Packing the Cooler for the Lake

The cooler gets packed the same way every July Saturday, early, before the heat comes up off the asphalt. It is a blue plastic box with a white lid, big enough to take two families through an afternoon, and around the latch is a white crust of last week's lake water. Nothing goes into the box until the plug has been pressed shut and the jugs have come out of the freezer.

The night before

Two gallon milk jugs go into the freezer the night before, washed out and filled to the shoulder with tap water. By six in the morning they are solid and the plastic has gone cloudy with frost. Block ice is the only ice that will last through a July afternoon on the water; cubes are gone by noon. The jugs come out of the freezer wrapped in a dish towel, because the plastic sticks to wet hands.

The plug

The drain plug sits in the back corner of the cooler, a flat rubber stopper on a short stem. It gets pushed in from the outside until it seats with a dry pop. The packer runs a thumb around the gasket to feel for sand from the last trip, because one grain of sand under the rubber is enough to send the whole day's melt water into the footwell of the car. When the plug is right, the inside holds a couple of inches of melt without leaking.

The ice

The frozen jugs go in first, flat on the bottom, their caps turned one way and then the other so they lie level. A bag of cube ice goes over them, not too deep. Melt runs down off the cubes and collects around the jugs, which stay frozen longer than anything else in the box.

The drinks

The drinks go in next, on the ice — cans of beer, bottles of lemonade, a row of water bottles. They ride lowest because they are hauled out first, all at once, when the boat is unloaded. The beer is buried deepest, down between the jugs, so that the first hand into the cooler comes up holding the coldest thing in the box.

The sandwiches

Everything that can soak rides above the ice line. Sandwiches in wax paper go into a plastic basket with a handle, and the basket sits on the drinks. A folded towel goes under the basket — that is the buffer between the melt and the bread. Grapes and hard-boiled eggs ride in the same basket, wedged tight so the first pothole on the dirt road does not tip it. The sandwiches never touch the bottom of the cooler, because the bottom of a July cooler is always wet by noon.

The towel

A clean dish towel, wet and wrung out until it is just damp, is spread over the top of everything before the lid shuts. It holds the cold air in and catches the condensation that would otherwise drip from the lid down onto the bread. When the lid is closed and latched, the towel is the last thing packed.

The ride

The cooler rides on the floor behind the front seat, out of the glare of the side window, with the plug end against the back of the seat. The lid stays latched for the whole drive. It rides the whole way on the floor, the weight of the jugs settling it into the rubber mat.

The drain

At the end of the day, with the last can back in the box, the plug comes out first. The melt water pours into the gravel at the boat ramp in a thick stream, carrying a few soggy napkins and one floating pine needle. The jugs, still cold and half full, go back into the freezer for next Saturday. The cooler is wiped out with the damp towel, the plug is left lying on the floor, and the lid is propped open so the inside dries instead of turning musty. The cooler stands open on the carport floor, plug out, the last water draining from the corner into the stain on the concrete.