Today my Chicago cousins, aunt, mother, and grandmother and I met up in Lafayette, IN. We decided to repeat our holiday get together we used to do 20 years ago at a hotel in Lafayette. Sitting at the Lafayette Brewing Company for dinner, we recalled all kinds of memories we had of our summers at Bear Lake. My cousin L, who was no more than 10 years old the last time we went, asked, “Was there a lot of drinking up at Bear Lake?” I could feel my mom, who spent most of her time reading and drinking tea by the dock or shopping every nook and cranny in a 70 mile radius, rolling her eyes. “I recall trash cans full of beer and ice,” she said. “But it was only beer,” my grandmother of 86, drinking the house lager, said in defense. We all laughed. We finished the evening playing ridiculously comical Christmas charades with the help of some of Milwaukee’s best.
