Playground
Say the word “playground” and I immediately think of Lake Lotawana, the man-made, 365-acre body of water where I grew up, located just 30 miles east of Kansas City.
As I reflect on my time growing up there, I realize how miraculous our lake house was! For starters, my parents bought the land in 1929, when the country was in full depression. My father was self-employed selling construction supplies and business was slow, but somehow my parents managed to buy lot H-12, which at that time, was literally miles from any water. A dam had just been built over a local stream and the lake was just starting to take shape.
The second miracle was the house itself. Dad had designed a combination of a house and boathouse, which was built on dry land before the lake was formed. The house had to be at the perfect level for a boat to fit properly in the boathouse section; if the house were too low, there wouldn’t be enough headroom for the boat, if the house were too high there wouldn’t be enough water to float a boat. The dam that determined the level of the lake was five miles away, but when the Lake finally filled, Dad had figured everything perfectly, the water covered the foundation and the boat slipped perfectly into its space—a remarkable feat! There were a couple heavy rains that raised the level of the lake too quickly for the spillway therefore causing the house to flood, but those were few and far between.
The next miracle was that they were able to build a house at all! They didn’t have funds to hire a contractor, so they built the house without spending a single dollar on outside labor. They did everything themselves, including the plumbing and electrical work. My dad even heated and bent railway ties to make beautiful andirons for the fireplace. The final touch was a beautiful stained-glass sailboat that graced the window in the entrance door.
As kids we were always around the water and the rule was that no kid left the house without his kapok life vest on. One Saturday the whole family was on the dock, so we were allowed to take our life vests off. Mine accidentally got kicked in the water and to everyone's amazement, it sank. I had been swimming around keeping both myself and my waterlogged life vest afloat. By age five I had learned to drive the outboard and even ride a surfboard. This was long before the invention of waterskiing.
I enjoyed wonderful summers at the lake through my high school and college days. When I was fourteen, I got a job working in the parts department of an automobile dealer in Kansas City, but I still commuted to the lake with my friends every night. Waterskiing came along and we made six-person pyramids for the holiday shows. The water ski jump we built was pretty crude. Because we couldn't afford plywood for the surface, we used boards instead; they were never perfectly even so it was like jumping off a washboard.
And, of course, sailing there was fantastic! The time I spent playing on that lake no doubt led to the time I spent as an adult teaching kids to sail, racing competitively, and exploring the world on a sailboat with my wife, Betty. I looked at the world as my playground, thanks to those early years on Lake Lotawana.