BOOM

I think my family started going up to the Lake when I was six. We bought a house the following year. Picture this house, but white with green trim/shutters:


And in a different location. I’ll get to that.

In 1990, my parents decided that rather than doing all the fixing that was going to be needed on the old/existing cottage, we’d build a new cottage on the same site, from scratch. You’ve seen a million pictures of this house. Here’s the easiest one for me to grab, since I'm too lazy to go hunt for a better one:


In order to clear the site for the new cottage, we sold the existing cottage for a paltry sum on the condition that it was moved off-site by a certain date. Somewhere, I have pictures of that white-and-green cottage on a cart, being moved down to the end of the street.

That’s where it stood for 18+ years. Down at the end of the street. We passed it on the way to our (shiny new) cottage every time we came in or out of VBP. At one point, it was sold and the new owners did an amazing job of fixing it up. They had cool flowering bushes up on the street, flowers in the boxes, the whole shebang.

Sunday morning, my mom called. The old cottage? It went BOOM on Saturday night.


The owners -- the ones who did all the work to make it look great and be comfy for the bulk of the year -- were at the restaurant just outside of the community when a fire started, probably in an upstairs bedroom. It consumed enough of the house that (they think) it got to the gas water heater, gas stove, gas furnace. Explosions were heard. Shockingly, the next-door neighbors slept through the whole thing.

I’m quite interested to see what it looks like when I get up there in a few weeks. And I’m very thankful nobody was hurt in the fire! Pardon me while I scurry off to find fire extinguishers for this house and the lake!