Jim Anderson and his dog enjoy boating on Gull Lake.( Submitted photo)
LAKE LIFE
Longtime summer cabin on Gull Lake becomes a full-time home
SUE WEBBER • CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Along with a career as a Minneapolis attorney and a long-time residency in suburban Golden Valley, Jim Anderson and his family have deep roots in the Brainerd Lakes area.
He remembers back to 1953, when his dad, T. R.“ Dick” Anderson, a Twin Cities attorney working mainly for the Bell Family that started General Mills, wanted a lake cabin where he and his wife and five children could spend time in the summer.
“ He rented one on the north end of Gull Lake first, and then in 1956 he bought a small cabin down the beach, four houses from Grandview on the east side of the Lake,” Jim said.“ Our family has been there ever since.”
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At first, his mom, LaJean, and the five children were at the cabin during the week in the summertime, Jim said.“ My dad worked in the Twin Cities during the week and would come to the cabin on the weekends,” Jim said.“ A lot of times he took Friday off to come to the cabin, and then went back to work in the Twin Cities early Monday morning.”
In 1965, as the Anderson children grew older, their dad bought a place next door to their cabin.“ We were all getting older, and the cabin wasn’ t big enough,” Jim said.“ We all loved being there. We were mostly at the lake all summer when the kids were growing up. We needed to go where the action was, where the kids wanted to be. We all came for the month of July.”
“ Grandview bingo was a big deal,” he recalled.“ All the kids loved to sail. We had five boats at one time. My brother was an avid water skier, so we built a ski jump.”
The neighbor who had introduced them to Gull Lake built a tree house, and the boys spent a lot of time there, he recalled.
“ This end of the lake has a nice beach where they built sandcastles,” Jim said.
“ One thing for sure is the friends I made at Gull Lake remained friends for life,” Jim recalled.“ It seems like after we met in the summer at the lake, we continued to‘ hang out’ when we were back in the cities, even if we went to different schools and lived in different parts of town.”