sauble beach, part one

In retrospect, Sauble's got everything a kid could possibly want. Vast tracts of beach. Dunes. No perilous drop offs, sharks, or jellyfish. No sand fleas. No sea-borne rubbish. Waves on occasion and a mild undertow. Sure it's blue-lip-inducingly cold most of the year, but there's got to be some aspect of summer vacation that toughens you up and makes you less of a namby pamby baby who'll get bullied when school starts, right?

Although I've been in the ocean a few times and I've spent plenty of hours floating about in other lakes, Sauble has been deeply imprinted on my brain. When I dream about "water", I dream about Sauble. At least once a month I dream about swimming at Sauble - this despite having been in the water at Sauble maybe three times in the past, oh, eight years.

I am pleased beyond belief that we now own a house near Sauble. It was truly the highlight of my summer being driven by Anne in her rental car, listening to the Black Eyed Peas, in the backseat with Phet, with both of our heads stuck inside an upside-down rubber dinghy (that had been threatening to fly off Mum and Dad's roof-rack), on the way to Sauble Beach! And then getting to Sauble and not only are we there, and Mum and Dad, and Ji, but so is Phet's family! And the Bristowe-Turners! And the Dwyers! Anyone who tells you that Muskoka's where it's at, or that the Hampton's are that place to be, has got their head screwed on wrong. Sorry, fellas, Sauble Beach is the bomb.

And did I mention the fries? Oh. My. God. The fries are good. I don't generally eat fries, but I was vulturizing those fries at Sauble. They tasted so insanely good it was like they were the fries of the gods. Sizzled on Mount Olympus with the fire of Zeus's lightning. Crisped to perfection in single batches by the Kitchen God. Blessed by all the angels and saints, who are up there singing endless lofty spires of the Halleluja For The Fries chorus.

When we got to the beach one day, Sarah had just gotten a box of fries and gravy. She very sadly knocked some of the fries into the sand, and while I was helping to clean up, I couldn't help but pop one sand-free fry into my mouth. (I hadn't had Sauble fries for a verrrrry long time and had forgotten just how goddamn great they were). The still-hot, crispy outer surface crunched between my teeth, yielding up a warm and softly delicious inner yumminess. I pretended to continue helping to clean up, but really I was just dusting off the sandy, salty fries and stuffing them in my gaping maw.

Then Dad turned up with a giant box of fries, and I had to try and count (one mississippi, two mississippi, oh god lord let me horf down those fries mississippi) out break-intervals between the stuffing so that people sunbathing near us wouldn't be terrified of my vast and unappeasable apetite - an apetite likely to seize control of my entire body and force it to go and snatch fries out of the hands of passers-by, and jam them into my own mouth. It was clear that everyone on our blanket felt the same way. We all hovered and hoovered around the box of fries, trying to cover our gluttony with nonchalance. No one was fooled. We had obviously come under the spell of the Sacred Fries. [Countryside-7-September-2005]