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46 I think we were there two years because I remember being in the main house and also in a little green cottage they rented which was right down on the river's edge. Aunt Tisha's was not over 100 yards from the place where the Salmon River emptied into Lake Ontario. The lake shore was a sandy beach for miles in both directions. Across the river mouth from Aunt Tisha's, there was a sandy point between the river and the lake, and there were a few cottages along the beach plus some low trees. About a mile east along the shore, a sizeable creek emptied into the lake although it was shallow enough to be waded without trouble. Also to the east, or maybe northeast would be more accurate, along the lake, were almost endless sand dunes, some I'd guess 20-30 feet high. We kids used to love to roll down these dunes. Also this general area was the site for picnics, where you could be sheltered from the wind by getting in behind the dunes if necessary. My first recollection of peanut butter sandwiches stems from these dune picnics. There was good fishing in the Salmon River and my father enjoyed rowing up the river a mile or two, I frequently accompanying him, and fishing. The Barnes family who lived across from the Sedgwick Farm Club in Syracuse, had a cottage up the road a few steps from Aunt Tisha's, and I used to play with John and Mary. Across the road from the Barnes' place, there was a tiny store where you could buy candy and gum, and it was a thrill to be able to go in there with a few pennies and emerge with some gooey stuff you shouldn't eat but was very pleasant. There was a dock into the river in front of Aunt Tisha's and beside it, was a shallow, sandy area where we kids bathed. But the real excitement for us was to watch the older kids dive into the river off a springboard on the dock. Gere Hawley was the most sensational diver; he'd start running way back on the lawn, spring across the dock, and out onto the board, and when he leaped from the end of the board, it looked as though he was going to land on the other side of the river. Among the older boys was a very nice teenager from Syracuse named Brick Tallman who was very good with the young fry. However, the Bennetts were vacationing at Selkirk and Dana, the demon, took some sort of an antipathy for Brick and attacked and actually bit him during the encounter; Brick was perhaps 12 and Dana 8. But the event which made the most lasting impression on me at Selkirk was a drowning, the first time I'd ever consciously come into contact with death. I man at the hotel had gone swimming alone in the lake and had swim several hundred yards out into the lake when he had a bad cramp and drowned. They recovered his body by dragging and all I can remember was a crowd of people around the body on the beach by the lighthouse, and being able to see this inert figure lying on the sand, and understanding that this figure was a dead man. It was a new and shocking idea that somebody could thus die in such a pleasant place and so unexpectedly, and so NEARBY, near enough to be lying there on the sand, never to rise again.
Transcription Notes:
mandc: correction needed, ninth line from bottom, change "swim" to "swum."