1989 was a very busy year. The previous chapters of this book I had written in December of 1988. This one I'm starting in October of 1989.

I had met Gloria at White Lake. Her father had purchased a lot in 1960 and built a camp off the lake. We would spend weekends there with Gloria's entire family (17 of us at times), until the camp was deeded to us when Gloria's father died. At that point Gloria’s two sisters purchased properties close by, but, even then, being on the water was an on-going dream of ours that we pursued endlessly.

During the early part of 1989 - in April, we went to look at a few more places on the water. Nothing had come up on White Lake for two years except one well beyond our means at the time for $189,000 which was also on the main highway. One Friday night we took a drive to Richfield Springs to look at a place on Canaduraga Lake, another teenage haunt of mine. The place was an old estate that had been divided into four lots. The one with the house on it was going for $165,000, again out of our range, and not much to talk about. We rode around and found a nice little two bedroom ranch also for sale; stopped, looked at it and found out they wanted $210,000. At this point we just about gave up on the dream. We had an appointment to see a place on Shore Drive - Kayuta Lake the next morning that was selling for $75,000. We imagined it was a shack at the top of a cliff. When we drove down the road we were impressed with the neighborhood - big year round homes. When we looked the place over we were impressed. A decent two bedroom summer camp on a nice piece of property. We had lost out on a few properties with low bids so needless to say we offered the asking price, which was accepted. A note of irony was that the guy that had been hired somewhat into my position (one of the consultants at Blue Cross) had been fired and had to sell the property. We spent the summer selling the old camp and moving into the new one. That fall, we had a deck built with two sliding doors into the camp, had an enclosed porch split into an entrance and a third bedroom and had the property filled with topsoil and graded. The water did not compare to White Lake but being on the water was wonderful.

The majority of the fall of 1989 was spent looking at colleges for Eric. We had hopes of him going to a top-notch college where he could get a excellent liberal arts education.