Union Pier, Michigan

August, 1949

Slightly more than a hundred miles southeast of Chicago, Union Pier had been developed after the turn of the century as a restricted summer vacation area for wealthy Chicagoans trying to escape that city’s extreme humidity and high summer temperatures.

Affluent businessmen from the Gold Coast and South Shore would deposit their families in their mansions or costly hotel suites for the unbearably hot months of June, July, August and September. They would then commute by car or train on a daily basis, or weekly, arriving in Union Pier on Friday and returning to their offices or factories on Monday.

  notation: The 18th amendment became law in 1920.

With prohibition the law of the land, Chicago bootleggers needed a safe port for the importation of illicit liquor from neighboring Canada.

Miles from Michigan City, Indiana, its largest neighboring city, already boasting an existing pier, and also having easily-bribed local officials, Union Pier became an excellent location for this illicit activity.

The area boomed… until the great depression of the late twenties forced most of the property into foreclosure.

Union Pier sat fallow until the late thirties and, in 1941, the advent of World War Two.

With the economy on a rapid upswing, big city speculators purchased most of the property for pennies on the dollar that were sold by bankers only too anxious to finally get these properties off their books.

The weathered, then shabby, mansions were quickly converted to boarding hotels. Acres of previously well-manicured lawns and tree-covered lots were made into groves of cheaply constructed cottages, and the area, once restricted to Jews, became the vacation place primarily for the lower and upper-middle class Jews of Chicago, Benton Harbor, Detroit and as far away as Windsor, Canada.

The Old Highway began at the recently widened New Highway just north of the Union Pier Bowl and ran west for a quarter mile before angling northeast, following the shoreline for better than three miles into neighboring Lakeside. Once past the bowling alley there was a one-story, wood-frame building, the Union Pier Business Center, consisting of a grocery store; a gift, novelty and drug store; and a real estate office. Just beyond the business center was a narrow, rutted road that lead to the Palladium. Besides the bowling alley, the Palladium’s rows of clanging pinball machines and its open dance floor was the only entertainment in town. Another dirt road, angling to the north, went about a quarter mile from the Palladium to merge with the black-topped Old Highway a half-mile north of the Old and New highway junction, actually making a quarter mile shortcut for anyone coming from Union Pier or Lakeside to shop at the business center, go to the Palladium or the bowling alley, or wait for the Greyhound bus that stopped in front of Union Pier Bowl.

Larger boarding hotels on the lake side, and tree-lined groves of cottages on the land side, followed one after the other on the old, two-lane highway.

With the exception of a few hardy gentile families, in winter the entire area was desolate and all but totally isolated.

Early spring: 1949

Due to a last minute cancellation, Myra Lipensky was able to rent a cottage that was even closer to the public entrance to the beach than the Parminter cottage. Public entrance meaning a weed-choked, not-too-steeply sloped path that had been etched by years of usage out of the high sand, weed and tangled-bush embankment that followed the shoreline mile after mile.

Within a grove of twelve furnished cottages, the Lipensky cottage had a moderately large kitchen/living/dining room combination, two small bedrooms, a bathroom with a shower stall only and a porch. The furniture consisted of a scarred wooden table and six rickety, reed-covered chairs, and a flaking set of mismatched, white wicker furniture consisting of a sofa, two armchairs and a coffee table. The burners of the stove and oven had to be lit with a match each time they were used. The once-white porcelain sink had been scrubbed gray by thousands of steel-wool pads. The old-fashioned, high-domed refrigerator had a wooden wedge shoved beneath one leg to keep it from rattling. The bedrooms each had twin beds and badly marred cigarette-burned dressers. The fully-screened porch faced the road, and had roll-up, orange- and brown-stripped canvas curtains to help keep the wind and rain out, and to assure privacy for anyone wanting to sleep outside.

Unless it became unseasonably cold, both Mitchell and then-five-year-old Lawrence planned on sleeping on roll-up cots outside.

August 3, 1949

With the orange, five-man war surplus, rubber and canvas raft perched atop their heads, looking much like a four-legged caterpillar, they made their way across the old highway, turned right and went forty yards.

“Ow!”

 “Ouch!” stepping on unseen rocks, stones and occasional bottle caps, to the path leading down to the beach.

 “Ohh!”

 “Jeeze!” Fighting gravity, hanging onto the quarter-inch line that ran around the circumference of the raft…

“Oh!”

“Shit!” as sharp-leafed weeds cut at their toes and legs.

 “Aie!”

 “Jesus!” Running across the scorching sand as the wind tugged at the top-heavy, inflatable raft.

 “Ahh!”

“Ahh!” Splashing into the cool lapping water, the raft, with its two metal oars held snugly under the compartmental, middle air-filled seat, was lifted off their heads in unison and flipped, landing right side up in the water of Lake Michigan.

It was 10:45 a.m.... and the start of the third day of the anxiously awaited Lipensky/Parminter vacation.

His nose red and peeling, wearing a blue, boxer-style bathing suit, Norman’s shoulders and back were burnt from the two previous days of continuous, unaccustomed sunshine on his light-complected skin.

Mitchell wore a yellow, brief-type bathing suit that showed in deep contrast to his already well-tanned body.

The boys had spent the first two days on the raft they’d bought with $17.50 each, coming from their Bar Mitzvah gelt that finally, with the help of their fathers, they were able to wheedle out of their tight-fisted mothers.

Sitting canoe style, one boy on either side of the raft with their outboard legs dangling in the warm water, they’d explored, paddling to the south, staying in water no deeper than needed to clear the oars so that they might better find what they were so hungrily searching for…

What else?

Girls!

Paddling till they’d spotted what looked like unaccompanied girls of their approximate age, they rowed ashore, pulled the raft onto the beach and, nonchalantly—so they thought—ambled toward their female prey, who were unaware—so they thought—of their approach.

Mitchell was far the better looking of the two, but still shy, found it hard to get a conversation started with an unknown girl. Norman, on the other hand, was clever and glib and more easily able to break the ice.

Going south the first two days, the boys had gone ashore nineteen times and the girls had been either too young, too old, or not pretty enough, and besides, the scene changed constantly and just because their “dream boats” weren’t there on the outgoing trip didn’t mean they wouldn’t be on the beach when they rowed back in a few hours, so why tie yourself down with anything less than what you really want? Which was, what else, but a long-legged, big-busted Miss Jewish America of 1949… or a fairly reasonable facsimile.

On this day, the third in Union Pier, they planned to explore north, towards the unknown.

Taking his glasses off, Norman put them into one of the provision pockets stitched onto the raft and snapped the pocket shut. Thinking he looked better without glasses during these expeditions, although a strain on his eyes, he preferred not wearing them just in case he should meet a girl he’d like to impress.

In daylight, without glasses, Norman’s eyes were a striking light gray, and in just the two days he’d been in it, the sun had bleached his hair from dark blonde to a kind of streaky platinum.

The mothers had been sitting on lawn chairs on the Lipensky lawn when the boys had returned the previous evening.

Carrying the raft, their heads had been hidden, and when they’d dropped it on the grass, “Vey-is-mere, they look like goys! Your Mitchell looks like a shvartzer,” Ida had laughed, “and my Norman looks like a Swede.”

If they should meet girls, they did not want to be taken for shaygets

 [gentiles], and shunned, so, to be on the safe side, Mitchell, as always, wore his mezzuza, and Norman, who rarely wore any type of jewelry due to his delicate skin, had a silver chain with a Star of David about his neck.

Pulling the raft ashore, the boys swam for a few minutes to cool off, then dragged the raft back into the water and jumped aboard.

                                        Peace

Straddling the tubular, semi-hard rubberized canvas, Norman sat on the starboard side and Mitchell port. Their outboard legs dangled in the water while their inboard legs, stretched forward, rested on the raft. In the direction they traveled, at that time of day the sun was behind them, shining pleasantly on their backs.

Paddling leisurely, the boys enjoyed the heat of the sun and the gentle bobbing motion of the raft on the water.

Mitchell felt the heat on his back and the right side of his face. He looked at the dark-brown skin of his thigh, still glistening with water, and at his stomach, darker where the wet flesh creased horizontally along either side of his navel, and at his upper arms. As the oar dipped in the water and was drawn back his biceps swelled and contracted with each pull and release.

The water was a dusky, greenish-blue, the sand at the water’s edge dark-brown, and higher, away from the lapping water, a light, golden-beige. The shrubbery on the embankment was brilliant green, the sky, radiant blue, and the clouds as white and feathery as tufts of pure white cotton.

The oar in his hands cut through the water as though moving by its own volition.

Breathing through his nostrils, he sensed the aroma of sand, of water, and the green growth.

The gentle onshore breeze skimmed warm water from the surface of the lake, bringing it inshore… to him.

Mesmerized by the all-enveloping beauty, the totality of what he felt, saw and sensed seemed too beautiful to be real and Mitchell felt as though he were living in a surrealistic dream.

Parting his lips, breathing through his mouth, he drew the sun-warmed, sea-cooled air deeply into his lungs.

He felt the hot sun and the tepid water.

He saw the sky, clouds, sand and shrubbery.

He sensed the sweet odors of life about him and felt…?

What?

Closing his eyes, the motion of the raft tranquilized him.

The tepid water caressed him.

The soft air kissed him, and…

Mitchell Lipensky had no way of knowing, but that very minute—that very moment—was the pinnacle and at no time in his life would he feel what he felt as strongly as at that exact time…

He knew nothing of death; those he loved were all alive.

He knew nothing of the pain of lost love.

He knew not of debt.

The war was a memory.

His country… America was a peace.

He’d made no mistakes… no mistakes of consequence.

His parents were together; his family intact.

There was nothing he needed—really needed—that he didn’t have.

The roads to his life were fully open to him.

Mitchell Lipensky looked about the beautiful world that encompassed him and felt the wonder of his strength.

The wonder of his youth.

Mitchell pulled the oar through the water and felt the miracle that, possibly, might be felt only by the very young, or the very innocent.

Peace.