There is a small abandoned garage on the side of the road in Shirley Mills, Maine. I don’t think anyone ever notices it sitting there, losing its battle to stay upright, but I notice it—I always have. As a child traveling to our summer home on Moosehead Lake, I watched for that crooked, weather-beaten building with the diamond shaped window in the center of the door, because seeing it meant I was almost there—almost to my grandmother’s camp, to happiness and summer vacation freedom.

More than that, the little building meant that a view of the lake was also close. Perhaps, if just this one time my mind did not get lost in daydreams of the fun days of summer that lay ahead, if just this once I paid attention, maybe I would be the first of the six kids in my family to see the lake as we crested Indian Hill. Being first meant winning our traditional sighting contest and the right to yell, “I see it!” (In later years that would be shortened to “Me!” a one-syllable acceptable way of declaring you were the first to see the lake.)

The prize for winning was the sweetest of all things on a child’s taste buds: the right to gloat over your siblings. With a singsong voice you could proclaim, “I saw it first. I saw it first,” ignoring the protests of your siblings, “Nils’ head was in my way,” or “That’s not the lake, that’s the roof of the Indian Store.”

Of course, someone always accused the winner of cheating. (How anyone could cheat at this contest I could never figure out.)

Mama and Papa had the last word. By authority of the front seat, they decided if it was indeed a false sighting, or that some other violation had occurred, like the time my sister crammed a travel pillow into my face at the crucial moment.

We played that game for many years, well into young adulthood.

~

My maternal great-grandmother, Delia Mandanda Snowdale, grew up in the town of Weston, in southern Aroostook County. She wrote this childhood memory in her journal:

1890: When we lived out on what they called the Calais Road, about five miles from where Grandmother lived, there was quite a piece of woods. I can remember several times walking out there with Mother and Father. When we came out of the woods we were way up on a hill, a quarter mile from Grandfather’s, but when you got to a certain place you could look down over a field and you could see the house and I remember when we would get out of the woods my oldest brother Thaddeus and I would start running to see who would get a sight of the house first.

My great-grandmother raced out of the woods onto the top of a hill to view the prize: her Grandparent’s house. We crested a different hill to win sight of a different prize: Moosehead Lake.

I can hear Delia’s sing-song voice now, “I see it, Thaddeus! I see Grandmother’s!” I can hear her voice as clearly as I remember my own, “I see it; I see the lake!”

Some childhood games are timeless.

L.E. Hughes is an award winning columnist, author and owner of Diamond Corner Bed & Breakfast in Stratton. She welcomes your thoughts and comments: diamondcorner@ roadrunner.com. © Copyright 2010 Lew-Ellyn Hughes. All rights reserved and retained by the author. Do not reproduce without permission.