Lake Phalen - The Center of My Young World

I've been to more of Minnesota's supposed ten thousand lakes than I can count, but there's only one that really matters to me. I lived in a number of houses when I was growing up in St. Paul, most of them within a mile or so of each other. But despite several moves in my young life, there was one constant: Lake Phalen. Looking back, I think it was the center of my world. No matter what season it was, there was always something to do there. And that carried on from grade school well into adulthood. Even after college when I moved to Bloomington, I still came back regularly to do things at Phalen.

Phalen Beach (photo courtesy of streets.mn)

I have vague recollections of family picnics on the 'island' at Phalen Park near the lake. We would park nearby and carloads of relatives would unload kids and their gear, plus mountains of picnic baskets, coolers, and blankets, and we would all rush over the stone bridge across the Lagoon.

Of course, someone (usually my dad) had gone over very early in the morning to stake a claim to several adjoining picnic tables by securing tableclothes to the tops. Then once the cars started arriving, another Dewall family picnic would commence. The kids would set up croquet and badminton, and the moms would start laying the food out.

Just about every summer holiday merited a gathering. The most memorable of those picnics for me centered around the 4th of July. I have to chuckle as I think about those events, because I grew up thinking that it was all for me, since my birthday was July 3rd. Of course, my parents being very practical, saved my family celebration for that day since most of my mom's family would be there. I was pretty smug thinking that the rest of my siblings only got one birthday cake each year while I got several! (My mom made one, each of my grandmothers did as well, and sometimes an aunt or two would contribute one.) And to top it all off, there were fireworks after dark (which we watched from aluminum folding lawn chairs along the shore of the lake).

I'm not sure when it was, but obviously at some point I realized those celebrations were for the holiday and not just my birthday, but it sure was fun when I thought they were.

Another early memory is taking Red Cross swimming lessons at Phalen Beach. In the summer of 1962 we moved to a small one and a half story house on the corner of Earl and Orange, which put us within a few blocks of the beach house. It's long gone, falling victim to extensive remodeling of the area around the lake, but when I was young it was a concrete or stucco (as I recall) complex that included men's and women's sides with closed-in courtyards, toilets, showers, and concession stands. The swimming area was marked off by floating ropes and buoys, and there was a diving platform (we called it the dock) out in deeper water. Lifeguards were on duty from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day, and the beach was almost always packed. I think I was seven when I took my first lesson. My brother Tom, a year younger, was my swimming partner. I suspect my younger brother and at least one of my sisters took those lessons, too, but Tom is the one who sticks in my mind. We were close in age and tended to do things as a pair.

My dad was adamant that all of us would learn to swim. My mother never had, and I believe she had a fear of the water. I have a couple of faint memories of her coming with us to the beach, but she always sat on the blanket far from the water. We learned to run really fast across that hot sand - this was long before things like swim shoes had been invented. Of course, you could wear your flip-flops (called 'thongs' back then) to the water's edge, but then you ran the risk of them floating away or someone else taking them. I only needed that to happen once. Walking all the way home across hot asphalt and cement, finding relief on people's grassy front yards where I could, and then being chastised for losing my footwear cured me of doing that again. I think I just developed callouses on the soles of my feet and got really good at running!

At some point - fairly early on after we had moved to the Earl Street house - my mom let us troop off to the beach on our own, with me being responsible for my younger siblings. It amazes me to think about, because there's no way you would do that now. But it was common in the 50s and 60s to let kids go about the neighborhood on their own. Today they call it 'free range parenting.' In those days, it was just letting kids be kids. The East Side was a pretty quiet area, and most of the homes between our house and the beach were occupied by families we knew. I believe there was a big clock on the outside of the building (or at least one inside), so I could keep track of the time and know when to leave. Getting all of us back home on time was a requirement if there were going to be future outings.

Sometimes we took a few coins tied up in a handkerchief to be able to buy a cold drink or popcorn from the concession stand, but that was rare. We usually got by with drinks from the water fountain in the covered area between the two halves of the building. (That was also where you would go to escape the sun on hot days, but only for a little bit.)

As I got older, I got to ditch my siblings and instead would go to the beach with my friends. I can remember passing the older teens and college kids on a slope across from the beach house. We called it 'Pill Hill', and I suspect that not all the smoke drifting up was tobacco. You have to remember this was the late 60s/early 70s, and even the East Side wasn't immune to hippie culture. The older I got, the more I wanted to be part of that group on the hill. They looked like they were having so much fun, and besides it was cooler on the grass and there were shade trees!

But once I hit high school, the spot across the lake known as 'the Point' became a more frequent swimming and sun bathing spot. It wasn't an official beach, just a spit of land that jutted out into the water. There wasn't much sand, mostly grass and trees close to the water. There were no life guards, and it was a popular spot with kids my age or a bit older. On a regular basis the cops or park patrol would come and roust us out, but the next day we'd come back. The water was very shallow for a long way out, but there were drop-offs. More than one kid drowned there. There were also incidents due to kids swimming across the lake from the legal beach to the Point. It was almost a rite of passage for teens, but at least one guy didn't make it. The lifeguards at the beach kept their eyes out, but it was difficult to get a boat out into the water and to the middle of the lake quickly.

Somehow those drownings or near-catastrophes didn't stop people from swimming at the Point. After my husband and I moved back to the Cities in 1989, that was where we took our kids to swim. It wasn't crowded, it was cooler with the trees, and you could park on one of the side streets off East Shore Drive, just across from the water - much more convenient than the crowded beach across the lake.

But it was much more for me than the picnics and swimming. I had a number of friends that lived across the lake on the east side, where the 'rich' people lived, their newer houses much more impressive than the older homes on our side. We rode our bikes almost daily around the lake, and as we got older, 'cruising the lake' in our cars was one of the most popular high school activities. In those days you could drive almost completely around the lake. Renovations and reworking the park have changed the terrain and the roads. Wheelock Parkway comes all the way through now, but in those days it ended just a couple of blocks east of Arcade.

I also had a friend who lived on East Shore Drive - Mike. He had a Sunfish, a small sailboat that was easily portable. I think it was meant for two people, but we sometimes squeezed in four. My boyfriend and I had a couple of double dates with Mike and a friend on that boat. I do remember because it was small, it was easy to tip over when it was full. One one particular occasion, Mike and Scott had conspired to purposely swamp it and dump Leann and I into the water. Then Scott swam underneath the upturned boat and hid in the area by the hull where there was air. We were frantically looking for him the water, thinking something had happened. Not funny! The guys laughed, the girls not so much.

And then there was the tennis court complex. I played tennis in high school, and almost every day after school (unless I had to work), I was down there. Evenings as well, until it started to get dark. Later they put lights around the courts, but not back then. When you couldn't see the ball anymore, it was time to go home. The team practiced there several times a week as well, with Coach Hoff making us run around the outside of the courts to warm up. That in itself was something of an obstacle course, because the courts were fenced in with high chain link, and there was barely any room between the east side of the fence and the trees and bushes that came very close to the courts. When you hit that side, it was like running through the jungle. Between the scratches and the bugs, we got warmed up, all right.

And life around Phalen didn't end when the weather turned cold. Us Ray kids had a big plastic bucket with snow and ice tools that we would haul down to the ice. We'd drag along shovels to clear some of the snow off the lake to either skate or ice fish. I had a pair of old wooden cross country skiis that belonged to my mother's father, and we would take turns using them to glide down the little hills in the park area west of the beach. And of course, whenever it was Winter Carnival time, we'd take shovels and hand trowels and ice choppers to look for the medallion. We were always sure it was hidden somewhere near Lake Phalen, no matter what the clues in the Pioneer Press said.

It's funny, but even now when I hear the term, 'East Side,' the first picture that pops into my mind is something to do with Lake Phalen. I think it's kind of nice for a city girl to have memories associated with the great outdoors.