Rebecca Nappi: Rich summers didn’t always depend on money

Coeur d’Alene Lake. New listing. On the water. Large two-level well furnished lake home w-fireplace, electric heat, 2 baths, 3 bedrooms, air-conditioner, snack bar, attractive family room and handy kitchen. $31,500 and well worth it. – Classified ad in The Spokesman-Review, May 1970.

A tipping point for me arrived Tuesday with the announcement that five homes, priced between $4 million and $6 million, will be built overlooking Lake Coeur d’Alene. They will be designed and decorated in the “luminous” style of Thomas Kinkade.

The lake culture that Inland Northwest boomers grew up with is now officially on a death watch.

In my 1960s-70s childhood, almost every family I knew owned a lake place or lake property, regardless of their income. My family didn’t, but we sometimes rented, and we were often invited to friends’ lake places.

The lakes were egalitarian. Wealthy folks built cabins next door to working-class folks. They bonded over dockside complaints about teens who raced their boats too fast. Every lake I frequented as a child – and there are about 75 lakes within driving distance of Spokane – had the feel of welcome. Most had public beaches and/or private resorts where an afternoon of sun and swim cost just a couple of bucks.

Clean, attractive summer cabin on Hayden Lake. New dock, 14-ft. metal boat, several items of furniture, stove and refrigerator goes with the property. Priced at $10,500.

I researched the prices of 1970 lake places because 1970 was the best summer of my teen years. Pat and JoAnn Kenney’s cabin at Newman Lake became the weekend hangout for our Marycliff-Gonzaga Prep-Holy Names gang. We girls wore bikinis and pigtails. The boys drove the boats. We drank pop and built campfires and told stupid jokes. Our parents watched it all unfold, reminiscing together about their own younger-year summers.

I memorized Newman Lake that summer. Most of the cabins were modest. Some were built by owners who had never built anything before.

Every cabin at every lake I visited in my younger years was decorated in house hand-me downs – linty moose heads, kitten-shaped Kleenex boxes, teal-colored 1950s couches that snagged when you sat on them. The cabins smelled faintly of mildew, a residue from our long, damp winters.

In recent summers, I’ve revisited Newman and other lakes of my childhood, and I am amazed at the older cabins that have been razed and replaced with multistory homes better suited to upscale subdivisions in Spokane and North Idaho.

Gentrification is just now beginning in the city cores of Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. But it’s been happening at our lakes for at least a decade.

$8,500. Hauser Lake. Nice 2-bdrm, modern, furnished cottage. Approx. 50’ beach. Terms.

$7,500. Lower Twin 2-bdrm, furnished, dandy beach access.

$4,700. Sacheen Lake cabin. Equipped with cookstove, sink, bar, bed, table, refrig.

As the old lake culture dies, I worry that our lakes will become playgrounds for the rich only. It’s hard to find public beaches on many of the lakes, let alone resorts where you can hang out cheaply for the day.

But I am optimistic that families who have kept their rustic cabins will remain faithful to the old lake traditions. They will remain proud of their castoffs décor. They will call mildew the “aroma of summer.” They will gloat, as they should, that they were smart enough to buy cabins when affordable lake places were as ubiquitous as Thomas Kinkade paintings.

And they will invite out to the lake the friends of their children and grandchildren who don’t have cabins, because they know that our Inland Northwest lakes should be a water-sun-mountain gift to all children, luminous and priceless.