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| Alice and Me | On the shores of Silver Lake, Michigan |
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| Sand-Dune Buggies - Click to enlarge - Click back to return |  |
Lying down on the top of the sand dunes and then rolling side ways all the way down until splashing into either lake was pure joy.
There is an icy cold stream that runs from the lake through the woods, to the road into the park, to past the park store. And that's as far as I followed it. The store was always the goal.
We joked around to the boys that whistled at us, as they passed by in their "to die for" cars. Our favorite joke was: They would ask us if we wanted a ride and we would say, "Do you have any gas", and they would say, "Sure" and we would say, "Then step on it". And of course, we laughed and laughed as they went fuming by.
Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
I never have seen such a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do; For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied; But what it needs most of all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door, Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and help up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.