And it goes like this…

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Leave Those Feet at the Door

Washington Island has always been the keeper of all things precious for me. The Island has remained virtually unchanged in its appearance since I was a child, but the feelings it has always evoked in me have spanned my entire range of emotions. I have felt serenity, anger, peace and a sense of coming home on the seven square mile block of land.

My first memories of the Island began when I was just a small child. While I was born on the Island in Orville Wylie’s home, we moved away when I was just a baby. However, my grandparents remained in their Island home and my mother would ship her brood back up to the Island each summer when she was ready to pop out another one of my brothers (each of the three were born in July). This was no hardship for any of us kids; we loved the Island.

My grandma, Nanny, was the keeper of order. She fed us, clothed us and warned us with the direst warning, to never come into the house “with those feet”. Those feet had spent the day outdoors barefoot wandering the woods that surrounded their house. When a day’s worth of dust and maple sap had collected onto the bottom of our feet, she’d greet us in the front yard with a large metal washtub and begin the nightly ritual of washing our feet. The woman had no mercy. She would torture each one of us with a bar of soap and a firm hand over and over our ankles, arches and “filthy” toes. If you wiggled and giggled, she’d give you an extra dose of torture before finally releasing you to the waiting towel.

While my grandma was the keeper of order, my grandpa, Papa, was the commander of fun. My grandpa had the bluest of eyes and they would dance and twinkle as he sang and regaled us with stories and bits of knowledge he had collected over the years. He built us a small log cabin in the woods behind the house and we would stuff leaves between the logs to keep out the cold and wild creatures. My sisters and I played house for hours in our log cabin in the woods while Papa would occasionally drop by to encourage us to listen to the whistle of this bird or that.

Papa would take us for walks in the woods and would quiz us on which tree would produce the small pointy leaf and which had the yellow leaf with a green spine. We’d walk over and around large tree trunks that had fallen during some great storm and would sometimes gracefully tiptoe on top of it like a gymnast’s balance beam. He’d would tell us about berries and mushrooms and would at times “hush” us and whisper, “Listen, girls, just listen.” We would strain our little ears and look at our Papa with such adoration until he shared with us what it was that we were listening to.

After a hard day of play, we’d return to the house for supper.  My grandma cooked on a wood stove up until I was in high school and she could cook like no other. Our dinners would often consist of the day’s catch of lake perch, bread right from the oven and sauce. My mouth waters to this day when I think of Nanny’s “sauce”. We’d have our choice between cherry or raspberry sauce.

My memories are tinged with my grandparent’s crank phone with three shorts and a long designating an incoming call for the Jepsen’s. I think of rides to the dump in my grandpa’s telephone truck (he was “the” telephone guy on the Island) where we would walk on top of piles of discarded furniture, toys and other treasures until we found the needle in the haystack that would made our day. Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, Bill Anderson – all great country artists that would sing out their heartache into my grandparent’s yard through the large outdoor speakers Papa mounted on the front of the house. Maple syrup production, archery lessons, Papa tap dancing, a wringer washing machine and clothes hung on the line – all lessons taught by those professors of life – Nanny and Papa.

My youngest brother was born in 1965 when I was eleven. My guess is that may have been one of the last years that we spent any great amount of our summer time on the Island. Years to follow were filled with dread of days on the Island when my busy teenager life craved to be home partying with my friends rather than listening to that godawful country music or taking time to “hush” to listen to whatever it was making noise in the woods. The Island magic that was my childhood did not have a place in my hormone-filled adolescence.

My Papa was diagnosed with Alzeimer’s when I was in my early 20’s and he was in his mid-60’s. He could still regale us with the stories of his Coast Guard days and tap out a dance with a twinkle in his eyes, but he could not recognize me. My Nanny, bless her soul, lived until the ripe old age of 89 and then just closed her eyes one night and left us without making a fuss or a bother. Uff dah, Nanny, we thought you’d live forever.

A few years ago, I forced my husband to join me on a trip to the Island. We departed the ferry boat and made our way toward Gasoline Town Road. My husband looked at me and earnestly said, “I don’t get it. Why do you love this place? What do you see here that I don’t see?”  My eyes teared up and I said, “I see the Three Bears House in the woods. I see a metal washtub waiting for a good foot washing. I see Nanny and Papa waltzing on their front yard to Skeeter Davis. I see my roots.”

My life has been richer for those summers I spent on Washington Island.

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