"Summertime, when the living is easy....."

When George Gershwin wrote this song, he was not singing about life on the farm in rural Illinois. While we think of summer as a time to relax, take life easy, enjoy the warm air, and give ourselves the chance to recharge for the year, the folks who farmed the land in Lake Zurich spent their summers much differently.

Before the 1900s, children left school in April to go home and work on planting, preparing the fields, and helping with household chores. The work was backbreaking. When children did have free time, they really enjoyed it.

Summer had the novelty of being the time of year when many plants bore their fruits and wild flowers grew in the woodlands. When Irene Mills (who later married into the Snetsinger family of Lake Zurich), was a little girl living on a farm in Diamond Lake, she remembered taking fishing treks with her sister to nearby Indian Creek. Along the route the girls would stop to pick wildflowers and to help neighbors with berry picking. Wild strawberries and raspberries filled the vines in July.

Summer was also the time of year when lots of strangers passed through town. Gypsy caravans, carnivals, resort folks, and wanderers were regular sights along the sleepy dirt roads. These strangers were quite a sight and an adventure for farm children in the ho-hum life of daily chores.

By 1924, the resort business in Lake Zurich was full force. It was a year when things on area farms were tough, and some people opened their homes to boarders and created picnic groves on old pastures. This was the year that Irene Mills married Clarence Snetsinger.

In her diaries, Irene remembered that summer: "Clarence's parents were running a picnic grove across the way, and several hundred carloads of people traveled from Chicago every Sunday. There were 20 boarders staying at the house for the summer, so we extended a helping hand. I helped prepare the meals on Sunday and between times, we made a couple hundred hamburgers and hot dogs, ham and egg sandwiches, and pots and pots of coffee for the picnickers. If we had any time to spare, we helped out at the refreshment stand selling ice cream cones, candy and pop- a couple hundred cases on good days." (Before the advent of the refrigerator, folks prayed that the ice in the ice houses would last through July so that there would be ice cream for the Fourth of July!)

The Snetsingers weren't the only people in town who found the resorts, for many years, were a part of summer life. When Spencer Loomis was a child, his family lived along Old Rand Road. They would spend every Sunday sitting on their front porch watching the resort visitors heading back to the city. The traffic was so congested, that the family could hold a conversation with the folks leaving. "It was better than anything on TV"

When Bob Grever was growing up on the farm, the week was dedicated to work. But on Sundays after church, the boys would grab their sports equipment and head to Lions Park for some good old-fashioned baseball. Labor Day was the big weekend for celebrating, and Sunday afternoons were the favorite time of summer.

During the 60s, things had changed dramatically in Lake Zurich. During the summer there was less work without the farms and more of the "good old summertime". The Frontier Enterprise, which was the local newspaper, described summers during the 60s: there were smorgasbords at Farman's after racing at Arlington Park, the same old discussions of how to clear the lake of weeds, summer band concerts, and fishing. And every Fourth of July, the town called for two minutes of bell-ringing at 1:00 p.m. to commemorate the birth of the nation.

Today, some children go to summer camp, some stay home and spend their summers at the beach, or vacation with the family. There is always much celebrating to do in July: the annual Fourth of July picnic, Alpine Days, the Farmer's Market, area festivals, community band concerts, and of course, the lake.