Submission for the third Belvedere book - back to Book 3

By Susie Reese LeRoy

Cottages #6/#411

My parents, Susan and Carlos Reese, bought No. 6 in 1966 when I was four years old.  They brought me with them that fall when they came to sign the papers on the musty, dark Rutherford place. It was grey on the outside and brown on the inside- but not for long…

Michigan blue.  Those words conjure many, many shades in my mind.  Michigan blue can be sky blue, almost but not quite robin’s egg blue, or anything in between, but it is never, ever dark or dreary. The Reeses started painting in 1966 and we haven’t stopped yet.  Mom and Dad used to leave the six of us at home and come up every Memorial Day weekend to work on the cottage.  (Well, that is what they told us anyway!!)  I do believe they painted at least a bit because the paint cans multiplied in our basement.  All of them were left partially full and wholly unusable after a frigid winter. And no one kept track of which color went where.  Did I mention Dad’s infamous formula? One quart gin to one gallon of paint seemed to fit the bill.  Boy, did they both love blue.

Painting was not confined to Memorial Day, however.   If there was a rainy day over the summer, Dad would go buy a can of paint and start anew.  Any shade of blue would do.  “I think that’s close, don’t you?” he would ask. Of course, as soon as the sun returned, Dad was back out on the golf course.  By the time he returned to the job, he’d often forgotten which can of paint he’d been using.

 Although our living room was multihued, no one seemed to mind.  No.6 was a bright and happy place with front and back screen doors slapping all day long as we ran in and out to gang, went to town for Jeffs, played capture the flag by the Casino, walked to DQ, visited Amah and Padue (Helen and Richard Moss) at No. 411, rode bikes, and played on the beach.  Summers on the Belvedere were idyllic.

As a teenager I embraced my parents’ DIY work ethic.  They were ahead of their time! I was allowed to choose a color and paint my room.  Let’s just say the color of the sun had nothing on the yellow in my room; the lime green knobs on my dresser and nightstand bordered on neon.  I cut my teeth on that room, and when “the kids” took over No. 411 in 1993, we went to work.

I remember the rainy day we decided we would repaint the kitchen, blue, of course, cabinets and all.   It poured and poured.  We had already seen the one movie at downtown’s single cinema screen.  We were tired of gin rummy.  Yes, let’s paint the kitchen!  We unloaded all the cabinets and unearthed meat grinders, silver bells, crystal, and all manor of ash trays.  The house looked like a bomb went off.  And then the sun came out.  I’m pretty sure we had dinner at the Casino that night…

My siblings and their spouses and kids are scattered all over the country, but we come together when we can on the Belvedere.  We still tackle projects - although none of us is brave enough to try Dad’s gin formula!  But we do laugh a lot and reminisce.   And our summers are still filled with color.  Especially blue.