This one year in the early seventies, probably 1971 or 72 since I think Russell wasn't much older than a toddler, I remember bits and pieces of a rare family vacation: a summertime week at a rented camping cabin on Webster Lake just past the northwest corner of Rhode Island in Massachusetts. The full name of this lake is Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg or simply Lake Chaubunagungamaug for short. Ya, right. It's famous for that outrageously long Nipmuck name, but I'm pretty sure we knew it as just Webster Lake.
The cabin was one of several lined up along a slightly sandy shoreline at the end of a windy dirt road surrounded by what looked to me like a foreboding dark and dense forest. The place was very spartan with furnishings not updated since the early 50s, not so long ago in years from that time but styles had changed enough so it was noticeable, even to a young interior décor savvy gayboy of about 7 or 8.
Well-worn shellacked wood framed couch and chairs with rough, almost burlap texture green upholstered boxy cushions. Tiered end tables and table lamps featuring faux Indian stretched "cowhide" lampshades stitched with rawhide string. I remember the adorable glow these lamps gave off, and the volumes of hungry mosquitoes they attracted.
The room featured a TV, also from the 50s, a bubble-shaped screen affair with rabbit ears which barely got a signal from either the Providence or Boston stations. I think we had one UHF station that came in well enough, and I remember one night, sitting around the bluish glow, we munched on popcorn and watched a showing of "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." Later, my father swilled down his Narragansett beer in greater quantities as he yelled at us kids to go to bed or he'll "get out the strap," as we cried woefully through that sleepless night, the ominous shadows of the swaying trees cast by the eerie moonlight upon the knotty pine walls of our bedroom, perhaps luring the Creature to rise from the lake and murder us in our sleep.
The true reason for the getaway was revealed soon enough as my father got busy each morning for a long, languid day of fishing off the dock. He tasked me to learn his favorite and sacred pastime yet I immediately turned out to be quite the tragic case of utter shame and disappointment when I balked at the whole experience entirely:
Carrying pole and tackle box to the dock: Fumbled and stumbled.
Grabbing nightcrawlers (even the name of the bait freaked me out) from the bucket: Ewww!
Impaling the slimy, wriggling thing on the sharp, threatening hook, its guts oozing down my fingers carrying clumps of black dirt with it: I started bawling.
Never mind getting to the point of sitting under the blistering hot sun in awkward silence with my line in the murky water waiting for a nibble. Oh he tried...he set up a rod for me, the nibble came and I just about ignored it. I'd seen the end result of a catch...slippery, razor-scaled, pokey-finned, smelly fish that needed rough handling to wrest its silently-screaming mouth from the hook torture device from which it helplessly dangled. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Needless to say, this would be the last time my father and I spent any "quality" one-on-one time with each other. I couldn't wait to wash that icky lake grime away, get dressed in a nice summery cotton ensemble and stand with arms akimbo in the one room cabin pondering what drape selection could possibly improve these dire mid-century rustic digs. Or at least I daydreamed. What would my father think of that?