My hometown. A good place to be from. Fact is, escaping that southern-democrat shithole was one of the best things I ever did with my life. There still isn’t so much as a single black student at the local high school, and almost no black population after dark. The lake itself is famous for being one of the first bodies of water in the midwest to be condemned.

Jean Shepherd (A Christmas Story) immortalizes Cedar lake in a few of his novels, notably “in god we trust, all others pay cash” where he talks about going to cedar lake Crappie Fishing with his dad.

My dad knew better. We fished the lake as kids, but we were under strict orders never to eat anything, and we had to wash our hands and fishing equipment if we ever got any of it wet with lakewater.

You see, Cedar Lake was originally a resort town. Folks from Chicago would come down to the lake and live there in the summertime, or at least spend weekends. it was cooler than the city, and middle class families could buy a little chunk of land and put a three room cottage, little or no heat, outhouse, have a summer blast. The lake, at the turn of the century, was clean and pretty, full of life.

Little by little, though, people moved in full time. As time passed, most of the summer cottages became year-round residences, and those who lived in them did the best they could with what they had- which often meant very rudimentary septic systems. Cottages right on the lake, well, as often as not would just lay pipe as far out in the weater as they could, and that was their seepage bed.

Forty-odd years of the entire population of a town using the lake as their septic tank takes it’s toll. When they finally put in city sewers in the early 70’s, the lake was already so disgusting that the state pronounced it unfit for swimming, fishing, waterskiing, all manner of watersports. Nobody was supposed to eat anything they caught there, either. Not as you’d want to, anyway, the fish often had fewer fins and more eyes than is commonly desired.

Anyway, around 1972, the lake had so much actual shit floating around in it that the methane gas was easily detected as far away as US 41, and around August, the heat and gas together with a butt thrown by a careless boater combined to ignite the lake.

Yes, it burned. Methane gas bubbling up from the band of shit close to shore caused a flame to burn with a light blue cast, only visible in twilight, and which lasted from august to the middle of september. This repeated itself for several years, as I remember, and eventually the lake began to clean itself up. These days it’s merely disgusting, but back then, living close to the lake was more curse than blessing for several months a year. I know people who have actually swum in the lake, but I wouldn’t do it on a bet.