I couldn't!" I spat, yanking furiously at my drawstring. Quickly, the embarrassment of mooning the campground washed away like muck off my toes and we finally did flip that boat over. We climbed up on it, standing carefully on the slippery bottom and then we jumped off, again and again, doing cannonballs and can-openers until dinnertime. When Doug's sister Jenny (who thankfully wasn't around earlier!) came to fetch them, we righted the boat and dragged it back to the shallows. Doug and Les had to take off, so I was left to bail it out and re-pack it.

That was the last major camping trip we took Up North. We still went family camping with our church friends, but it wasn't quite the same. I still went swimming and boating, but those trips were always short-term affairs, just weekends. I didn't spend a week on a lake again until my son was in Boy Scouts.

Swimming with the Scouts is different than swimming in your own lake. For one thing, Scout camps have lifeguards, and lifeguards have rules. And whistles.  If you get too wild you get whistled and warned. And you have to take a swim test. The swim test was no big deal when I was a Scout, but when I was an out-of-shape adult it became a challenge! The rules haven't changed; you swim a hundred feet on your chest, turn over, and float on your back for a minute. Completing it as a kid was a mere formality. Finishing that hundred feet when I was forty was a cause for celebration!

And now Memorial Day is upon us and there are no plans to camp on a lake. It really is a pity. It's something I wish we would have done more often when our son was younger. We did a few weekend trips with our church friends, but we stayed at a campground with a pool. A pool, for crying out loud! Even though there was a lake nearby, but they sprayed it for weeds Memorial Day weekend so you couldn't swim in it. Hopefully there will be time to make amends. Perhaps one day we'll have grandkids, and when that happens I'll consider it my bounden duty and privilege to pick up a carefully-used travel trailer or a small cabin. And after everybody's cinched down their drawstrings real tight, I'll take them out and teach them how to swamp a rowboat.

When I launched this blog, I introduced myself as a member of Batwipe and the Dead Fish, a 1970's-era high-school garage band of little or no reputation. You've already met me; I was the drummer. Dale played bass, Bob played rhythm guitar and sang, and Mike played lead guitar and sang. We were just four guys who liked music and enjoyed each others' company. We were best friends who would forgive each other of almost anything. One night Bob and I put that bond to the test in a prank on Mike that involved stealth, outright lies, a mad dash across town, hundreds of styrofoam packing peanuts, and shaving cream.

The whole thing began one late summer night when the four of us went downtown just to goof around and see what we could get into. We had my car, a 1962 Plymouth Valiant four-door. No babe-magnet she, but "Junkyard Jenny" got me through high school. I parked the car on a main street and we wandered around until we found a large box of styrofoam peanuts on a loading dock at the Greyhound bus station. It was open, there was nothing else in the box, and it was Right There, so we assumed that it was left for trash and took it. We carried the box back to the car and then made a tragic discovery: There was no way it would fit in the trunk! So, being the irresponsible teenagers we were, we dumped the peanuts in the trunk and tossed the box. A few peanuts drifted with the breeze, skittering along the curb until they disappeared. We disappeared too, back to Mike's house, where the peanuts made their way into our practice room. For reasons that will remain a band secret, we called them "little eebs."

Several months passed. Mike moved into a smaller room at his parents' house, the band started practicing in the basement, and the little eebs got swept up and thrown away. That is, except for a small quantity, about enough to fill a shoebox, that somehow got left in my car. They went unnoticed for a long time until one night when Bob, his brother Brian and I decided we'd "get" Mike with them. Why we wanted to get Mike in the first place is a mystery. Probably for the same reason jocks snap each other with wet towels. Nonetheless, the game was afoot. We drove to Mike's house and I walked to the door, the box of peanuts under my arm.

I knocked on the door. Mike's mom answered.

"Hi, Sharon." I said. "I borrowed some books from Mike and I'm returning them."

"Oh, I'll take them," Sharon said. "He's at his girlfriend's."

"I'll take care of them," I said. "It's no trouble."

I stepped inside and went to Mike's room. I stuffed eebs everywhere. In his bed. In his pillow. In his desk. In his underwear drawer. I let my evil inclinations run as far as my imagination could take them. Even after I'd done my worst, I still had a few handsful left.

Back at the car, Bob and Bri waited for a report. "I got him good," I boasted. "He's gonna freak out."

"Got any left?" Bob asked. I said I had a few. "We ought to get his car next."

"That's IT!" Bob said loudly. "He'll get in his car and there'll be eebs all over the place and then he'll go home..." Bob cackled so hard he couldn't finish the sentence.

We drove through downtown to the South Side neighborhood where Diann lived with her parents. The sun had just gone down as we arrived. Just as we expected, Mike's green Volkswagen was parked out front. Bob parked his Vega on the other side of the street, a few houses down. We got out of the car and crept along on the driver's side of the cars parked behind Mike's. As we approached the Bug, Diann's front door opened and Mike stepped out onto the porch!

"Get down!" Brian hissed. We ducked in between two parked cars and watched as Diann kissed Mike goodnight. We huddled there next to the curb until we heard the Volkswagen start up and drive away.

"Aw, man! That was close!" I gasped.

"I thought we were goners!" Brian said.

"Come on, you guys," Bob egged us on. "We still can do it, we just have to beat Mike home."

We piled back in Bob's car and took off hell-bent for Mike's house. We roared onto the street next to Mike's, parked the car and cut through backyards, coming to rest next to his garage just as Mike pulled in the driveway. We watched as he walked up to the back door and didn't move until we were sure he got inside. When the coast was clear, I ran into the garage and commenced Round Two. I stuffed eebs in the ashtray, down the vents, and made sure to shove a big handful up over the driver's visor, because that's where Mike stashed his keys.

The moment I finished, there came a scream from somewhere near Mike's bedroom window. We got him! We had hit our target like a towel snap to the butt crack! But in our excitement, we never dreamed that Mike would get so mad, or figure out who did it so quickly. I tossed the empty box behind the garage and dived for the shadows where Bob and Bri crouched, just as a thoroughly-enraged Mike stormed out the back door. He raced into the garage. We heard the car door open and then there was a sound not usually heard in Grand Rapids, like a lion wounded in battle on the Serengeti. We didn't wait for more...Bob, Bri and I snuck back around to where he'd parked the car and we made for home, cracking up all the way to my street.

As we rounded the corner, I saw Mike exacting his revenge on my car! We arrived in front of my house just as he emptied a can of shaving cream across the windshield. I hopped out of Bob's car, trying to fake Mike into thinking that we weren't even involved in whatever had him so upset. But he knew us too well. Dale might have thought up such a scheme, but he wasn't evilly motivated enough. No, it had all the markings of a Bob-and-Ter stunt, all right.

Shaving-creaming my car appeased Mike's bloodlust. The score was settled. We even laughed about it later on the bus that took us back to the high school from downtown. Mike told me that there was a single eeb, right in the middle of his bed, that tipped him off. The gag seems even better that way, with just a subtle little clue that, yes Mike, you've been gotten. A box of eebs over the door would have been way too much; even though I didn't plan it, the single peanut was perfect, like a calling card.

Who are the people who devote themselves to selflessly examining every culinary pleasure and all the wonders of the modern world to see if they are in any way bad for us? Each day's headlines blurt forth a new warning from a government agency or scientific cabal, informing us that life may be hazardous to our health. And every day I rejoin the battle to fight off a deepening paranoia that some new convenience or old favorite food is going to rise up and kill me where I stand.

I'm willing to grant that some of the warnings are grounded in legitimate science and genuine care for the common good. But I wonder: Are they all? Which ones are real, and which are imaginary? How many of them are merely ideas that someone hatched in order to put forth a pet concern? I'm as convinced as I need to be that some of the warnings foisted upon us are the work of well-meaning people whose hearts may be in the right place but haven't done any real research since they opened a science book in junior high. I've even created a name for this group: Hysterical Hacks.

Hysterical Hacks in general are not scientists. Scientists conceive ideas, formulate hypotheses, test their hypotheses, and publish the provable ones. Many times scientists hedge their bets by declaring that more research is needed before an absolute conclusion can be reached. Hysterical Hacks are spokesmen for heaven-knows-who, and they're not bashful about emphasizing that the world will stop right now until everyone falls in line behind whatever idea, provable or otherwise, they choose to spout.

Join me on a typical working day, as it would be if I took every warning at face value. I arise when the clock radio starts blaring. I've already endangered my hearing, I've been told, by having the radio on too loud. I turn on the lamp on the nightstand, burning too much fossil fuel by using an incandescent light bulb. I'd switch to more energy-efficient flourescent ones, but it's been reported that they contain mercury and can contaminate a whole room if they get broken. I head into the bathroom, strip off and step into the shower, allowing a small pond's worth of hot water to run down the drain. According to a news feature that was broadcast this week, if I were environmentally considerate I'd turn the water on just long enough to get wet and then turn it off to soap up. Once I was well-lathered I'd turn the water back on just long enough to rinse and then shut it off and get out. I'd also be cold and have soap in my eyes. I also would either have scalded myself or suffered hypothermia trying to find the right temperature again. But that's the price of earth-friendliness.

Once I've primped for the day and dressed myself (quite likely in clothes that were made in an offshore sweatshop, thus exploiting the indiginous workers and allowing American laborers to be downsized out of their livings), it's time to make breakfast. I put some bacon in a plastic dish and microwave it, thus ensuring my demise from either dioxin exposure or clogged arteries. I crack a couple of eggs into an aluminum frying pan and turn up the heat, on my way to a nice tasty meal that will either send my cholesterol skyrocketing or eat holes in my brain. I skip the margarine on my toast, mindful of TV reports of wandering gangs of trans fats that are just looking for an unsuspecting cardiovascular system to attack. I wash the whole of it down with a cup of coffee, which may or may not be fair-trade and probably carries enough caffeine to keep my heart pounding like timbale drums all morning.

Before I head off to work I pack up lunch. Breakfast was pretty heavy so I'd better keep lunch light. Maybe I'll just have a spinach salad with some diced chicken and a diet soda. Maybe the spinach will be chock-full of e.coli, like happened over the winter. The chicken might have been raised in a cage on a factory farm, poor thing, and never even got to feel the sun on its feathers. And if the soda pop got too warm the sweetener may have turned into formaldehyde! Oh well, at least I'll be well-preserved.

Having run out of excuses not to do so, I leave the house to go to work. I drive a small pickup truck. I'd like to have a bigger one, but all this one hauls most of the time is my sorry behind to the office; I don't really need more. Do I really need this one? Since I live on a farm and occasionally use it for hauling and towing the answer is yes...but thanks for checking. Living on a farm puts me a fair distance from town, which not only increases my carbon footprint due to excessive travel, but it precludes the use of more environmentally-concious commuter transportation, like a bicycle. But riding a bicycle risks a closed-head injury if you don't wear a helmet, and I don't have a helmet, so that's out. Furthermore, all that exposure to sunlight could increase my risk of skin cancer. I'd just as soon not chance it.

Once I'm safely at the office, I turn on my computer and start the day. It's fortunate that I'm not pregnant, as the radiation from my monitor could put an unborn baby at risk. (Being that I'm male, if I was pregnant I'd have bigger issues than working too close to a monitor anyway.) When I get a few free moments I check the online headlines:

I pause at the last one, wondering how they'd work as light bulbs. But I'm bugged as the work day wears on. All day long everything I've done, used or eaten has had some potential to harm me or doom the planet; the stress is starting to get in.

I'm worn down as I leave work. I start thinking about supper. Maybe I'll just swing through the drive-thru for a burger, fries and a nice chocolate shake. What am I thinking?! Snap out of it, man! The radio just said that hamburger could have listeria in it! The salt on the fries could give me high blood pressure which could lead to blindness, diabetes and a stroke! And the chocolate in the shake is toxic to dogs! But we don't have a dog! It doesn't matter! We could get a dog, he might nose out that shake cup, and then where would he be?

Now I'm shaking as I arrive home. I go to the freezer for some dinner meat. How about pork chops? How about trichanosis! Skip it; I'm not hungry. In fact, I have a headache. I go to the medicine cabinet. There's no acetaminophen; the vet says it's poisonous to cats, and we've got cats! Is there any aspirin in the house? We haven't had aspirin since the baby came. Never mind that "the baby" is grown and married and lives several states away; he could have gotten Reye's Syndrome if he'd gotten into the aspirin fifteen years ago!

What's that shrill screaming? Oddly, it's not me; it's the smoke detector. It's a month past the time change and I still haven't changed the batteries! The racket's driving me crazy; I rip the thing off the ceiling, tear open the back door and throw the infernal thing out in the yard! Then I go and retrieve it so the parts can't decompose and leach into the ground water. I can't take any more...I run downstairs to hide in the basement, completely ignoring the fact that it hasn't been tested for radon, and curl up whimpering in a corner, eventually falling into a shallow, very disturbed slumber.

Thankfully, typical days don't end that badly. They could if I walked around worrying about everything that someone says could harm me. But I don't, so they don't. And I do know that some of the things I listed have merit. Once upon a time I took the attitude that I was going to die of something some day, so I didn't pay much attention to a lot of warnings. Then I got really sick and the possibility of death turned far too real. I am more circumspect now, and if I've poked fun at your favorite cause, please forgive me. It's just that too often we get frightened about things that only might be harmful. So let's all relax, take things in moderation, and keep in mind that even though something's going to get us some day, we might as well enjoy what we have before us now...carefully.

Oh and by the way...has anyone ever calculated the toll that Hysterical Hacks take on human existence?

In the Bible, the book of Proverbs tells us that we need to hear both sides to get a whole story. It's a truth that points out the need of as much information as one can gather before coming to a conclusion. That particular bit of wisdom has served me well, though I've ignored it a few times, always to my peril. It first came home to me one evening as a young man of about 20. It was taught to me by my mother, who used the unusual medium of dishwashing soap to illustrate the consequences of ignoring that ancient maxim.

It happened one evening as I was headed out for an night on the town with the guys. My family had just finished supper. Grandpa was our guest that evening. Most nights he dined with Grandma at the nursing home but this particular dinner found him at our house. The meal was over, and he and Dad sat at the dining room table and played a game of Cribbage while Mom cleaned up the dishes. She filled her sink with soap suds just as I was heading out the kitchen door. The phone rang as I passed. Mom asked me to get it as her hands were all soapsuds.

I picked up the receiver. Being a smart-aleck I answered the phone, "Kelly's Brickyard. Kelly speaking!" The caller was Mr. MacEndarffer, a friend of Dad's and Grandpa's, who most people just called Mac. My oddball greeting caught him off guard but I quickly assured him that he had indeed dialed the right number. Once the issue was cleared up he asked to speak to Dad. I stepped back into the kitchen. "Dad," I called, "it's Mac." Mom continued her washing-up. We learned later that she had heard "Kelly" and "Mac" and thought the caller was our new minister, the Rev. Mack Kelley.

Dad took the phone and continued on as I'd started. "Yeah, yeah, this is Kelly..." he said. Overhearing this reinforced Mom's belief that the minister was on the line. After some brief chat Mac asked to speak to Grandpa. As it happened, Grandpa had taken an interest in religion with the onset of Grandma's illness and was scheduled to join the church in a few weeks. Mom thought that Rev. Kelley must have wanted to speak to Grandpa about the details of the upcoming event.

Dad called his dad to the phone. Grandpa took the receiver. "What the hell do you want?" he barked. Mom's eyes popped wide open and her jaw dropped, horrified that Grandpa had just cussed at the new preacher! She also dropped her platter flat into the sink. Soap suds flew across the cupboards, danced briefly in mid-air, and then dropped to the floor. The resulting tsunami overflowed the sink, dousing Mom's blouse. Dad and I looked at each other, wondering what could be wrong with Mom!

The confusion eventually got sorted out. Mom went upstairs to change her blouse while Dad and I cleaned up the soapsuds. Grandpa left to go to Grandma.