The winding road to Scoops Beach reminded Arden of the old Thanksgiving song, “Over the River and Through the Wood.” It was an adventure to get there.
The tiny, two-lane road to the beach paralleled the river that meandered alongside the downtown, and eventually fed into Lake Michigan. The river dissected the beach road from downtown Scoops, which Arden could see was already jammed with returning resorters and fudgies already in town for Memorial Day.
The beach road wound past a series of cracker-barrel cottages—all shake shingles, shutters, and mossy roofs—which were among the original summer cottages built in the late 1800s. The road slowly climbed a tall dune to breathtaking, 360-degree views of the river, downtown, and Lake Michigan. Here, mammoth summer homes—multistoried behemoths with turrets, towers, and decks—perched on the dune.
Lolly had won the argument, and now they were all on their way to the beach, though Arden’s mind was still preoccupied.
Dean Martin began to blare from the backseat, and Arden jumped.
“Found it, Grandma!” Lauren laughed.
“My Dean,” Lolly sighed. “Ain’t that a kick in the head?”
“What, Grandma? I don’t understand.”
“That’s the name of the song, my dear. Time I teach you a thing or two about my music. Turn it up!” Lolly shouted.
Lolly began to sing, and Lauren rested her chin on the cushion of the front seat and beamed at her grandmother.
Why can’t she just be quiet and relax? Arden thought.
Even over the music, Lolly’s “Woodie” groaned as it continued to climb the massive dune.
“Attagirl.” Lolly patted the dashboard tenderly. “You got it.”
The 1950 Buick Roadmaster was as much Lolly’s little girl as Arden and Lauren. Lolly’s father had given it to her. The Woodie was the color of the lake, the ultimate beach car: pure nostalgia, unconventional, total fun.
“Your father spent years restoring this car for me,” Lolly said to Arden, repeating the lines she said every time she drove the old car. “It’s a part of the family.”
Les Lindsey had indeed spent years restoring the car for his wife, returning the outside woodwork of white ash and mahogany trim to its pristine state, painting the car a vintage pearlized green, clear-coating the exterior to make it look as if it had been dipped in wax, and turning the interior into a white-and-pink leather wonderland befitting Lolly. The car was huge, with a backseat and trunk that could hold four kids and enough beach stuff to keep them entertained for a week. Lolly had even used the family sewing machine to add mismatched curtains in the back windows—vintage prints of cherries, stands of pine trees, and bobbing sailboats on a lake.
Yes, “Woodie” was Lolly’s beach car, and—since her husband’s death many years ago—the two had become nearly as famous as Scoops’s fudge, two bigger-than-life personalities, both from bygone eras, roaming the resort town.
At the top of the dune, Lolly turned the Roadmaster like an old sea captain changing the direction of his ship. Arden watched her mother—in her long, bright-white wig, a geometrically patterned scarf tied around her head like Doris Day—drive while singing “That’s Amore.” Arden gulped, fighting her instinct to grab the wheel and force the Woodie to the side of the road so she could take over.
Suddenly, a canopy of ancient sugar maples and pines choked out the sunlight, as the road suddenly cut through a dense forest that led to Lake Michigan, and Arden yanked off her sunglasses.
“Look!” Lauren said, pointing out both sides of the backseat window.
On the left, a family of deer stood at attention, like wax figures at Madame Tussauds, while on the right, a wild turkey high-stepped through the woods.
The Woodie slowly crawled down the other side of the dune, the brakes moaning loudly, until it was suddenly drenched in sunlight.
Lake Michigan stretched out in front of them like the ocean, the surface still as glass, sun illuminating the greens and blues of the water. Boats motored along the lake, Jet Skis zipped by, and some very brave souls had actually ventured into the still-frigid water. A golden-sand beach stretched out, dotted by bright umbrellas and towels, picnic baskets and sand buckets, people lounging in the sun. Dunes towered in the background, and dune grass danced in the wind. The Woodie stopped as cars ahead slowed pulling up to the one-room weathered guard shack to buy a beach pass.
“Hello, Dolly!” a young, blond girl in a red lifeguard T-shirt yelled from the guard shack. “Sorry … I mean, Lolly! Time for a new beach pass, I see!” she added, stepping out of the shack. “But the big question is: Where to add it this year?”
The girl giggled as she scanned the front and back windows of the Woodie. Decades of beach pass decals—designed in colors, fonts, and images that reflected the passing eras—were adhered to nearly every square inch of bumper as well as the front, back, and side windows, leaving Lolly only gaps through which to see the road.
“Ever thought about removing some of those, Mom?” Arden said, pointing to a window.