We drove on down to the lake. My grandparents’s hotel was directly on Lake Erie at the bottom of the hill.

There was a walkway that paralleled the shoreline and I used to walk down the path to a little general store that sold penny candy from big glass jars. The store is gone, but there’s still a path there and some of the beach cottages look like they date from that time.

We walked out on to the beach. When I was a kid, the beach was all stones, but they’ve covered it with sand. The stones are still there though, under the sand.

These stones have always been great for skipping on the water.