Intro--House-by-the-Lake--Williams Bay

A LITTLE PIECE OF HEAVEN...In finding a house by the Lake...

It was August 1970, my Mom & Dad were looking to find a place closer to the lake. My Dad was really high on moving into this modern-style house in Fontana. Sure, it was a great place, on the lake, with its own pier...but you would have to walk down 40 steep steps to get down to the water...My Mom, on the other hand, fell in love with this older, charming house in Williams Bay, in Cedar Point Park, only a mile away from Knollwood...

This very unique house was originally built way back in the early 1920's by a quite distinguished Mississippi Riverboat Captain who loved the wide expansive view of the Bay...The current owner, at that time, was Leonard Kapooli, the Interior Decorator for Marshall Fields. He had also been a one-time resident of Knollwood, like us, and my sister Maureen got a tip that his new place was up for sale in the Bay...

My Mom kept on insisting it was the perfect place, where Jimmy could go swimming everyday. He could just swim, swim, swim, building up some strength to his muscles in his back, she kept reminding. My Dad, however, just looked at the place, and shook his head, He saw it as an old house that would need lots and lots of work. Of course, my Mom, in the end, won out and we put in a bid for $40,000 and waited...

I remember sitting over in the cozy, small park, out in front, on the rickety, worn-torn, old green benches(which still remain there today), glancing over at this very, very cool house, with my Mom...It was so, so close to the water. It was only about 25 steps to the pier that even had a diving board, too.

My Mom had her fingers crossed because we would know in a few days if Mister Kapooli would accept our bid. Those were an anxious few days. It seemed like a dream house to me and my Mom, having our own place, situated between two nice open parks, where I could run wild all day, only a stone's throw away from the shoreline. Wow. Not far from the beach, either...

It seemed too good to be true. Surely, someone would come in at the last second and out-bid us.

Finally, the day came, our $40,000 bid was somehow fortunately accepted. I think everyone in our family was extremely happy, especially after getting to see this new house in Williams Bay. We got to enter the house to get a peek at what soon would be our home...All I can remember was Kapooli had a wild Austin Powers 60's lay-out. He had black veneer wood flooring with a giant white fur rug in the living room. It was like the ultimate martini lounge...

As we walked thru the house, so many things had the Kapooli influence. The colorful, glistening chrystal chandelier in the dining room...was surrounded by the four dramatically covered walls which were a black & white dense fabric that had some kind of elaborate Venetian Canals theme going on...Very wild...

Out in the kitchen, hanging over the windows, were two chalkboard plaques with poems Kapooli had written...One had a caption that started off with...IN QUIET PEOPLE, THERE IS VISION AND PURPOSE...The other poem contained a caption that ended something equally compelling like...WHAT IS REVEALED TO THE MEEK IS OFTEN HIDDEN FROM THE GREAT...

Both chakboards with the enlightening versus remained a part of the kitchen's decor for years and years. It added some character and a little bit of wisdom for one and all to enjoy...

Also, the beautiful and durably strong white wicker porch furniture inside and the two majestic, heavy, white plaster greyhounds, remain here, outside our front door entrance, to this very day.

Kapooli moved out and we moved in. Only a few things came with us from our Knollwood cottage. An awesome Universal Gas Oven & Range-Top, for our kitchen, that my Grampa Griffin, Gampy, gave my Mom. Also, her bleached mahogony dining room set and a couple of living room coffee end tables...my brothers bunk beds...and my old, giant-size baby bed...all fit in nicely...Everything else was gonna be brand new...

We put down blue/green shag carpeting in the living room. It was thick and bouncy. My Mom then stuck up this giant, cosmic, rectangular blue/green shag wall hanging, with a snazzy swag lamp that hung down to really light it up at night...On either side, were two ultra-mod chrome directors chairs with comfortable, white 8-inch leather straps...Of course, over in front of the picture window was a large royal blue couch(which became the first of many blue couches to follow...)...Then my Mom loaded up all the shelving units with all kinds of books and funky knick-knacks...You could say she had her work cut out for her to transform the house from hipster bachelor pad to cool. chic, family, 70's Americana...

My Dad was pretty busy too...He had this awesome TV antennae installed on top of the house and you could spin it from indoors with an odd circular, electric, dial controller, any which way you would like...You could whirl it NorthEast to pick up Milwaukee...You could whirl it around SouthEast to pick up Chicago...Whirl it Southwest, you would get Rockford...and even whirling it to Northwest would pick up all of the Madison TV stations...There were even some unique circumstances on a clear day where we would pick up Green Bay or Upper Michigan stations. I can even recall tuning into fuzzy channels from Des Moines, Iowa and even ashtonishingly Springfield, Illinois. You just never knew what that antennae would pull in...it was so powerful.

This was long before cable TV came along and we had at least 20 stations to choose from instead of 5 or 6 channels. Milwaukee had the popular Bowling For Dollars...Rockford had Dementia 13, a Friday Night Scary Movie staple...Chicago had all our familiar favorite stuff and the legendary, fright-fest, Creature Features on Saturday Night as well...And all the available sports options from all kinds of baseball games to football games to basketball games and beyond made your head spin, every single weekend, we were up, back then...

Upstairs, my Mom and my sisters would end up creating a fabulous, jeannie bed out of a carved-out alcove bed area, in the guest room. The interior wall was painted a startling rich pink and the bed itself had this wild, cosmic, hot pink, fake fur, bedspread they got from the Borg Fur Factory Outlet in Delavan. They then lined the opening to the jeannie bed from top to bottom, with long strings of hot pink & lime green plastic chrystal-like beads...To top things off...Inside the bed, against the wall was a long row of soft extra furry lime green pillows and extra furry hot pink pillows, which took quite a beating, down the line...

Why...???

Because...Over the early years...Every little boy and little girl...every single one of my sister's kids, always fought over who would get to sleep in the jeannie bed...every night...I can remember playing all sorts of funny card games like Old Maid and Crazy Eights...(I should have had them playing high-stakes, Texas hold-em poker, dammit, they'd all be millionaire Vegas cardsharks by now). It was funny, once, years and years later I would lift up the jeannie bed mattress and see all kinds of old playing cards and kiddie trinkets and baby pacifiers all lying there underneath, covered in dust...as if time had preserved these ancient relics...Hilarious...

Of course, having the neat little hidden alcove lamp light, way back then, allowed me, my Mom and my sisters to read all kinds of children's books classics inside this magical bed to all of my nieces and nephews as they were barely wide-eyed toddlers and up...right before they would nod off to bed. Everyone's eyes always still light up when they fade back and remember the wild, pink furry, jeannie bed...So much a part of all of their Lake Geneva memories...

Of course...looking back...way back at the time in 1970...this was a huge move for us to land so close to the shoreline of Lake Geneva...I think as my Dad finally relaxed, outside on the patio, probably sipping leisurely on a bottle of Pepsi, looking out at the water, he must have eventually realized this was the absolute perfect place for his big family, no matter what kind of shape it was in...What it comes down to...It had been my sister's tip and my Mom's perseverance that would make this house by the lake in Williams Bay our stomping grounds for close to 40 years now and counting...

Quickly, looking at the evolution of the O'Leary's real estate ventures in Lake Geneva. You have to go way back to the 1930's, when my Grampa Griffin had bought two lakefront lots in nearby Lake Como. He then sold those lots and bought the cottage in Knollwood in the mid-1950's. From there, we sold the place in Knollwood for $25,000 and bought the Lake House in Williams Bay for $40,000. Right now, that looks like a less than net $15,000 investment is now worth over a million dollars easy.

I think, for sure, that makes my Mom, hands down, the most insightful investor, in the whole family. Over the years, so many people have come and gone for numerous visits to our Williams Bay hideaway house and walk out onto the patio outdoors, on a nice summer's day and just be totally captivated....It almost has a trade winds of Hawaii, feel to it, blowing a cool breeze off the lake on a hot day or just exuding a quiet, serene beauty where you can become lost without even moving an inch...One of the old owners once came back onto the porch and said he had traveled all over the world extensively and he said nothing matched the feeling he got from standing right there, looking out, staring out, from our vantage point onto beautiful Lake Geneva...

And to think my Mom's family, long ago, would take the train up all the way up from Chicago to Williams Bay(which was the last stop back in the early 1900's) and settle in for the day and have fanciful, elegant picnics in the park in the Bay that incredibly lies only about 200 feet away nearby, to the left side, behind our house. Me and my Mom, sometimes often wonder if it was my Mom's mother, Annie, up in heaven, looking down, who pulled the strings to get us here where we are....

For a number of years, my Mom had a vintage painting of an olde-time family enjoying a picnic by a lake, decked out in Victorian Era clothes...hanging on our living room wall...to signify the link between the now and the past, long ago...It was a fitting tribute and a sign of how much all of the good times each had shared remained sacred, from her happy memories...of her, long-lost Griffin and Burke relatives, telling her stories...of their fun day trips to Williams Bay, Wisconsin.

There are just so many fun-filled memories about our special house-by-the-lake. And I hope I can capture a bunch of them in the many pages that will follow...As a matter of fact, my Lake Geneva memories, wherever they may be, always have and always will be some of mine and my family's all-time favorites, so stay tuned...