chapter 5 - the traditions

Lake Safety

 

While swimming and boats offered endless entertainment for the kids, Charles was worried about the potential dangers of the lake as well.  Rather than setting rules for what the kids could and couldn’t do on the lake, he opted to create a system of incentives.  These incentives defined lake privileges based on demonstrated swimming capability.

 

Although the incentives have changed throughout the generations, the lake privileges have not.  The original system was:

 

1. First five strokes—ice cream cone

2. First fifteen strokes—ice cream cone

3. Swim from dock to rock—ice cream cone

4. Swim from raft to shore—ice cream cone.  Privilege of rowing alone between raft and shore

5. Swim from Skippers Island to shore— Privilege of rowing alone between Skipper Island, Pudding Island and the boat house

6. Swim around islands (Skippers, Scotch Bonnet, Pudding)— Jack knife and initials carved in canoe dock, privilege of rowing alone between Skippers Island, Rowan's Point and Armes Point

7. Swim across the lake— $1.00 and privilege of rowing or swimming anywhere on the lake.

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Rag Tag

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In the summer of 1960, a game was invented that has been enjoyed by generations ever since.  That game is called Rag Tag.

 

Chris and Rob Parlin, along with their neighbor friends Galen Seerup and Dale and Danny Sarjeant, were the founders.  Like all teenagers, they were enjoying their summer and the free time that came with it.  One afternoon they started throwing around a tennis ball on the raft.  Then they started throwing the ball at each other and trying to dodge it.  That evolved into a game of tag whereby whoever was hit by the ball was “it,”

They soon discovered that a tennis ball wasn’t the optimal device for the game because if you missed your target it would sail far away.  So they tore up an old t-shirt and this started the tradition that has continued for more than 60 years: Rag Tag.

 

That summer, the kids played the game endlessly.  The rules evolved along with the game but the basic rules were:

1. If you get hit by the rag you are “it.”

2. The ladder used to get on the raft is a safe zone (meaning you can’t get tagged if you are touching the ladder).  You are protected until another person touches the ladder, then they are protected and you are open game.

3. You can sink the rag by splashing it but if you touch it, you are it.  This rule alone is probably the most contested rule in the heat of the game with the lack of instant replay to assist questionable calls.

4. There are no boundaries.  On one occasion this rule was tested to its limits when a hot chase went all the way from the raft to Armes Point and the target of the chase crawled ashore and ran the dirt road all the way back to the dock and then swam back to the raft.

5. No packing the rag with mud from the bottom of the lake.  This rule had to be instated when Galen Seerup realized it was much easier to hit his target with a rag filled with mud and stones.

6. Time out can only be called when an adult is swimming laps between the dock and the raft.  Time out only lasts long enough for the lap swimmer to safely clear the raft.

 

In the 60 years of Rag Tag there has only been one person banned from the game for flagrant violation of the rules.  Blackie Parlin had the ingenious idea to use a popsicle stick to shove the rag up between the cracks in the planks of the raft and “tag” the bottom of players feet.  His children informed him that this was such an egregious violation of the rules that he was permanently barred from playing with them in the future.

 

Injuries have been mostly limited to splinters from when the raft planks were made of wood and bruises on the head from coming up for air too quickly and banging your head on the bottom of the raft.  But the most memorable injury happened to Danny Sarjeant who knocked out her two front teeth when she jumped off the raft to sink the rag but landed face-first on the back of her brother’s skull. 

 

After the end of that inaugural summer of Rag Tag in 1960, Joan Sarjeant presented a framed commemorative rag to each of the kids as memorabilia of their summer of fun.