The LMBMSMAMFMWMSMLM

What's that you say? The LMBMSM... what? Sure, it's a mouthful, but allow me to explain. The first summer that we had our cottage (1999), my dad's best friend Larry Brosseit (he was like an uncle to my brother and me) came out to the lake with two of his two kids, Aaron and Abram (they are about the same age as Mark and I). Aaron brought this new game "Washers", which we played in the afternoon while we all sought valuable face time with Larry. Washers is played with two wooden boxes 25' apart (at the center of the pipe), 12" square on the inside of the box, and a 4" PVC pipe in the center of the box (about the height of a beer can). Two teams of two throw against each other, with the object of scoring 21 points first. As for scoring: inside the pipe is 5, inside the box but not in the pipe is 3, a leaner is 2, and close to, but outside the box and not touching it is 1. That's just the short story of course, as the nuisances of Washers would take a whole website. Which I am starting soon, but will not unveil just yet...

Well, little did we know that day of the tradition we had begun. Today the LMBMSMAMFMWMSMLM is the biggest post-Labor Day, invitation-only Washers tournament held in all of Idlewood!! Sadly, Larry passed away in the spring after the second year, and thus on year three we offically named the tournament the Larry M. Brosseit Memorial Straight Men's Annual Muster... well, you get the idea. So the tournament was great, but we had this crazy infestation of flies because the wind was out of the east. The flies were seriously something of Biblical proportions (think the plagues of the Old Testament... that darn Pharoh!!), and eventually the flies even got into the house as people were going in and out all day. That said, we still had a great afternoon, and the short story is that Matt Okma and Craig Johnston won. Note that this was the first year we did a draw for partners and seeding.