It’a 8:00 a.m on Saturday, already a beautiful sunny day . and I’m looking out at Magician Lake. Magician Lake does hold magic for me.

In the fall of 1966, when I was only twenty years old, I student taught at Algonquin Jr. High in Des Plaines, Iliinois. (I went on to be hired after graduation and remained in Des Plaines until 1981 when David was born.) Almost immediately after meeting Dorothy Bishop, the “Spanish Coordinator”, I met Bonnie who served as the department secretary. She and her husband Bill lived only a few blocks from school with their 8th grade daughter Jan and 4th grade son Michael. Little did I know then how our lives would inter-twine.

One of the first things I learned about Bonnie was that she had grown up in “Spinks Corners” near Sister Lakes, Michigan. Somewhere in the late 60’s, Bonnie and Bill took the huge leap of buying a traditional small summer cottage on Magician Lake. They spent every weekend and most of the summers here. Eventually, they tore down the cottage and built a year-round cedar home and retired here.

Meanwhile, back in Des Plaines, Club 62 was beginning, although it didn’t have a name at the time. There were 12 schools in Des Plaines and Spanish was taught in grades 5-8, so we were a large staff. We had meetings every other Monday that often lasted until 6:00 p.m. since everyone was expected to share their teaching ideas, problems and successes. From those staff meetings also developed plans to make presentations at conferences and eventually the “Fiesta”, a huge daylong community event, was born. With all that togetherness and, because we all were either single or newlyweds, we became a very close group as school spilled over into our personal lives.

The staff changed from year to year, of course, but the core remained even as people changed jobs or stayed home with babies. Susan, Max and Annie had started a couple of years before I arrived. A few years later Pat and Sharie were hired, followed by Chris, Susan P. and Gina. Mary Pat arrived when ESL began. Then we began to adopt teachers from other disciplines—Rita, Darlene, Lorraine, Sherrill and Mary Anne-- who were “our kind of people” (the phrase Dorothy used when she found a new teacher who was a match for our department’s personality). Finally “Club 62” with its regular monthly breakfasts, officially began about 12 years ago when we realized that we were in danger of drifting apart as life took us to different jobs and locations.

Throughout all these years Bonnie has been a constant. Being a few years older than the rest of the group and being available in the Spanish office, Bonnie listened to and talked us through the boyfriends, the difficult classes, the weddings, the pregnancies, the toddlers, the celebrations and the sad times. We were the ears for her life’s events as well.

Starting in the early 70’s small groups occasionally went to Magician Lake and eventually “El Escape” was born and all of us would spend a precious few days together in the summer. (How many people would host 10 people for three days!) Even when husbands and babies came along, El Escape was a priority because those three days of laughter, wine and cheese on the pontoon boat, sun-bathing, strawberry picking, shopping, bridge and eating would see us through the rest of the year. Although “El Escape” sadly ended in the years following Bill’s death, it has come back in recent years. We are almost all retired now but we feel like the 20 year olds we were when this all began.

Did I mention silly? This is the group that once (a long time ago, thankfully) had a thigh measuring contest. Once all the españolas circled the cabin late at night chanting the Three Bears play that we all had taught to 5th graders. Last night the laughter developed over confessions of getting your finger caught in your nose while washing your face, giving cats baths, and hearing “Viagra” when “Ibruprofen” was intended…..this after seven of us stood on the train platform in St. Joe waving like a bunch of idiots as the eighth member of this weekend’s group arrived from Chicago. Who knows what silliness today holds?

I’m sure up for it!


P.S. - It's now Monday morning. I'm happy to be home today as I may have actually "used up all my words" (one of Ken's sayings) but, oh, what fun it was using them up! What a blessing to have people who know all my warts and all my history, but still like me!