Submitted by Camille Leatherman Breland      Back to Book 3

I started going to Charlevoix in the early 1960s.  What a time to be a child!  Your parents went to the Belvedere to have a vacation themselves.  You went to gang and didn't come home until curfew.

Gang ran from 10-12 and 2-5 on weekdays and a picnic day on Saturdays.  I was able to stay with Grandmother Leatherman for the whole summer when I was eight years old.  As my cousins grew, they joined me in a whole summer of fun.  On the sun porch of 519, we played gook, spit, slap jack, Monopoly, Life and any popular game of the day.  We read Archie comic books, which we could buy with our 50 cent weekly allowance.  (As long as we never left our shoes on the sun porch!)  Grandmother did not allow TV watching (although a clear memory is watching the moon landing on a small grainy black and white TV).

We were looked after by Frankie, our nurse, and Davey, our cook.  Sunday mornings always meant homemade pecan rolls.  Saturday lunches were packed with homemade brownies, making all the other gangsters jealous!

After dinners, all the kids would meet up at the beach where we'd play Red light, Green light; Mother May I?; Simon Says, and our favorite, Kick the Can.  We'd all stay at the beach until the 9:30 curfew rang, and then it was home to bed.

Capture the Flag was the favorite game of Gang.  And the nighttime version, Commandos.

Thursday evenings and Sundays were the days off for our caretakers.  That meant we could walk to King's Burgers to get our dinner.  We'd also all walk to the movies.  We'd have Jefs at the drugstore soda fountain, loved Mr. Misty's and Dilly Bars at the DQ, and of course ate lots of Murdick's fudge.

Gang was divided into Little Gang, Intermediate, Girl's Gang and Boy's Gang.  Lydia and Myron Sherer, Janet Kuhn and Darcy Mudd, Chris and Ginger Payne (yes they were gang leaders together) were my Girl's Gang Leaders.  Ann Flanigan, Sara Meyers, Connie and Margie Bisbee, Lucy McDonald, Sally Schade and Jayney Ware were my contemporaries.  Cousins Adele and Irene Orgill, Kate Orr, and my brothers Bobby and Leslie were my crew.

This is the beauty of the Belvedere.  My children were lucky enough to grow up experiencing my summers, and now my grandchildren are continuing the tradition, with so many of my friends’ grandchildren.  Life goes on,  but the Belvedere is our constant.