After they returned from service during World War 2, Uncle Stan Friedberg and Uncle Sam Block decided to look for a summer place that the three Friedberg children – Stan, Jean, and Louise – and their families would share.  Carl Strouse felt that coming from California for long periods would be too difficult (the trip was much slower then), and decided not to buy in.  The children did not know this until Uncle Sam’s death in 1972.  The Chicago uncles bought Mill Pond in 1948 for $20,000.  Rumor has it that Uncle Sam wanted to negotiate down to $19,500 but Uncle Stan prevailed. Its last use before the sale was as a small summer colony.  The first summer of occupation was 1949; the Blocks shared the Block House with the Strouses.  Jeanie, Tiz, and Ann slept in the Girls Bunkhouse; Cass and Sammy slept in the Boys Bunkhouse. The babies, Jon, David, Dan, and Bill, slept in the houses.  The pond is an artificial lake, dammed by the miller who owned the land originally (after the Pottawatomie Indians of course).  The miller’s name was Lein – hence Lein’s Mill Road which runs into Pleasant Lake Road.  As Pleasant Lake Road passes between the main driveway and the mill, it is legally a dam.  The miller and his family lived in the Block house, at that time only two rooms, the living room and Aunt Jean’s room upstairs.  The original piece of land was approximately 40 acres and included the caretaker’s house to the north. The house and land at the top of the hill to the south was occupied by a tenant farmer and belonged to Sam Ruby, a car dealer from Chicago who owned about 800 acres surrounding Mill Pond, including all the subdivisions to the south and north, extending to the shores of Lauderdale Lake.  When Ruby died (and it’s true, he was the brother of Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot President Kennedy) Mill Pond bought the house to the north, because the cows who grazed on the land pooped in the pond and the mothers worried about water quality.  At first rented, the house was eventually sold (with the right of first refusal) to the current owner, Scott McKenzie.  When Uncle Sam died one of his extremely wealthy clients, Colonel Henry Crown, who was apparently a friend of Sam Ruby’s or had some kind of control over his estate, gave the west field and the hill beyond it to Mill Pond in Uncle Sam’s memory.  The Mill was derelict; in 1954 the first floor was renovated to accommodate Aline Friedberg, who was in a wheelchair. So that she would not have to enter a dark room to turn on the lights, all the light switches are in the room before the room they light.  Aline died before she could use the house.  Sometime in the 1990s Mill Pond Company bought the plot of land to the east, overlooking the ball field.  Thus the total acreage of Mill Pond is about 90 acres.