Pentwater
Along the Lake Michigan coastline, in the northwest lower peninsula of Michigan, you can find the charming community of Pentwater, Michigan, population 717. Motorists heading up US 31 might easily skirt right by this hidden gem without even knowing that it is there, if not for a couple of signs situated at either exit for Pentwater’s US 31 business loop, which is a generous description of the main thoroughfare that snakes along the northern shore of Pentwater Lake, through the Pentwater Village limits, and continues north, before taking a sharp right-hand turn at Bass Lake and over to Pentwater’s other exit. Of course, the people who usually wind up in Pentwater do so because it’s their destination, whether they piled the family into the mini-van to spend the day enjoying Pentwater’s public beach, or navigated their watercraft by the Pentwater pier head and up its channel for a quick stop to resupply or gas-up wile boating the Great Lakes from Chicago, IL, Gary, IN, Green Bay, WI, or some other distant port. Still others enjoy longer stays in Pentwater, camping in Charles Mears state park, making reservations at a local hotel or bed and breakfast, or they flock, like migratory birds, to one of the many vacation homes in the area.
I fit into this latter category. I have been going to Pentwater, on and off, for almost 50 years now. I say “almost 50 years,” because I just turned 49.
All in the Family
Growing up, our Knapp family cottage was located just north of the Pentwater Village limits, on the east side of the aforementioned US 31 business loop, about a 5-minute drive from downtown Pentwater. My grandpa Knapp built the approximately 1,300 square foot cottage back in 1966, and as I learned during a recent conversation with my dad, my dad (who was the oldest of eight kids) had just gotten out of the service when he was recruited by my grandpa to help with pouring the 24’ x 36’ concrete slab. Then my dad, my dad’s uncle Jack and my uncle Bob helped my grandpa rough in the main structure, dig the well on the property, and continue to help on and off with the construction until the cottage eventually took the finished form that I remember as a kid.
Our summer stints up in Pentwater were spent with day trips to the public beach, throwing horseshoes in the pits out in front of the cottage, exploring the steep sandy hill and forest that lay beyond the retaining wall on the south side of the property, and splashing around and catching minnows in the warm, shallow waters of the Bass Lake outlet that spilled out from the nearby damn. All of us kids (and as far as “Knapp” kids go, there were a lot of us) slept in a large communal bunk room on the upper level of the cottage, which could be accessed by a steep, almost ladder-like staircase off of the open kitchen/dining/living room area. On one side of the main living area there was an old bumper pool table, which was flanked by an assortment of couches, sitting chairs, and the lazy-boy recliner that my grandpa would relax in to watch one of the local TV channels broadcasting from nearby Cadillac or Muskegon that he was able to tune in to with the set’s primitive rabbit ear antenna.
I wouldn’t say that I have vivid memories of my early childhood at the cottage, rather a collection of these vague, but familiar sensory-induced feelings that have stuck with me over the years. A trophy fish mounted on the beam separating the living room from the kitchen/dining area, the smell of the wood burning stove, playing army guys in the sandy soil of the yard, rummaging through the collection of toys that were kept on the covered porch, these are the things I tend to remember.
When I was just a few years old, I tripped and fell head first into a bon fire that our family had built on the sandy dune of the Bass Lake inlet. I suffered significant burns to my hand and forearm, or so I’m told, I don’t have any recollection of the incident—just a picture of me napping in a crib with my bandaged arm resting up near my head.
In the late eighties, my dad bought a used boat from some guy who had been keeping it docked at Keenan Marina in the Ferrysburg/Spring Lake area. It was an older, 1983 27-foot Bayliner with a cuddy cabin that could comfortably sleep six (two in the forward compartment, two on a converted bench/pull out bed in the main galley, and two in the rear compartment that sat under the elevated bridge) or as many as eight if two brave souls chose to sleep under the awning that covered the aft deck of the boat. Shortly after my dad purchased the boat he moved it to Snug Harbor Marina in Pentwater, and it was spacious enough that we would stay right there on the boat, basically using it as a cabin on the water. My dad would occasionally take the boat out to cruise around on Pentwater Lake or to pull my half-brother Tony and me behind on a tube, and when the weather cooperated and seas were calm, we would venture out onto the big lake. During one particular trip out on Lake Michigan we were fishing, which consisted of trolling the deep waters while using down riggers to bait the fish. About twenty minutes into our fishing expedition, one of the down riggers tripped and my dad instructed me to grab hold of the reel. A few minutes later, I landed a 28” steelhead, easily the largest fish I have ever caught. We tossed the giant fish into a cooler of ice and continued to fish for another 3 hours, but never ended up getting any other bites. After we got back to the marina and were taking care of our gear, my dad stopped me and said that he wanted to get a picture of me with the fish that I had caught. When he handed my prized catch to me, it had been sitting on a bed of ice for several hours and was frozen solid, so I jokingly said, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” What I decided to do, was grip the tail of the fish as if it were the handle of a Louisville Slugger, striking a pose while I held the completely vertical fish with my arms cocked back, prepared to swing at the first offering in the strike zone like I was readying myself for a big-league heater.
When I was ten or eleven, my dad, step-mom, and Tony went tent camping at a family-friendly campground just up the road from our cottage. I couldn’t remember much about the place, other than it had mini golf, train rides (i.e. a small lawn tractor pulling several wagons that had been fashioned to look like a locomotive hitched to a string of train cars) and similar fun activities for young children, that we had chosen this really cool campsite that was situated on the edge of a ravine, and that the sprawling property used to be some sort of old orchard (I thought it was an old apple orchard, but my dad later corrected me, saying that he thought it was actually an old cherry orchard.)
Years later, when Teresa and I started our family, we decided we wanted to take our boys (who were probably only 2 and 4 at the time) tent camping, and I thought back to my experiences at that campground, and felt it would be a perfect destination for our family’s first camping adventure. I honestly don’t remember whether I knew the place was called Kibby Creek Campground prior to us arriving that night, I was going off of memory, and just had a general idea of where the campground was located. But sure enough, there it was, exactly where I thought it would be, like something frozen in time reaching out to me from my childhood.
Teresa and I pitched our large cabin tent, and then we made a fire to roast hot dogs and smores. We tucked the boys into their sleeping bags shortly after dusk, and then her and I stayed up to sit around the campfire to talk while enjoying a few adult beverages. After a couple of beers both of us had to pee, which is when we first realized our mistake. The public restrooms were a good 5-minute walk away from our campsite, too long of a distance for my blind ass to feel that I could confidently navigate to and from the bathroom by myself in the dark, and it wasn’t like we could just leave our kids sleeping in the tent while the two of us went on a late-night potty break. Then I remembered I had an empty Bigge-size Wendy’s cup in the car, so I suggested that we could just stand in the open half of our spacious cabin tent to take turns tinkling into our impromptu plastic port-a-potty.
I went first, and emptied my bladder before quietly, and carefully handing the now half-full cup to Teresa in the dark. Teresa squatted down in a sort of catcher stance, positioned the cup between her legs before starting to pee. Almost instantaneously we heard the sound of liquid hitting the plastic floor of the tent, which caused us to both start giggling uncontrollably, while she contemplated how she could have possibly missed her target. After muffling our laughs so as to not wake the kids, or alert people at the nearby campsites as to the events transpiring in the shrouded privacy of our tent/master bathroom, she tried again, and once more we heard a splattering of urine droplets. More nervous giggling ensued, and that’s when I asked her if she had taken the lid off of the cup, prompting her to sternly retort, “why in the world would you put the lid back on the cup before handing it to me?”
Eventually our trips to Pentwater became less and less frequent. After my dad retired, him and my step-mom moved up to Manistee, where two of my aunts, and at the time, two of my uncles also had places. With so many relatives migrating to the Manistee area, I often joked that my family was planning to take over the town and officially change its name to “Knappistee.” My uncle Dick and uncle Bob and their families, and of course my grandma Knapp and uncle Ronnie continued to use the Pentwater cottage, but after my grandma passed away, and it was becoming harder and harder to maintain the place, the family made the difficult decision to sell the cottage that my grandpa had built all those years ago.
But as fate would have it, it was around this same time that my best friend Matt’s parents Pete and Barb bought a home in the Duna Vista Resorts Association, literally just down the road, and across the street from our Knapp family cottage. I have known Matt since we were kids, and his mom and dad are like surrogate parents to me, so it was as if one part of the family moved out, and another part moved in. All of a sudden, I had a new reason to visit Pentwater. About ten years ago, Matt and I started going up to his parent’s place each spring to hang out and watch the opening weekend of the “March Madness” basketball tournament when his parents would be traveling down south or out to Boston to visit Matt’s sister Jill and her family. And Matt and his wife Nikki have since bought a home in the same association, just one block over from his parents, so now when we go up for the tournament we instead hang out at Matt’s place.
Now its Matt and his family that are spending their Pure Michigan summers up in Pentwater, making memories that will last a lifetime, and its through my fortuitous connection to my adopted “Souza” family that I too am able to keep making special memories of this magical place that has been, and will continue to be, such a big part of my life.
The History of PENTHIST1
There are a million reasons why I might choose to write about Pentwater, but in actuality, the purpose for doing this blog is to address questions that I will periodically get from different members of the Sakai community who are looking for me to explain the backstory about the PENTHIST1 Course Site that I use when doing my QA/accessibility testing.
So, here goes…
In November 2020, shortly after the first wave of the Covid pandemic had subsided, Matt and I made the decision that the two of us would head up to his place for our own “non-deer camp,” since our regular deer camp at Teresa’s family’s place in the U.P. wasn’t going to happen. Think of it as our annual basketball tournament pilgrimage with all of the regular shenanigans and debauchery, but in November instead of March, and without any basketball to watch.
I had taken my lap-top with me to get some work done, and one morning, after I had woken up early, I was sitting alone at the kitchen table preparing to do some testing on the Sakai development server that me and the other members of the Sakai QA team use. I was still relatively new to Sakai, and just progressed to the point where I was ready to really dig in, which required that I create some test users and a sample Course Site to complete the test cases on the new accessibility test script that I had been building out.
So I started with creating some test users. First I needed an Instructor, and being that I was at Matt’s place, I decided to give him the job. But I didn’t use his actual name, instead I used the alias we had created for him for our high school fraternity Da’ Fellas, Heraldo Hiroshama (you can learn more about the origins of Da’ Fellas by reading my “For Hodge” blog post.) Then I made myself a Teaching Assistant, but again, I chose to use my Fella name, Xavier McWillykems. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I made Matt the Instructor and me the lowly TA, it was just a knee-jerk decision, and for whatever reason it has stuck. Then I followed this up by creating several test Students, again borrowing from our friends Fella names, Dick Vermen, Phige Newton, Bobo Schwartzentowski, Dinkly Winkerson, ridiculous aliases that are associated with actual people we went to high school with who were part of our little fraternity, now forever immortalized on a Sakai Course Site that I dutifully recreate each Monday after our maintenance servers are reset.
All told, there were eight founding members of Da’ Fellas. Besides Heraldo (Matt Souza) Dick (Dave Thielen) Dinkly (Micky Morgan” Bobo (Brett Wilmore) and yours truly, there was also Jack (Chris Conn) and our two eldest statesmen, Popz (Darin Leaf) and Willy (Dominic Perrone)--plus dozens more that joined our ranks in subsequent years, the aforementioned Phige (Aaron Paterick) Hodge (Josh MacKellar) Hanzz (Brad Brookens) Skud (Mark Haskell) and many others. Depending on what a particular test case calls for, it’s not that uncommon for me to create other Fella-inspired test users, a second Instructor name Asdur Menaboni (Jeff Milbourn) or you might see names like Plutarch DeJesus (Brandon Foster) or Royata Koi (Tom Maki) show up on the course roster as extra Students.
I know its silly, but I get great joy in populating my PENTHIST1 Course Site with former Fellas, to the point I picture them each time I have to log-in or log-out as one of them, so its as if we have remained close since graduating from high school back in the early nineties.
After creating all of my test users, I needed to come up with a topic for a Course, and Again, I didn’t overthink it. I was at my buddy’s place in Pentwater, so I would use that as my inspiration. I still needed a subject, so settled on it being a history course, which I thought made the most sense.
As I was going through the various fields for creating my new Course Site, I just started making crap up. I named my Course PENTHIST1, and described it as an “Intro to Pentwater History” and explained that it would serve as “An Abridged History of the Village of Pentwater, Michigan.”
The real fun, as I would soon find out, involved creating this largely fictitious history about Pentwater to build out my course content.
I laced my content with some historical facts about Pentwater, like how several of the main streets within the Pentwater Village limits are named after signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of course I sprinkled in many references to well-known landmarks and local establishments.
But I took much creative license, and even more pleasure in crafting a completely false narrative about how the community was started by Dutch settlers who had moved to the area to take part in the booming maple syrup trade of the early 1800’s, going so far as to suggest that the name “Pentwater” loosely translates to the Dutch term meaning “Flowing Syrup.”
I would reference local eateries like the Gull Landing, Brown Bear, and the Antler as answers to some of my multiple-choice quizzes, or local landmarks like Snug Harbor Marina or Charles Mears State Park. But then I would turn right around and say something like how the World War II era Sherman tank that is parked out in front of the Pentwater VFW branch was once used to quell an uprising of a local maple syrup bottlers union whose members resorted to violent tactics to protest the emergence of the sugar free syrup lobby that threatened their monopoly-hold on the bottled syrup industry.
I would also reference nearby communities, like Pentwater’s larger, and better-known neighbor to the north, Ludington, along with regular mentions of the lesser-known communities like Hart, Whitehall, and Montague.
I would say something like former MSU coaching great George Perles once had a home in Pentwater, which is a true statement, but in the same breath, I would explain that Pentwater’s water tower isn’t filled with water at all, but contains the community’s maple syrup reserve.
Like I said, I have gotten much joy from doing this, and I just hope that if anyone from the local chamber of commerce ever stumbles across my work, that they will understand that this was all just innocent fun, and it was my humorous, light-hearted way of shining a spotlight on a community that will forever occupy a special spot in my heart.
Pentwater Madness
As previously mentioned, Matt and I have been going up to his family’s place in Pentwater for going on ten years now. Each March Madness it’s the same--the two of us make the 2 ½ hour drive north and barricade ourselves in his cottage with a week’s supply of beer, frozen foods, and peanut butter pretzels to binge-watch the first two rounds of the tournament.
While we have participated in a number of different pools with friends and co-workers over the years, last year we decided to create our own bracket, and hence the “Pentwater Madness” pool was born.
Ours is a low-key, family friendly pool with a buy-in that is next to nothing, and we encourage people to have their spouses and kids each fill out their own brackets (in fact, Matt’s teenage daughter won it all last year, and I think she’d be the first to admit that you don’t have to be a college basketball expert to participate)
In 2021, the first year of our pool, we had 17 people fill out brackets, and this year, we expanded our field to 41 participants, and our plan is to continue to invite more of our friends, relatives, current and former co-workers to join in the fun.
Matt and I share the bracket manager responsibilities from our satellite control center that we have dubbed “Your NW MI BB HQ.”
We only allow one bracket per person, to prevent people from gaming the system and to ensure everyone has an equal shot at winning it all.
Besides the modest pay-out for the top three finishers, the winner gets their name added to our “Wishing Well” trophy, a replica of the one that sits out in front of the famous Pentwater landmark, the “Wishing Well Party Store,” which incidentally, is the place that Matt and I stop into when we first arrive in Pentwater to pick up our supply of beer.
My son Carson helped me build our “Wishing Well” trophy, which we designed so that the top can be removed and rotated 90 degrees after one of the four sides containing the engraved plates of each year’s winners are all filled, so that the custom placard featuring our official “Pentwater Madness” logo and tagline (which I commissioned my brother-in-law Jason to create—only cost me a six-pack of beer) is always oriented to the side that displays the most current slate of champions.
So far we just have the two champions, Matt’s daughter Riley who won in 2021 and my cousin’s husband Lyle who won this year, but eventually, years and years from now when all four sides of the trophy have been filled, we will retire the engraved plates of past winners to a wall plaque to open up space for more champions, ala Stanley Cup style.
I know that it’s just a scrap wood creation with some shiny plates, but our “Wishing Well” trophy, and to a greater extent, the “Pentwater Madness” pool that Matt and I created, will serve as our legacy, and it’s something that we hope to one day pass down to our kids to manage, and carry the tradition on for future generations of Knapp’s, and Souza’s, and our extended families and friends to enjoy.
Like I described in one of our invite emails, “Whether you’re a rabid college basketball fan, or just a casual “March Madness” viewer. You’re part of the passionate fanbase pulling for the hometown team, or that former college intermural gym rat channeling your past glory to will your alma mater to win it all. The forty-something that grew up sinking imaginary game-winning buzzer-beaters in the driveway as the tune of “One Shining Moment” hummed in your ears, or the little kid experiencing your very first “March Madness”—we invite you to join us on this once-a-year, magical dance where anything can happen, where everybody starts with the same 1 in 68 chance of winning, and even a long-shot Cinderella underdog like you can defy all odds to be crowned a champion.”
“Pentwater Madness” is just the latest addition to a long list of things that makes this tiny village on the Lake Michigan coastline of the northwest lower peninsula such a magical place, and this newest tradition is just one more reason for me to continue to return to my home away from home, year after year.
As if I needed another reason…
49 years and counting, Pentwater has never disappointed this kid.