Beach Haven

This is Mike. I scanned a booklet shared with me by my sister Cris Dunn (she doesn't like it when I call her Crystal). She gave this booklet years ago to our father, Fred Beach, and encouraged him to fill it out. He did, and she kept it all these years. There are nuggets in here I hadn't heard before, and the writing is personal as it's done in his own handwriting. His personality also comes out in some of the answers. Click any picture and you can scroll back and forth through enlarged images.

Mike here. This is another story about our early church membership as I remember it, at the request of my little sister Crystal. I was young then and I'm old now so take anything I write about that time with a grain of salt.

Two of the founding families of the Berwick Branch were the Schmidt and Smethers families. They were related to each other. I believe the mothers of these two pioneer groups were birth sisters. The patriarch of the Schmidt family was someone I only knew as ‘Pappy Schmidt’. To someone as young as I was he seemed ancient, and likely actually was so. Some years after we joined the church I remember someone showing me the typical picture that showed all the head-and-shoulders pictures of the general authorities of the church at the time. Down in one of the bottom corners was Pappy’s picture with several other ‘emeritus general authorities’. At the time it seemed impressive, though I had no idea what those words meant, or even really what a general authority really is. I’ve done some searching on the church website and have had no luck finding those ‘class pictures’ from back then (early 1970s) to see what more I can find out about him. I’m sure if I chased down any of his surviving progeny they could fill me in.

The Schmidt family lived out in the woods. A good part of their property was a swamp. I remember spending time at their house with the other young men my age. Billy Schmidt was part of our deacons quorum. We occasionally got time wading around in waist-deep swamp water at his house. Billy was into trapping back then. Between Billy’s traps, snakes, muskrats, beavers, and other sorts of risks, our time playing in the swamp was sort of a form of Russian roulette. For boys of 10 through 13 or so it was a form of heaven.

The Smethers family lived within a few miles of their Schmidt relatives. Unlike the wooded swampy space of the first property, this place was tamer. I remember it to be all on the side of a hill of maybe 10 acres or so. The top part of the hill was an open grassy pasture. About halfway down the hill to one side was about a half-acre pond and a substantial barn. Below the barn was the Smethers home. Below the pasture, pond, barn and home was the bottom of a hollow with a clear cold stream running through it. The land on either side of this creek and up leading to the house was wooded.

The Smethers home was a regular venue for branch activities. I remember summers swimming in the creek and the pond. We also enjoyed fishing in both. The barn was quite large with a hay loft above, and a shop and hay stack on the main floor with a large open area in the middle for the tractor. All sorts of dangerous metal farm implements hung on the walls. In the lowest level were indoor stalls for animals. This barn made for a farm-kid play area without all the safety features. It was not unusual for us kids to jump from the loft down into the hay stacks. The tractor would get taken out leaving a large open area that made for eating, dancing, or similar group fun. In the winter the pasture portion of the hill became a favorite sledding run. The pond froze over thick enough that we could ice skate on it.
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One year at a winter party, after sledding and skating, someone got the idea to take a group picture on the pond ice. It was quite thick so there seemed to be no concerns since we had been skating on it all day. I was in the gaggle closing in for the picture. While posing I remember the distinct sound of ice cracking underneath me. We had maybe 30 or 40 people in the center of pond standing close together concentrating the weight. It was obvious I wasn’t the only person to hear the cracking sound as everyone gasped with panic and scrambled in every direction for the pond bank, slipping wildly cartoon-like. We all made it off safe and sound, and laughed about the whole thing for a long time. I think I was a little slow to try my luck skating again that day.