Times are changing

My last post had to do with the journey from our city home to our summer cottage. Our drive to the lake was always the same route along state two lane highways and country back roads.
Things changed one summer during the 1950s.
Our cottage stood on a street called First St. It was a dirt road and there were only four houses on it. At the very top of First St. sat a wood frame Catholic Chapel which was owned and operated by the Diocese of Monroe, Michigan. It was only used in the summer months to accommodate people, like our family, who came to Luna Pier just for the summer. There was only one Mass said on Sunday and we always attended it because that meant we could sleep later and not have to drive to the small town of Erie and St. Josephs Church. When I say wood frame, I mean it literally. This was a bare bones wood structure, painted white on the outside, while the interior had absolutely no ornamentation or statues or any kind of embellishment. What I recall vividly was that it was always crowded, always hot and there were no pads of the kneelers. For a five year old, this was the worst thing I had to endure.
Next to the chapel there was a tiny house painted pink and inhabited by a middle age couple who lived there all through the year. I can't remember their name, but I seem to remember thinking they weren't very friendly. They probably dreaded our arrival with all our noise and boisterous shenanigans.
Then came our house. It was a two story rectangular home painted barn red and trimmed in white. It had a smallish side yard with two large trees perfect for climbing, and a white picket fence in front of it along the road.
Next to us, at the end of the street sat a small one story dwelling that had some sort of siding on the outside that always reminded me of sandpaper. The name of that family was Perry. They were our next door neighbors all the years I was growing up. They also lived in Luna Pier all year long.
Across the street there was only one house, or I should say a large two family house. Before I came along, the place was owned by a huge Irish clan who came only for the summer and brought all their friends. My parents and older siblings used to reminisce about the days when the O'Dwyers lived there and all the fun they had together. That house was vacant for much of the fifties until a family moved in from Toledo later in the decade.
Our street was a dead end and behind it was an enormous corn field owned by a farmer named Cousino who lived at the far end of the field. That field was a great source of fun for us. We used to love to play hide and seek in the midst of it, all the while dreading being caught by the farmer because we knew he would yell at us and tell us to get off of his property. The corn field stretched all the way to the railroad tracks I mentioned in my earlier post.
In the summer of 1955 we arrived at the lake to find road scrappers and bulldozers and dump trucks lined up along the country lanes. President Eisenhower had started to build the interstate highway system and I75 was going to be put in right between the cottage and the railroad tracks. That whole summer we had all the noise it takes to build an interstate highway. All day long the trucks and dirt spreaders went back and forth behind our house, approximately one half mile away. As children, we were fascinated by the enormous machinery and power of the road scrappers noisily doing their work and we would go into the field and run to the edge of the work site to watch more closely with fascination.
After that, Luna Pier was never as quiet as before. We could always hear the interstate. Up until then, as we fell asleep, all we could hear were the raindrops tapping on the wooden roof during a summer shower, and now and then the lovely, soothing whistle of a freight train.
This intruder, this sign of progress, did not dampen our spirits. Our daily lives remained the same. In the evening we could see the sun begin to stretch farther and farther over the flat landscape toward the west. Often, after an especially beautiful sunny day, Dad would call us to one of the windows that faced the stunning red, orange and pink sunset. He would talk to us about the beauty and uniqueness of the world and the wonders it provided. And he would tell us that we mustn't take this sight for granted, after all, "if this sunset only happened every ten years, people would come from all over just to get a look at it". So true.