In the summer of ’62 my family moved from one point in West Seattle to another about two miles to the south. Different neighborhood, different school. The local YMCA had a summer day camp program that would run for about five weeks and my parents thought it would be a good thing for me to go to as they moved from one house to the other. It was.
The camp was way off at someplace called Lake Fenwick. It was a big lake (to a ten year old) on the side of a hill. To get there we had to go through lots of farm land after we left West Seattle. Today was the first time I have been back to that lake.
One of the boys at camp was Jim Scott. He liked wearing a cowboy hat so all the other kids started to call him Stoney Burke. Stoney Burke was a TV show about rodeos. The title character was played by Jack Lord (pre Hawaii Five-0). Jim and I and several others seemed to get together all the time at camp and it was a blast. We played near the water and captured frogs and tadpoles among the lily pads.
Much to my surprise, Jim turned out to live two houses away from our new house. We also wound up in the same Boy Scout troop a few months later. At the end of the summer camp we all participated in a competition related to the President’s Physical Fitness Challenge. I still have the ribbon I won for doing 660 sit-ups in a row.
Strange to think that I now pass by the road to the lake almost every day I go to and from work. The vast farmland that we drove through, picking up other kids along the way, no longer exists. Southcenter Mall and miles of warehouses and miles of strip malls have replaced the farms. But the lake is still there. And it still looks like a nice place. Just watch out for the Urtica dioica (stinging nettles).
This last picture is my favorite for the day. The dull gray sky reflected into the water seems to make the lily pads float in the air.
