Gilford Beach, the Raft
Summers in New Hampshire provide a teenager with blissfully warm weather and an abundance of distractions from the boredom that seems to accompany the day-to-day existence of the young.
There were the streams in which I’d fish for trout, and the marinas filled with pickerel, and Weirs Beach with its small mouth bass. My father’s boat would take a few friends and I water skiing. We had waterslides, and alpine slides, and the Weirs’ famous arcades and candlepin bowling. And there was the Gilford town beach, with its scattered scrub pine clinging to the yellow sand, a beaten down concession stand and the large grey raft moored just 10 yards beyond where the lake bottom fell away into inky blackness.