And Some Have Greatness Thrust Upon Them

By Rick Horowitz

For vacation adventure and family fun, this year make it Lake Rick! That's right: Lake Rick, the Great Lakes' hidden treasure, is just waiting for --

Excuse me? There isn't any Great Lake called Lake Rick.

Just waiting for you. Of all seven Great Lakes, Lake Rick is the only one with the --

There aren't seven Great Lakes. There are only five Great Lakes.

Then you haven't heard. There used to be only five Great Lakes. Now there are more. Lake Rick makes seven.

Lake Champlain makes six. Congress says so.

Maybe you know Lake Champlain, that long skinny thing on the New York-Vermont border. As lakes go, it's not a bad lake -- a hundred miles long, more or less, a dozen miles across. It's a perfectly good lake. What it isn't -- what it hasn't been until now, at least -- is a Great Lake. That's about to change.

Sitting on the president's desk, you see, awaiting his signature even as we speak, is an otherwise ordinary piece of legislation with a tiny little surprise tucked away in the fine print: From now on and forever, it declares, Lake Champlain is a Great Lake, too, just like Huron and Ontario and Michigan and Erie and Superior.

Never mind that Lake Champlain is a splash in the pan compared to the original Greats -- about one fifteenth the size of the smallest of the bunch, Lake Ontario. Never mind that a Great Lake Champlain will instantly turn every last schoolkid in this vast, acronym-dependent land of ours into a quivering heap of jellified brain slag.

And never mind that the only two things Lake Champlain has in common with the other Great Lakes are:

1. First name "Lake."

2. Wet.

Did I mention that money is involved?

It seems that having a Great Lake in the neighborhood isn't just an ego boost. There's a pot of federal research money -- 50 million bucks, actually -- available to so-called Sea Grant colleges. If they're near an ocean, that is, or if they've got the right kind of lake.

Great.

Which is why Vermont's Sen. Patrick Leahy decided the time had come to go for the gold. "Vermonters," Sen. Leahy claims, "have always considered Lake Champlain the sixth Great Lake."

And I've always considered Lake Rick the seventh. (Well, not always. Just since I heard about the money.) True, Lake Rick is a bit smaller than the other Great Lakes, even Lake Champlain, but size doesn't seem to matter anymore. Based on my latest surveys, Lake Rick is roughly the size of the average bathtub. In fact, Lake Rick is exactly the size of the average bathtub. Show me where it says all the Great Lakes have to be outdoors.

Research? No problem: Lake Rick is conveniently located just steps from the University of Rick ("That Friendly, Unaccredited Place"), where scholars are already hard at work studying offshore investment opportunities.

And speaking of shores, don't forget: I live only a mile or two from one of the other Great Lakes, so I've had a nice damp role model just down the street for years. I know what it takes to be Great, and I'm willing to do what it takes. If the feds insist, I'm even willing to drain Lake Rick, just drain it completely, and then refill it with authentic Great Lake water from Lake Michigan. Can Lake Champlain do that? No way!

Cash will be fine.

I'm still working on the boating.

3/3/98