Summers at Lake Tishomingo

The Ellis Family history would be incomplete without a chapter on Lake Tishomingo. My grandparents, Gilbert and Alvina Ellis, owned a lake lot on Lake Tishomingo. We spent every Sunday, Saturdays, and any other day that we could find an excuse to go during the Spring, Summer and Fall between 1976 and 1990.

Lake Tishomingo is a large, manufactured lake in Hillsboro, Missouri. Uncle Oscar Von Berg bought a house on the lake in the early 1970s. Uncle Oscar always tried to talk Grandpa into buying a lake lot, which Grandpa did by purchasing K60 in 1976. K60 was not a lake front property, so Grandpa bought L9 in 1977. L9 fronted the lake, had a shed and allowed us to build a boat dock eventually. Grandpa sold K60 to my mother.

Grandpa wanted to buy an adjacent lot and build a retirement house, but he was never able to buy one of the adjacent lots. We did spend a lot of summer days down at the lake though.

We usually started going down to the lake in March or April. We usually took the boat out and put everything up in October. Every year in the Fall, we would get together, rake and burn the leaves and do any work that needed to be done before we closed for the winter.
We swam in the lake a lot. We always had to wear ski belts, but we swam every week. We stored our gear in a coffin next to the shed. Spiders infested the coffin, so we had to be careful in getting out all our swim gear. We usually took it out, threw it on the ground to get rid of any spiders and then picked it up.

We also had rafts and inner tubes. My sisters and I could easily have two of us stand on the inner tube, but we could never get all three of us on it. We spent years trying to get all three of us standing on the inner tube at the same time.

When Grandpa retired, Grandma and Grandpa would take us down to the lake during the week. They told us stories about growing up in St. Louis, their courtship, and their marriage. We loved to listen to their stories of the “good ole’ days”. We would swim, play badminton, and do any odd jobs Grandpa needed us to do.

We had to do a fair amount of work to support the property. Grandpa built retaining walls, a set of steps and built a driveway. We put up a retainer of railroad ties around the driveway. Grandpa then had a ton of gravel dumped. We had to use shovels and grass rakes to spread the gravel out on the driveway. Grandpa would have more gravel dumped every few years, which we spread again. We also had to paint every few years. Weekly, we had to sweep and wipe everything down.

We also had to cut the grass. Grandpa would usually cut the Lower 40 with the riding mower, while I cut the Upper 40 with the push mower. He let me ride the mower but was hesitant to let me cut grass on the hilly Lower 40. He was afraid it might roll on me.

Grandpa and Dad would often fish early on Sunday morning, so they would get me up to drive the boat. Grandpa bought a Bass Tracker in 1978, which was his pride and joy. He taught my sisters and me how to drive it at an early age. I never liked to fish, so he and Dad put me to work as a boat driver.

After Grandma died on February 12, 1991, we did not go down to the lake as much. Grandma and Grandpa had spent so much time down there, it was too painful for him to go down like we used to. My generation was mostly working adults and could not get down to the lake like we used to either. Grandpa decided that it was too much work and sold L9 to a St. Louis Police Officer in the middle 1990s.

The lake represented family. We spent Sundays with our grandparents, parents, aunt and uncle, siblings, cousins and eventually nieces, nephews and second cousins. We swam together, worked together and always laughed together. Those days were inspiring. When the Rock of the Family passed, some of what the lake represented died as well. This era in the family history was over but it would be incomplete without recording them.