Part One: Poppa and The Land
In this section, Donna and Candace Waid remember the land as it was during their childhood and share their visions for the future.
Donna Waid
Donna spent her childhood going up to the lakehouse on weekends. She tells the story of one trip below.
Daniel with DC Waid ("Poppa"/"Daddy") several months before his death in 2016.
Poppa used to keep his tools in coffins so no one would steal them.
The Lakehouse before renovation, appearing as Poppa built it in 1953.
"Most Snakes Aren't Dangerous"
I have such wonderful childhood memories of being there. We would have a big Fourth of July. We would have people in, and we swam and enjoyed the water and never worried about snakes. You know, we just, we would hear terrible stories about people [water] skiing and skiing into a snake.
But we — Daddy had taught us that most snakes aren’t dangerous and you need to learn which ones are and which ones aren't and make some noise because the vibration will scare most of them away. I think there are a couple exceptions but… At one point we had a pier going way out. And then we had a boat house and Dad and Mother and the two of us would go swimming every weekend. Well Mother didn't go because she didn't really know how to swim, but she went out.
This is one of the terrible stories of my childhood. Mother would take a bath and get all ready to go back to Birmingham and she would look nice, put on makeup and have shoes and her clothes would be nice and Daddy said, “I want you to go out for a canoe ride with me.” Well, we knew this was a big mistake but we didn’t tell Mother. And he took her out for this canoe ride and guess what he did? He turned it over. And he always swore it was an accident. He never meant to do it, but Mother came out of the waters sputtering and saying "Donald, you’re mean as a snake! You are mean as a snake!” and we're up there like saying, “Yes, Daddy, you are."
Dead Fish in the Corn
Um, but we had you know, we grew a garden, we planted things and Dad could do a great job of planting anything except corn, so we planted corn and we put dead fish in with the corn because that's supposedly what the Puritans did, or the Pilgrims. I can't remember which. But it didn't work for us. The corn was pitiful. It was no good. So we couldn't grow that, but mother loved for us to grow Irish potatoes, because digging them up was like treasure, buried treasure. “Let's dig up the potatoes.” I just have so many happy memories of all of us together.
