Postcard from a little-known beach

Postcard from the beach in Wilmette, Illinois

Last May, my brother and I walked from our mother’s apartment down the hill to Lake Michigan. A mile long beach extends from behind her building past the local public beach to a small, municipal pleasure boat harbor. The centerpiece of this little jewel box of sand is Wilmette Beach, where I spent my summer days sunning my skinny body.

Ken and I talked with the new lifeguards. The beach had just opened for the season. All of them had graduated from our high school, and some were actually in college. “What year did you graduate?” they asked us. When we answered, from their looks I could see they were calculating if our ages were closer to their grandparents than to their parents.

It was a splendid day, sunny and warm but not hot. I asked the lifeguards to pose for a photo at the entry spot, where we had passed to show our beach tokens more than forty summers ago. The young men (truthfully, they were boys) agreed that the young woman lifeguard should be our designated token checker, because she was wearing the official outfit, and they were not.

I took three pictures to make sure the horizon was horizontal in at least one of them, and here it is.

DAILY OR SEASONAL BEACH PASS REQUIRED TO ENTER SWIMMING BEACH AREA, says the sign on the right. We didn’t have passes, because we had walked along the shoreline from the private beaches to the north.

I forgot about Wilmette Beach and that photo until yesterday morning, when I again was visiting my mother, by myself this time. She was in no hurry to go out in the morning, so I made the same journey as I had done in late May.

The weather was different at the beginning of October, and the public beach was officially closed for the season. It never really closes, and you can walk there any time you want, weather permitting.

Here is a photo of the view from the shoreline, a half mile north of the public beach.

And here is how Wilmette Beach looks at noon on an early autumn day, just before a light drizzle turned into heavy rain. I headed back to spend the rest of the day with my mother.