The one downside to my grandparents’ farm was that it was not on a lake. But no matter. A half-hour ride around the Shagawa Lake (on which Ely was situated) up and around the end of Burntside Lake to the north side solved the problem. The road down to the waterfront of Schaller Bay was maybe five hundred feet long through the dense birch and pine stand. You couldn’t see down to the lake from the top of the cabin road until the last fifty feet or so. Good thing. Everyone understood that honking the car horn was required at the top and as you descended the road to the cabin, which would give any who might be swimming in the buff time to make themselves more presentable.

As a family, we could only come as invited guests if yours truly, a pre-adolescent boy, performed the required ritual of allowing Aunt Gertrude to kiss me. Ugh! I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why everyone thought it was funny. After the deed was completed and I wiped my face off, we could set out for the bay. Once at the bay, all was forgotten amid the fun and frolic on the inner tubes and wooden raft, their dog Flicka, the log cabin, the scent of pine, the buzz of flies, and the aroma of that all-American favorite summer food, hamburgers.

Another feature of Schaller Bay was the sauna, the kind heated by a wood-burning stove, fed from the outside, and the metal tub full of hot rocks. We would throw pots full of water on the stones to create steam and spread the heat. Mike and I had contests to see who could stand it the longest as the temperature rose. No signs were posted warning about limiting our time of exposure to extreme heat. Mike always won those competitions, with me nearly passing out.

An old-time black-and-white super-8 film (passed down to me) shows a bunch of men marching out of the sauna with the sauna pots on their heads and broomsticks over their shoulders like rifles, as though going off to war. The destination was marching right into the lake, while the women stood by laughing.

But those old people (my grandparents, my parents, cousins, etc.) also thought nude paintings were OK. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Mike Schaller was the artist, which seemed even more unusual. Gertrude (the family called her Gerts) was a first cousin to my father, Jack, Jr., through his mother, Gustava (my grandmother). They grew up like brother and sister. She married Mike Schaller, but they never had children. Mike was a spiritually minded man, not the overt kind, but it was known that he read his Bible every day. No one else in the family had that kind of reputation. He was a good man, liked by all.

But the nude paintings? What was that all about? As a pre-adolescent, they didn’t stir up lust (those hormones had not yet invaded my body) or anything like that in me, but they certainly caught my curious attention. The images were small watercolor paintings and more suggestive with their broad outlines, mainly of the backsides, rather than precise imaging. The faces were indistinguishable, with a simplicity of lines. Only two or three of these small paintings were in evidence, and then only in the sauna. Those pics must have found their acceptance from the Finnish side of Grandma’s family and customs from the old country in the north. Or was it a parody of the womenfolk who sometimes skinny-dipped when the males weren’t around? I will never know.

But one thing I know is that Mike Schaller was a man of God, who loved reading his Bible, and had a solid reputation as a man of character and integrity.