Althouse: "How did the adults of my youth manage these gatherings so effortlessly? Part of the answer is Oh, Dad, too: Life was simpler."

July 4, 2026

"How did the adults of my youth manage these gatherings so effortlessly? Part of the answer is Oh, Dad, too: Life was simpler."

"Lake houses were more affordable then, and less fancy. No dishwasher, no A.C., no TV. And no choices. Meals happened at fixed times. You ate what appeared. Cleanup by committee followed, and then the moms would declare, 'The kitchen is closed,' with despotic authority. If we got hungry later, there were snacks. Snacks that would make a nutritionist spiral: Ruffles and onion dip, port wine cheese food. Breakfast was sugary cereal. Lunch was mystery bologna. Dinner was barbecue, beans and slaw. Repeat until Labor Day."

Writes Dan Kadlec, in "The Lake House That Taught Me How to Dad" (NYT)(gift link, in case you need to learn to dad).

32 comments:

The Drill SGT said...: true dat; 7/4/26, 10:39 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Never having a "Lake house" i guess that's the way it was. But "Breakfast was sugary cereal. Lunch was mystery bologna." sound like my feeding schedule in 4th grade.; 7/4/26, 10:40 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Usually i got an apple or bananna and some sort of sandwhich - sometimes tuna salad or salami instead of bologna. Oh, and left over Chicken or Roast Beef from last night's dinner.

Later, my mother got more creative with Lunch. But that was the standard elementary lunch box meal.; 7/4/26, 10:42 AM
bagoh20 said...: As I remember it, my family was always partying: camping fishing, card parties, barbecues every holiday, especially in summer. It did seem effortless, and I don't remember any disasters. There was more personal independence and responsibility then. A kid over 6 had to be missing a long time before anybody got concerned. I could have had rigor mortis before any one came looking for me.; 7/4/26, 11:16 AM
Wilbur said...: Where I grew up owning a lake house would have indicated you were rich.

I didn't know anyone with a lake house, but then I didn't know anyone who went to summer camp either.; 7/4/26, 11:18 AM
Lazarus said...: People without outrageous wealth were able to buy vacation homes on Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket or at least Cape Cod in my parents' day. Another thing today's young people have to resent. Kadlec does appear to be overlaying a typical (1970s?) childhood with the lake house theme though. Even then, vacation homes weren't possible for everyone.

What is it about lake houses that makes people think of time travel? Refer to the 2006 film with Keanu and Sandra Bullock.; 7/4/26, 11:20 AM
tcrosse said...: When I was very young we would go to Sugar Camp Lake, WI. The cabin had no electricity and no indoor plumbing. I remember fishing with a drop line from a rowboat, and the men rowing across the lake for a beer run.; 7/4/26, 11:36 AM
Hassayamper said...: As I remember it, my family was always partying: camping fishing, card parties, barbecues every holiday, especially in summer. It did seem effortless, and I don't remember any disasters.

My wife is a neat-freak and hermit, bordering on having a touch of agoraphobia and/or OCD, and hates entertaining. This is one of her few flaws.

It was a rare month in my childhood when we did not have family, friends, or strangers (to me) over for a sit-down dinner or a backyard barbecue and pool party. My dad was a gregarious Rotary Club type and I got to meet people from all over the world at these dinners. My mom didn't seek out such get-togethers, but as a much more indifferent housekeeper she didn't really mind them either.

I miss the fun and conversation of a well-lubricated 3-hour dinner with guests, and would like to do as we did in the old days, but it causes my wife actual mental anguish that she complains about for days or weeks before and after the event. She still grumbles about a Thanksgiving 20 years ago when she thought she was given too little help with the cleanup. It does no good to remind her that her mother and sisters, along with myself, made every dish except for my wife's famous candied yams, and that she is the only one in the family with such exacting standards of spotless cleanliness.; 7/4/26, 11:38 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: Now approaching 80 yo, I am full-time single father of a 15 yo daughter, and I'm raising her the same way I did her brothers, now in their 50s. Three major rules, adjusted age-appropriatel --

a) Safety is paramount, your own and that of others. [That's not as bad (restrictive) as it sounds, but on a farm it is essential.]

b) Treat everyone , even if you don't like them, are pissed off at them, or they are non-abusively mistreating you. Lying is not decent.

c) Be a good housemate. Keep your own space neat and tidy. Do your share in common areas and endeavors.

Makes it vastly easier to deal with standard-issue kid stuff. The boys' mum was often away for months due to work requirements, so mostly full-time single dad during farming season, and it worked pretty well most of the time.

Daughter's mother [different woman and we adopted the child} was arrested, removed from the home and convicted of serial domestic violence. Under a strict No-Contact order ... did not follow Rule 2.; 7/4/26, 11:54 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: b) Treat everyone decently .... [accidentaly deleted]; 7/4/26, 11:58 AM
Mason G said...: "Where I grew up owning a lake house would have indicated you were rich."

That's what it was like where I grew up, too. Our "lake house" was a space at a forest service campground.; 7/4/26, 12:12 PM
Wince said...: I certainly hope his story was preceded by a lakefront acknowledgement.; 7/4/26, 12:16 PM
paminwi said...: I love my lake house. Never understood when my mom and dad could sit on their deck and just watch the world go by. I totally get it now. I always have a book to read and there are a few games my husband & I play when we feel like it. I deal with chaos whenever my kids and grandkids can come which is rare these days since they live so far away. But enjoy the chaos nonetheless.; 7/4/26, 12:19 PM
Original Mike said...: Children and grandkids up to the lake house currently. Just watched the 4th of July boat parade. Very patriotic, with all of the 4th trappings. One fellow in a boat had an elaborate eagle costume. A real eagle watched it with us from one of the large white pines directly behind us.

Up the Rebels!
Down the British!; 7/4/26, 12:37 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: Clark Griswold: "Our holidays were always such a mess.”
Clark Sr.: "Oh, yeah."
Clark Griswold: "How'd you get through it?"
Clark Sr.: "I had a lot of help from Jack Daniels."; 7/4/26, 12:38 PM
wendybar said...: We couldn't afford to go on any vacations. We lived in a very diverse neighborhood, and the only kids I know who got to go on vacation (A CRUISE) were the black kids who lived behind me. His mother worked for the state...and got a part time job at a store so she could buy her son a tuxedo from a store called Railroad Salvage to go on the cruise. We set up a tent in the back yard.; 7/4/26, 12:53 PM
Howard said...: The cohort in and near the greatest generation liked to get together with friends for camping cookouts and parties. Gallons of Gallo and overflowing ashtrays. A target rich environment for kids to steal alcohol and cigarettes.; 7/4/26, 1:48 PM
rehajm said...: Northwest Connecticut is not near the Berkshires. Ask anyone in the Berkshires…; 7/4/26, 2:02 PM
Joe Bar said...: When my Dad retired from the Air Force in 1972, he spent his last year there building a house for us on a small lake in western Massachusetts. That's where I went to high school. I fondly recall all of the activities in that article, except we also had winters on the icy lake, with fishing and racing studded dirt bikes on the frozen surface.

The fact that he pulled this off with a retired major's pension always amazed us. He was a really frugal guy, though. He designed and built much of the house in his spare time. Me and my brothers did a lot of the grunt work on the yard, and on the roof, shingling.

The house is still there, although my mom moved on after his death at an early age. Great memories and skills learned remain.; 7/4/26, 2:04 PM
Joe Bar said...: Prior to that, in the mid 60s, my Dad used to take us to "Higgin's Cabin," a bare hunting lodge on Moosehead Lake in Maine. The only access at the time was by canoe, and we had to portage some of the way. Great fun for elementary school aged kids. No electricity on running water out there, but lots of lake and woods stuff to do.; 7/4/26, 2:08 PM
Justabill said...: I fondly remember my grandmother’s cottage on Lake Ontario. Even the dog rolling in the dead fish on the beach. But I don’t think that I would want to own one.; 7/4/26, 2:40 PM
Mason G said...: I imagine not too many people would want to own a dead fish on the beach.; 7/4/26, 2:57 PM
n.n said...: Patience and love in moderation.; 7/4/26, 3:13 PM
Jamie said...: My grandmother, an only child, inherited her father's two small farms outside LaCrosse, WI (her mother died when she was 4, but I think the farms actually came from her mother's family). When I was a child, they still owned one of the farms and I treasure my few memories of visiting there (my dad was in the Air Force and we were only able to visit our extensive extended WI family when we were in driving distance). There was nothing to do except wander around, and it was wonderful.

With our own young kids, we lived outside West Chester, PA, in a neighborhood in which some 10% of the horses were owned by people who had grown up in that very neighborhood. It was idyllic. A few of our neighbors had access to family lake or shore houses; more rented the same condo, apartment, hotel room, or house every year for a week at the shore. We ourselves owned a ski boat with two other families, with a third family - originally our boat partners, but they sold their half to the other two - owning a small yacht, like 35', with which we would raft up just outside the no-wake zone of our marina so the relaxers could hang on the big boat and the adventurers could go around on the ski boat. Awesome summer days.

A vacation home was technically in our reach at that point. But because, unlike many of our neighbors, we had no family in the area, it seemed silly to try to establish a family center there.

Now, my extended family holds a big reunion every year in Door County (it's going on right now), which we try to attend every few years. Door County isn't especially eat to get to, but it IS fairly centrally located, and it's generally cooler than a lot of places where the family has settled. (Not this year, necessarily!); 7/4/26, 3:27 PM
Justabill said...: After I wrote that I thought that someone would make a comment about owning a dog, not owning a dead fish. Ambiguity piled upon ambiguity. So embarrassing.; 7/4/26, 3:35 PM
Mason G said...: "So embarrassing."

No, not at all. It just struck me as funny, that's all.; 7/4/26, 3:45 PM
mccullough said...: When will people realize the Post-War years were the economic anomaly in U.S. history?; 7/4/26, 3:53 PM
Narr said...: "Lake house" was not a concept in my family or neighborhood, middle-class though we were. Our threshold for rich was having an inground pool.

Before my father died, we were upwardly mobile, with Florida beach vacations (cabins, not hotels for mom and dad, all us boys, dad's sister and mother [our Oma]) and a new Buick every couple of years. After he died, and in the three years before she died, his spinster sister took all four of us off our mother's hands for road trips to Hot Springs and Daytona Beach (a nice hotel for once). Also, I got a three-week trip to Europe with her and Oma, who had family and even some business there. Unlike my older brother--who had been tested by a road trip with them the year before--I wasn't a spoiled brat asshole.)

The same aunt paid for my next brother and me to go to a two-week(?) day camp at the prep school nearby. I didn't want to go and had a lousy time, but Freddie enjoyed it.; 7/4/26, 4:11 PM
Narr said...: My son's girlfriend's grandparents have a lake house near Bolivar, and they go up pretty frequently. If their relationship lasts I'm sure we'll be invited eventually.; 7/4/26, 4:14 PM
Jim at said...: My wife and her family are currently at the lake house (cabin at Lake Quinault). I'm home making sure someone doesn't burn down our primary residence.; 7/4/26, 4:17 PM
Christopher B said...: Twisting the kaleidoscope a bit, this doesn't sound too far off from RV camping that is pretty familiar from my childhood in the late 1960s- early 1970s. We didn't have one (Dad had plenty of time camping in the Army and being outdoors on a farm) but I saw them a lot at the river/creek/pond side campgrounds in our stretch of north Iowa. Mostly solid middle-class folk in tent campers and trailers. If you got into the self-propelled models you were living pretty high on the hog (though Winnebagos were built about 30 miles from my hometown).

I suspect it may have been more common then because I'm also sensing a theme of semi-permeance (you aren't going to buy a second home if you expect your primary residence might change dramatically) as well as lot of free labor to keep things running, neither of which is likely to be true of MC/UMC households currently.; 7/4/26, 7:16 PM
Earnest Prole said...: “In his biting social commentary Class: A Guide Through
the American Status System, Paul Fussell noted that upper-middle-class vacation homes are defined by "spartan chic" and a studied rejection of luxury. He argued that this group proudly buys modest, slightly primitive cottages, often valuing exposed structural elements, plain pine furniture, and remote, "authentic" locations over actual comfort. Upper-middle-class vacationers prize rustic simplicity, such as unpainted wood walls, kerosene lamps, and wood-burning stoves. Furniture is usually L.L. Bean catalog-style, or older, passed-down family pieces. Upholstery is rarely pristine, favoring worn canvas or sturdy, traditional fabrics. The upper-middle class consciously rejects modern conveniences, interpreting luxury in a rustic retreat as tacky or bourgeois.”; 7/5/26, 1:56 AM