Barb Swartzell Shares Lake Memories

Barb Swartzell has come full circle—growing up on Barron Lake, moving out of state and now back to the lake to make more wonderful memories.

Lake Fun

“The memories started in 1956 when my parents bought the property from Mary Street on back to Miars Drive and then bought property on the lakefront,” Barb said. “They purchased the old officers’ quarters from the Bendix Company, took it all down, built a basement, moved it to its current location and put it back together.”                                                 

                                                                                                                    Jim and Barb Swartzell

Barb’s family, like many other local residents, had a house in town along with a cottage on the lake. “We would move out to the lake in April and move back to town in October,” she said.

Many of Barb’s earliest memories at Barron Lake involved her best friend, Karen Kaiser. “Karen lived on Miars Drive and her dad, Benny Kaiser, put up a ski jump out there at the northern end of Miars Drive. Karen and I would spend hours on that ski jump. We used to bring a saltshaker because the slugs would get on us and we’d have to get them off.”

Barb recalled the fun of skiing near Kugler’s Beach. “There were buoy markers over there and if you did it just right you could go around two of them with your slalom ski. We all had little boats and we would take turns diving in the water, going over the rope and then jumping off the diving board. What a way to grow up. It was great,” she said.

“The funniest thing—Karen was a really, really good skier. My dad had gotten a book from Cypress Gardens, so we decided to write to them. We told them all the tricks we could do and wanted to be in their show,” Barb said. “They politely wrote back and said no thank you.”
(Cypress Gardens, considered the original Florida theme park, hosted daily ski shows before closing in 2009.)

“We could do the trick skis and had no runners so you can turn around on them. It’s kind of the old-fashioned wakeboard type thing when you jumped a wake. But Karen was so tiny that our friend, Warren Williams, who lives on Prospect Point, would put Karen or our other friend, Jennifer, on top of his shoulders. It was a riot,” she said, noting that Warren’s family had Williams Supply for the lumberyard.

Barb remembers sharing lake fun with many friends. “Gosh, there were a lot of us. Larry Bartak was one. And there were a lot of kids the same age. We all had little boats and we’d just be out riding around a lot. They’d come to the cottage, and I’d make hotdogs for them. We had an after-prom party over at the cottage. All my friends came out. Those were the best memories,” she said.

Barb went all through the Niles school system and met her husband, Jim, in high school. “Jim and I both graduated from Niles High School. We weren’t high school sweethearts, but we were friends,” she said. She recalled being in the high school choir with classmate Tommy Jackson, whom everyone knows as Tommy James and his band, The Shondells.

Family Businesses

Barb’s family owned several businesses in town, including a Texaco station and Gordon’s Sporting Goods and a Zephyr station, which she said were all on 11th Street. “They sold boats and motors, and skis, tackle—everything. That’s how I got into boats and skiing. That was pretty cool,” Barb said.

After her family sold the sporting goods store, they opened a carwash on Second Street near the Wonderland Theater. “In the 1960s they built another carwash. It was called Rapid Auto Wash and I used to work there washing towels,” she said. “You could get a regular carwash for $2 and if you wanted wax, that was $2.50.”

Barb moved away from the lake when Jim was in the Air Force. “We got married in 1968 and lived in California. We came back here (Barron Lake) for a little while, but Jim got transferred to Connecticut. We were there for 22 years and that’s where we raised our two daughters,” she said. “But we came out to Barron Lake every summer.” Now, she and Jim live here full-time, and their children and grandchildren visit often.

What brought them back?

“The lake is home. It’s as simple as that,” she said.

Barb’s parents, the original cottage and the sporting goods store.