Horseshoe Pond

Semester conversion at the university is spiraling down to its inevitable conclusion: the start of our first fall semester in a few short weeks. My summer has been unusually short between study abroad on the front end and fall semester on the other. Nevertheless, I've managed to pack in Scandinavia, a little gardening, some time with friends, and, now, a little visit to Erie. Our annual family picnic was on Sunday, so I went up a few days early for a visit.

The other night, my sister, Jane, and I took her son, Mike, to his karate class picnic out at Presque Isle State Park. While Mike ran around with his friends and Jane chatted with some of the other Karate parents, I roamed around the area near Water Works beach. I've written about the peninsula before: it's the real star of my hometown, and one of my favorite places. Its central feature is a seven-mile stretch of Lake Erie sand beaches, but that's not all it has to offer. While the beaches are on one side of the peninsula, the sparkling bay is on the other side. There's a lagoon--once a series of isolated ponds that were connected by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s--there are several wooded hiking trails, a couple of lighthouses, and birding opportunities aplenty. There are also a bunch of houseboats, and that's where my walk led me the other night.

I've always been drawn to the houseboats on Horseshoe Pond. There are only twenty something of them, and when I was a kid, they always looked like playhouses out on the water: I guess that's kind of what they are. They're all privately owned summer houses, and the backyard is fabulous: the whole peninsula! If you scroll down a bit in this article, you'll find a piece about one of the houseboats.
http://www.lakeerieliving.com/Main/Articles/Uncommon_Cottages_629.

I walked past the houseboats to the North Pier Lighthouse and back again, and as I got to Horseshoe Pond on my return trip, I saw a big Caddy pull up. I noticed the New York license plates right away as it pulled into the dirt parking lot near the pond. The window rolled down, and a dark-haired middle-aged woman leaned her head out of the window and shouted to me, "Hey! Do you live here?" I thought she meant the houseboats, so I said, "No! I wish!" "YOU wish? she asked, sounding incredulous. "I'm from New York City!" It was then that I realized that she was really asking me if I lived in Erie, and it was clear that, for her, the Big Apple had nothing on the Gem City. I grew up wanting to leave Erie. I guess lots of kids want to leave their hometowns, especially small towns, imagining life is more interesting elsewhere--especially if that elsewhere is NYC. I guess I agreed with Erie's "mistake on the Lake" nickname back then, though it didn't take me long to miss it and wish I could move back.

The dark-haired woman climbed out of the Cadillac and continued shouting to me as I walked by. "Where do you live?" she hollered after me. I told her and she yelled, "What's your tax rate?" I told her it was 6.5% and she one-upped that by shouting back, "Oh my God! Ours is 8.8%!" As I walked back towards the picnic shelter, I heard her shouting across the pond to a houseboat dweller, "Hey mister, are these for rent or privately owned?" I could almost imagine her disappointment when the shout came back across Horseshoe Pond: "Privately owned--all of them." This woman might not make a peninsula houseboat her summer home, but she certainly didn't see Erie as any kind of "mistake." She'd found on Presque Isle what I find on every return trip home: the gem in the Gem City.



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