My grandmother made me obsessed with water. To her, it was imperative that any drive--be it to a restaurant for dinner or to CVS to use a coupon--was accompanied by a drive along the shore of Lake Erie. I couldn't blame her. Lake Erie, like many things in America, is really pretty from a distance. Driving along Route 5 in my grandfather's teal Chevy Lumina put us just far enough away from the water to ignore the (often aromatic) brownish sludge on top, but close enough to satisfy my grandmother's desire to watch each wave come to completion.
When I was little, driving to the Dunkirk Pier wasn't just a nice evening out, it was a religious experience. Luckily, the pier is one of the few places in Dunkirk where you can park your car and expect to drive away with all four tires and both side view mirrors intact. When it was nasty and cold outside, we'd go to the Greek restaurant that's situated right by the lake and insist upon a table near the big windows at the back, where I could stare wide-eyed out the window at the seagulls and the waves and ignore my parents' conversations about clients and the court system. But when it was nice out, we'd drive into downtown Fredonia, go to a little sub shop called the Bomber House (I spent years trying to explain to my friends while telling this story that this was not a bomb shelter and we would not get in trouble for talking about it on school grounds), and bring our tinfoil-wrapped dinners to the pier where I could stare creepily at fishermen and ask inane questions about the marine life and the power plant you could see in the distance. At that age, there was nothing better. However, soon after I entered my teenage years, the proprietors of the Bomber House went back home to Puerto Rico (I think) and took their subs with them.
Fast-forward to now. I can't seem to watch any movie, regardless of the subject matter, without ending up a mess of thought and reminiscence at the end; I'm a glutton for introspection. I went to see Water for Elephants last night with a couple friends. Although I drove in the opposite direction on Route 5 to get to the movie theater, it was the same Route 5 and the same Lake Erie, and although Tim Hortons isn't quite the Bomber House, the bagel I ordered at the 24-hour drive thru had enough carbohydrates to send me into a fit of nostalgia. I needed a pretty place to park by the water and I needed it urgently enough to pull haphazardly into the first road I saw going in the direction of the lake. Unfortunately, the actually really pretty place to park had already been discovered by a couple of shady-looking guys standing in the dark (this was at midnight), and had been discovered long before that by the Town of Hamburg, who put up a very intimidating and persuasive sign saying "PERMITS REQUIRED" right at the entrance. My grandmother would have been ashamed. No one should be deprived of the opportunity to sit by the lake and reminisce.
