Hearthside Grove Motor Coach Resort
Petosky, Michigan
We are now at the end of our Michigan jaunt, and have enjoyed every minute of our two-and-a-half-week's vacation of sorts. I say that because if this is a vacation, then I don’t know what we’ve been doing for the past year. Everything has been a vacation.
As usual, we are dogged by mishaps, but that’s only the Universe talking to us and making sure we don’t take this retirement thing for granted. The latest was a missing hearing aid.
My little ear-speakers are extremely light, and I am usually quite unaware of them, until and unless I feel a sort of dead sound in one ear, and then I know I need to replace the battery. I hear sound pretty well, but I just can’t make out words. Teeth could be feet, for instance. And a pain in the toe is a lot different from a toothache, so I need these little buggers. And they are not inexpensive, so when one went missing I was, needless to say, concerned.
I have this big, fluffy, curly hair and apparently when I pushed it off my neck in an effort to cool off in the heat, I dislodged one and sent it flying. I started a search as soon as I realized it was missing, about ten minutes later. I checked the car and came up empty-handed, then the bedroom, then oh god my table with its thousands of little jewelry parts, computer, camera, paperback book and pens, etc. I scoured the mess and came up empty again. John backed the car out so I could search the driveway.
I said a prayer and asked for help in finding the missing aid. Of course I found it right away, on the driveway. John had driven over it. I laughed at the irony and said to God – Ooops, sorry, I forgot to ask that it not be crunched under the car wheel.
I laid it gently on the kitchen counter, adding up the additional bucks necessary to replace it. $2500 for two, so $1250 for one? Or maybe I should replace both with the new supersonic ones my pal Dan, my hearing aid specialist, had recommended on my last visit. They wouldn’t whistle when I picked up the phone. Maybe God was telling me I should upgrade.
I picked up the damaged, crushed hearing aid, slide the battery holder closed and listened. The darn thing was working! God had his joke and let me off the hook!
What was I thinking! That wasn’t God. I should have recognized my mother in that one from the very beginning. First of all, she was psychic, of that I am certain. She could find anything, anywhere. If anyone in the house lost anything, anything at all, she would think on it, then within two guesses, locate it exactly where it lay. Rings, keys, homework, you name it. She found it.
She was also the original make-do woman. Having grown up during the depression, she was a fan of re-use, recycle, before it ever came into vogue. My favorite coat growing up was a maroon wool and velvet charmer with hat and muff to match that she made from fabric she found on sale and lined with my father’s old wool coat. I wore it until my elbows were poking out of the bottom of the sleeves. That wasn’t just recycling, that was love sewn into a garment, hers and my father’s both. How awesome is that.
But back to the hearing aid. Of course my mother lead me straight to the spot it lay on the pavement. And even though it was crushed, it still worked. No one would see it behind my ear, so the decline of its former beauty was of no concern. It worked, for heaven’s sake. That in itself was a second miracle. Not to mention the saving of $1250. My mother was also good on managing the money. And she always enjoyed a good joke, especially if she was the prankster.
Yeah, it was her all right.
Not God. Goddess.
Betty
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
The Real Petosky
Bay Harbor Motor Coach Resort
Petoskey MI
A few updates to my blog of the other day:
First of all, I never did find the Petosky Bowlarama. I did find the Bay Harbor Golf Club, the Bay Harbor Resort Village, the Bay Harbor Equestrienne Club, four other golf clubs with various high falutin’ names, six other resort villages, all gated so I was not allowed in, the Bay Harbor Yacht Club, the Crooked Tree Golf Resort, our own current homestead, the Signature Bay Harbor Motor Coach Resort, and … you get the message. Oops. Marylou is now Sunny, Fred is now Frederic, and the venue is the yacht club. Otherwise, the story remains the same.
Next, to borrow a bit from Gertrude Stein, Mackinaw is Mackinac is Mackinaw is Mackinac, and everything is pronounced Mackinaw. Something about Mackinac/aw being close to French Canada, claims to this land, and the variations on pronunciation, although I fail to see how a C can be silent, but it is. That’s not to say that Saginaw has a Saginac. No, that just didn’t happen. Phew. That’s a relief.
One of the sweet waitresses here told me that there is a parcel of land up north that is registered in England, France, Canada and the US of A, the last claim being by some “indigent” people from these parts. I’m pretty sure she meant indigenous. Although I would vote for the poor people if I had a vote. They deserve some consideration, don’t you think? And given how hot this area is in terms of real estate, it would be quite a windfall.
Land on Lake Michigan can get into the upper atmosphere, and the views are pretty dear too. And, by the way, it’s only a six-month town. Everything closes down for the “pretty cold” winter, according to that selfsame waitress. I’ll bet. These are the people that invented mukluks, I’m pretty sure. The people who wear animal fur and nobody throws red paint on them. That’s because the paint freezes in the can.
So Petoskey surprised me, and taught me not to make snap judgments. That being said, I have to tell you that there definitely is a Petoskey Plastics Corp. next to the Bay Harbor Yacht Club. And I’m pretty certain that they have a bowling lane for their employees in the basement.
Hey, I saw a Kia in the parking lot. So?
Betty
Petoskey MI
A few updates to my blog of the other day:
First of all, I never did find the Petosky Bowlarama. I did find the Bay Harbor Golf Club, the Bay Harbor Resort Village, the Bay Harbor Equestrienne Club, four other golf clubs with various high falutin’ names, six other resort villages, all gated so I was not allowed in, the Bay Harbor Yacht Club, the Crooked Tree Golf Resort, our own current homestead, the Signature Bay Harbor Motor Coach Resort, and … you get the message. Oops. Marylou is now Sunny, Fred is now Frederic, and the venue is the yacht club. Otherwise, the story remains the same.
Next, to borrow a bit from Gertrude Stein, Mackinaw is Mackinac is Mackinaw is Mackinac, and everything is pronounced Mackinaw. Something about Mackinac/aw being close to French Canada, claims to this land, and the variations on pronunciation, although I fail to see how a C can be silent, but it is. That’s not to say that Saginaw has a Saginac. No, that just didn’t happen. Phew. That’s a relief.
One of the sweet waitresses here told me that there is a parcel of land up north that is registered in England, France, Canada and the US of A, the last claim being by some “indigent” people from these parts. I’m pretty sure she meant indigenous. Although I would vote for the poor people if I had a vote. They deserve some consideration, don’t you think? And given how hot this area is in terms of real estate, it would be quite a windfall.
Land on Lake Michigan can get into the upper atmosphere, and the views are pretty dear too. And, by the way, it’s only a six-month town. Everything closes down for the “pretty cold” winter, according to that selfsame waitress. I’ll bet. These are the people that invented mukluks, I’m pretty sure. The people who wear animal fur and nobody throws red paint on them. That’s because the paint freezes in the can.
So Petoskey surprised me, and taught me not to make snap judgments. That being said, I have to tell you that there definitely is a Petoskey Plastics Corp. next to the Bay Harbor Yacht Club. And I’m pretty certain that they have a bowling lane for their employees in the basement.
Hey, I saw a Kia in the parking lot. So?
Betty
Friday, August 7, 2009
Bowling in Petoskey
Friday Morning
Michigan, on the road to Petoskey
So who knew you were supposed to put lock nuts on a tow bar to ensure that the bolts didn’t come unscrewed and cause your car to roam free as you were driving. Obviously the mechanic that fixed our last episode of wandering Jeep, that’s who.
This time we were on an interstate, but fortunately pulled over in time to stop anything more serious than the car hitting a reflector to happen. Of course the reflector put a huge dent in the bumper, and the bikes on the back of the bus scratched the Jeep’s hood all to hell, but who’s counting.
So after dropping the Jeep for repairs and spending another $2000 to buy a better towing system, we headed up to Traverse Bay in Michigan for a lovely few days. Nice place, Traverse.
We’re back on the road now, and heading to pick up the Jeep before going on to Petoskey, which is actually the subject of this blog.
Petoskey. I have no idea what to expect, but I my mind’s eye, it has lots of bowling alleys. No particular reason, but I just think Petoskey Bowlarama is a likely building.
I suspect that the locals gather there of an evening, especially during the frigid Michigan winters. As I imagine it, there will be several red and black buffalo-check shirts over T-shirts and jeans. And that’s just the gals. They would, of course, be called gals and not girls, the kind of good-time, funny gals who play like guys and drink beer out of the bottle and are great to have around because they have hearty laughs and nice figures.
I can just see these gals and their guys on the alleys of the Petoskey Bowlarama. Marylou is saying, “Jeez, Fred, you’re getting that cheese from your fries all over the score sheet.”
Fred, being a good guy, scoops up the errant cheese with his finger and licks it away. “Humph,” she says, not really caring that there’s now a pale orange smear on the edge of the sheet. “Food coloring,” she thinks, idly.
Of course if the alleys are computerized, all this will have happened on a computer screen and not a sheet of paper. Now that I think about it, Petoskey would not be behind the times in this respect.
There are a total of seven kids at home, the product of the three couples, and they’re all at Fred and Marylou’s house for a night of movies and cheese popcorn under the care of the local babysitter. You’ll note that cheese is a minor theme here in Petoskey. It’s comfort food, you see, and Petoskey would have no shortage of comfort food.
In the next alley, a group of teenage boys is making a fair amount of noise as they bowl, a fact that annoys a few of the older patrons, but not Marylou’s group, who figure their kids will get there soon enough and if making noise is the worst thing they do, their parents will consider themselves very lucky.
Everybody will be home in bed by eleven, the noisy teens included, and naturally the old folks will have been in bed for at least an hour by then. It’s not that it’s a school day, or a workday. It’s just that the babysitter has a curfew. Marylou realizes that even though she’s a grown woman with children, she still has to abide by an adult’s curfew rules. How ironic.
She tiptoes quietly from the bedroom of her sleeping, cheese-fry-sated husband, checks on the kids, then goes through the kitchen to the garage, where she grabs her bowling ball out of the car, brings it inside, and using a damp dish towel, polishes the Bowlarama dust off, then puts it back inside the new blue Plether case she got for Christmas. Not good to have a dusty bowling ball in Petoskey, where everything is neat and clean and the people are nice and bowling is fun and life is good.
Or so I imagine.
Michigan, on the road to Petoskey
So who knew you were supposed to put lock nuts on a tow bar to ensure that the bolts didn’t come unscrewed and cause your car to roam free as you were driving. Obviously the mechanic that fixed our last episode of wandering Jeep, that’s who.
This time we were on an interstate, but fortunately pulled over in time to stop anything more serious than the car hitting a reflector to happen. Of course the reflector put a huge dent in the bumper, and the bikes on the back of the bus scratched the Jeep’s hood all to hell, but who’s counting.
So after dropping the Jeep for repairs and spending another $2000 to buy a better towing system, we headed up to Traverse Bay in Michigan for a lovely few days. Nice place, Traverse.
We’re back on the road now, and heading to pick up the Jeep before going on to Petoskey, which is actually the subject of this blog.
Petoskey. I have no idea what to expect, but I my mind’s eye, it has lots of bowling alleys. No particular reason, but I just think Petoskey Bowlarama is a likely building.
I suspect that the locals gather there of an evening, especially during the frigid Michigan winters. As I imagine it, there will be several red and black buffalo-check shirts over T-shirts and jeans. And that’s just the gals. They would, of course, be called gals and not girls, the kind of good-time, funny gals who play like guys and drink beer out of the bottle and are great to have around because they have hearty laughs and nice figures.
I can just see these gals and their guys on the alleys of the Petoskey Bowlarama. Marylou is saying, “Jeez, Fred, you’re getting that cheese from your fries all over the score sheet.”
Fred, being a good guy, scoops up the errant cheese with his finger and licks it away. “Humph,” she says, not really caring that there’s now a pale orange smear on the edge of the sheet. “Food coloring,” she thinks, idly.
Of course if the alleys are computerized, all this will have happened on a computer screen and not a sheet of paper. Now that I think about it, Petoskey would not be behind the times in this respect.
There are a total of seven kids at home, the product of the three couples, and they’re all at Fred and Marylou’s house for a night of movies and cheese popcorn under the care of the local babysitter. You’ll note that cheese is a minor theme here in Petoskey. It’s comfort food, you see, and Petoskey would have no shortage of comfort food.
In the next alley, a group of teenage boys is making a fair amount of noise as they bowl, a fact that annoys a few of the older patrons, but not Marylou’s group, who figure their kids will get there soon enough and if making noise is the worst thing they do, their parents will consider themselves very lucky.
Everybody will be home in bed by eleven, the noisy teens included, and naturally the old folks will have been in bed for at least an hour by then. It’s not that it’s a school day, or a workday. It’s just that the babysitter has a curfew. Marylou realizes that even though she’s a grown woman with children, she still has to abide by an adult’s curfew rules. How ironic.
She tiptoes quietly from the bedroom of her sleeping, cheese-fry-sated husband, checks on the kids, then goes through the kitchen to the garage, where she grabs her bowling ball out of the car, brings it inside, and using a damp dish towel, polishes the Bowlarama dust off, then puts it back inside the new blue Plether case she got for Christmas. Not good to have a dusty bowling ball in Petoskey, where everything is neat and clean and the people are nice and bowling is fun and life is good.
Or so I imagine.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
A Dog on a Bus
Long Island Expressway
Bumper to Bumper
On our way to Michigan
A dog on a bus will
Sleep until noon
Protect you from cows
Patrol the perimeter
Run away if possible
Lick your bald head
Sit in your seat
Smell everywhere
Scratch anywhere
Whine to go out
Play for ten seconds
Whine to come in
Know where the treats are
Prefer your food to his
Bury a bone in your shorts
Bury a bone in your pajamas
Bury a bone under your pillow
Rebuff your kisses
Beg for a cuddle
Steal your heart
Bumper to Bumper
On our way to Michigan
A dog on a bus will
Sleep until noon
Protect you from cows
Patrol the perimeter
Run away if possible
Lick your bald head
Sit in your seat
Smell everywhere
Scratch anywhere
Whine to go out
Play for ten seconds
Whine to come in
Know where the treats are
Prefer your food to his
Bury a bone in your shorts
Bury a bone in your pajamas
Bury a bone under your pillow
Rebuff your kisses
Beg for a cuddle
Steal your heart
Sunday, July 19, 2009
To My Cuz in New Zealand
Croton-on-Hudson, NY
Dear Jen,
I almost missed this email! It's been quite a month and I hope not to have another like it for some time.
As we headed to New York for Four Weddings -- and a Funeral, as it turns out -- and the irony of the movie title doesn't escape me, but I digress -- John began a major attack of kidney stones. I'm told they hurt more than childbirth. You'd think so, from the moaning.
We stopped at one hospital for morphine, another for dilaudid, and yet another for another heavy drug. Then he went into renal failure, so it was back in the hospital for a "simple procedure' to get the kidney working again. Well, that didn't work, so it was on to another procedure in another part of the hospital. Two surgeries in one day, that's a tough one. Two days later, he had yet another procedure and more anesthesia.
Between the drugs and anesthesias, he was one stoned puppy, in considerable discomfort, and grouchy as hell. There was a point that I considered throwing him under the bus, but I kept trying to channel my nurturing self. Trouble was, my nurturing was what kept getting me into trouble. He's definitely a hands-off kind of sickie.
Two weddings, a rehearsal dinner, wedding brunch, and one bridal shower later, some of which I attended solo, John is considerably better, although he has yet to pass the stones, which are at this point, more like sand than boulders, having been blasted into dust. I got to be in the observation room and watch them operate the computer that controlled the laser. It's against state law, but fortunately my doctor is a laissez-faire sort and let me in. My only regret was that the stones were pulverized. I was planning on making myself a major necklace, my recent hobby being jewelry design. Now that would have been a conversation-stopper.
So all this hoopla is why I haven't written, so I hope you two will forgive me. In fact, I'm going to take some of this letter and put it on my blog, another thing I have let slip for far too long.
We are thinking of buying a house somewhere, the housing market being so depressed as to offer us an opportunity we might not have again. And yet, we're not going to stop traveling. This year has been amazing and we've gotten to see this beautiful country in a way would never have been able to otherwise.
How was your trip to Wellington? What's the story on the house? Catch me up on the boys, all three of them. My own boy is still happily single at 35. Those California types are so laid back, most of his friends, girls and boys, are still single. Haven't they heard about aging eggs? Their babies, if they ever have them, will come out bald, with pot bellies, canes, and smoking cigars. They'll be Brad Pitt at the beginning of the movie.
Summer here has been incredibly beautiful. I missed the June rain, but July is balmy and blue-skied. We are in a park on the Hudson River, about 40 miles north of NYC. A dog is barking somewhere, and at 9:26 on a Sunday morning, that's about the only sound to be heard. I'm going to take my coffee outside in my nightgown and smell the fresh air.
The dog's not interested in coming outside. He has a tick-borne virus and is very lethargic. He's going to the doctor tomorrow for a shot. It's always something.
Kisses to you and the fam.
Love
Betty
Dear Jen,
I almost missed this email! It's been quite a month and I hope not to have another like it for some time.
As we headed to New York for Four Weddings -- and a Funeral, as it turns out -- and the irony of the movie title doesn't escape me, but I digress -- John began a major attack of kidney stones. I'm told they hurt more than childbirth. You'd think so, from the moaning.
We stopped at one hospital for morphine, another for dilaudid, and yet another for another heavy drug. Then he went into renal failure, so it was back in the hospital for a "simple procedure' to get the kidney working again. Well, that didn't work, so it was on to another procedure in another part of the hospital. Two surgeries in one day, that's a tough one. Two days later, he had yet another procedure and more anesthesia.
Between the drugs and anesthesias, he was one stoned puppy, in considerable discomfort, and grouchy as hell. There was a point that I considered throwing him under the bus, but I kept trying to channel my nurturing self. Trouble was, my nurturing was what kept getting me into trouble. He's definitely a hands-off kind of sickie.
Two weddings, a rehearsal dinner, wedding brunch, and one bridal shower later, some of which I attended solo, John is considerably better, although he has yet to pass the stones, which are at this point, more like sand than boulders, having been blasted into dust. I got to be in the observation room and watch them operate the computer that controlled the laser. It's against state law, but fortunately my doctor is a laissez-faire sort and let me in. My only regret was that the stones were pulverized. I was planning on making myself a major necklace, my recent hobby being jewelry design. Now that would have been a conversation-stopper.
So all this hoopla is why I haven't written, so I hope you two will forgive me. In fact, I'm going to take some of this letter and put it on my blog, another thing I have let slip for far too long.
We are thinking of buying a house somewhere, the housing market being so depressed as to offer us an opportunity we might not have again. And yet, we're not going to stop traveling. This year has been amazing and we've gotten to see this beautiful country in a way would never have been able to otherwise.
How was your trip to Wellington? What's the story on the house? Catch me up on the boys, all three of them. My own boy is still happily single at 35. Those California types are so laid back, most of his friends, girls and boys, are still single. Haven't they heard about aging eggs? Their babies, if they ever have them, will come out bald, with pot bellies, canes, and smoking cigars. They'll be Brad Pitt at the beginning of the movie.
Summer here has been incredibly beautiful. I missed the June rain, but July is balmy and blue-skied. We are in a park on the Hudson River, about 40 miles north of NYC. A dog is barking somewhere, and at 9:26 on a Sunday morning, that's about the only sound to be heard. I'm going to take my coffee outside in my nightgown and smell the fresh air.
The dog's not interested in coming outside. He has a tick-borne virus and is very lethargic. He's going to the doctor tomorrow for a shot. It's always something.
Kisses to you and the fam.
Love
Betty
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Temptation
Florida - Four Months Ago
Being an acclaimed interior decorator in my head, it didn’t surprise me at all when I decided that our 41’ mobile mansion was not up to my personal standards. The rug got dirty all too easily. There was a scratch on the wood where the lounge chair kept scraping it, the direct result of my husband’s attempts to push it beyond its recliner status and turn it into his personal bed. The flooring in the kitchen area was grouted fake brick which retained elements of dinners past and refused to give them up no matter how hard I mopped. Which I have to admit, could be a good thing if we were ever caught in the forest without food. We could simply lick the floor.
And so on.
I put a mental number to my to-do list and set off to find the perfect RV renovator. In Florida, in the middle of discussions with one RV dealer who also did upgrades, John, a creature of no change at all, suggested that maybe instead of pouring twenty to thirty thousand dollars into our old bus, it might make sense to put that money into a newer vehicle with more of the amenities I now absolutely had to have.
Was this my creature of the rock? The man who having decided he was comfortable, never wanted to move so much as a book on the table for fear of disrupting his calm?
At the sound of this, I turned my head so sharply my teeth almost didn’t follow. He was serious. He was looking over my shoulder. I was pretty sure he hadn’t developed a lazy eye overnight, so I knew he had spotted something. There on a mound of earth in the winner’s corner of the lot, poised like the Heismann trophy on Joe Namath’s mantel, was a brand new Beaver Coach, even longer than ours and bearing the wondrous message “Special.”
It was shiny, it was new, it was clean inside! It was $700,000. I decided to look.
The first thing that hit me was the entrance into the coach. These were not my bumpy vinyl rubberized safety steps. These were granite. Shiny, black and as slippery as a grape. They were gorgeous. Now that was an entry, and damn the safety issues. But wait! The entire floor was black granite. Oh how gorgeous. Oh how beautiful. Oh, my practical mind said, how easy to keep clean. Just a little Swiffer and I’d be done for the day. I was in love.
I stepped up into the living area. Everything glistened. No, everything sparkled. I was standing in the middle of a diamond ring, a limpid lake, the sun, even. Every inch of the inside was gelled to perfection. The wood had maybe fifteen hundred coats of urethane. I could see myself in the cherry sheen of every surface. And what wasn’t wood was brilliant black trim. And what wasn’t wood or black was mirror, oh help me Elizabeth I had died and gone to heaven.
There were two bathrooms, two. And a full-size shower with a sliding door. And a king sized bed. And a washer and dryer. And a dishwasher. And everything sparkled. Oh Lordy, my wallet was throbbing to be opened, its cash intent on near-sexual release.
And oh, it was indeed sexual, this castle-in-a-coach.
The ceiling was a cacophony of tiny little lights, swirling wood trim, and mirrors. No wonder everything sparkled. The reflections just kept bouncing from one shiny surface to another and back again. My eyes were bewitched, my senses heightened, my reason impaired.
And then I realized. I was in a whorehouse. All it lacked were the red velvet drapes and the fancy women. No wonder I was so mesmerized, so dry in the mouth, so … I don’t know … turned on.
That was the point. This was a rolling cat house. And like every customer who has ever patronized one of those pleasure palaces, I was going to pay through the nose to stay this high and this excited.
Oh dear.
Suddenly my softy, cushy rug – did I say dirty? How silly of me. It was just colorful. – seemed so inviting. My little shower, so cozy. My sink with its dirty dishes so needful of my tender ministrations. My fake brick floor with its greedy grout so like a grubby, adorable child. My bus, home.
I had almost traded home for a wanton woman. Whew. That was a close one.
My wallet, no longer throbbing, sighed in relief. So did my conscience.
Temptation notwithstanding, I am at heart a good woman. And don’t you forget it.
Being an acclaimed interior decorator in my head, it didn’t surprise me at all when I decided that our 41’ mobile mansion was not up to my personal standards. The rug got dirty all too easily. There was a scratch on the wood where the lounge chair kept scraping it, the direct result of my husband’s attempts to push it beyond its recliner status and turn it into his personal bed. The flooring in the kitchen area was grouted fake brick which retained elements of dinners past and refused to give them up no matter how hard I mopped. Which I have to admit, could be a good thing if we were ever caught in the forest without food. We could simply lick the floor.
And so on.
I put a mental number to my to-do list and set off to find the perfect RV renovator. In Florida, in the middle of discussions with one RV dealer who also did upgrades, John, a creature of no change at all, suggested that maybe instead of pouring twenty to thirty thousand dollars into our old bus, it might make sense to put that money into a newer vehicle with more of the amenities I now absolutely had to have.
Was this my creature of the rock? The man who having decided he was comfortable, never wanted to move so much as a book on the table for fear of disrupting his calm?
At the sound of this, I turned my head so sharply my teeth almost didn’t follow. He was serious. He was looking over my shoulder. I was pretty sure he hadn’t developed a lazy eye overnight, so I knew he had spotted something. There on a mound of earth in the winner’s corner of the lot, poised like the Heismann trophy on Joe Namath’s mantel, was a brand new Beaver Coach, even longer than ours and bearing the wondrous message “Special.”
It was shiny, it was new, it was clean inside! It was $700,000. I decided to look.
The first thing that hit me was the entrance into the coach. These were not my bumpy vinyl rubberized safety steps. These were granite. Shiny, black and as slippery as a grape. They were gorgeous. Now that was an entry, and damn the safety issues. But wait! The entire floor was black granite. Oh how gorgeous. Oh how beautiful. Oh, my practical mind said, how easy to keep clean. Just a little Swiffer and I’d be done for the day. I was in love.
I stepped up into the living area. Everything glistened. No, everything sparkled. I was standing in the middle of a diamond ring, a limpid lake, the sun, even. Every inch of the inside was gelled to perfection. The wood had maybe fifteen hundred coats of urethane. I could see myself in the cherry sheen of every surface. And what wasn’t wood was brilliant black trim. And what wasn’t wood or black was mirror, oh help me Elizabeth I had died and gone to heaven.
There were two bathrooms, two. And a full-size shower with a sliding door. And a king sized bed. And a washer and dryer. And a dishwasher. And everything sparkled. Oh Lordy, my wallet was throbbing to be opened, its cash intent on near-sexual release.
And oh, it was indeed sexual, this castle-in-a-coach.
The ceiling was a cacophony of tiny little lights, swirling wood trim, and mirrors. No wonder everything sparkled. The reflections just kept bouncing from one shiny surface to another and back again. My eyes were bewitched, my senses heightened, my reason impaired.
And then I realized. I was in a whorehouse. All it lacked were the red velvet drapes and the fancy women. No wonder I was so mesmerized, so dry in the mouth, so … I don’t know … turned on.
That was the point. This was a rolling cat house. And like every customer who has ever patronized one of those pleasure palaces, I was going to pay through the nose to stay this high and this excited.
Oh dear.
Suddenly my softy, cushy rug – did I say dirty? How silly of me. It was just colorful. – seemed so inviting. My little shower, so cozy. My sink with its dirty dishes so needful of my tender ministrations. My fake brick floor with its greedy grout so like a grubby, adorable child. My bus, home.
I had almost traded home for a wanton woman. Whew. That was a close one.
My wallet, no longer throbbing, sighed in relief. So did my conscience.
Temptation notwithstanding, I am at heart a good woman. And don’t you forget it.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Slow Down!
Lake Chautauqua
Western New York State
One of the consistent rules of campgrounds is a speed limit. This makes sense, because of the children who tend to roam free in these places. There are no stay-out-of-the-road-Tommy imprecations to be heard, because the road is where it’s at. This is not the big city, nor is it even the suburbs. This is the country, where kids are supposed to let go and go.
The other big reason, it seems to me, is the noise and dust that fast driving causes. Dirt roads are the standard in campgrounds, and the only place you see cement is under your rig. If you’re lucky. These slabs are only in the better places, and they mean that your vehicle tends to be more or less level, and less likely to sink into the mud on a rainy day.
But speed limits bring out the worst in people. Or I should say, the worst people. I call them the road captains. By this, I do not mean the camper-workers, generally retired people who work at the campground in return for free rent, and who generally drive around in golf carts being generally pleasant, generally helpful and generally stern about the driving limit.
No, I’m talking about those fellow campers who make it their life’s work to call out to you as you drive along, “Slow Down!”
This, I’ve discovered is a near impossible thing to do if you are following the signs posted along the way. They range from a nerve-wracking 10 miles an hour to a mind-blowing 2.5 miles an hour. Have you ever tried to go 2.5 miles an hour? It is near to impossible. Besides, the effort of keeping at this speed means you are constantly looking at your speedometer and not at the road, so you are inevitably going to plow down little Shaniekwa, albeit slowly.
Most recently we stopped a campground of season residents in Western New York on Lake Chautauqua. It was a nice place, with a lovely, if distant, view of the lake, cement parking slabs, few children since school isn’t yet out, and a fair smattering of porch police. The speed limit was 5 miles an hour and we were at the far end of the big place, which meant that at that speed I had a three-hour drive to the gate.
I was diligent about keeping to the limit. Even so, the minute my car decided it had better move along or it would die of inactivity, somebody would call out angrily, “Slow Down!”
No matter that my speed was now at 6 mph, the difference from 5 mph all but imperceptible to me. They had me dead to rights, and were letting the world know that I was a lawbreaker. How embarrassing. How belittling. How did they know?
I started to think of smart replies: What are you, a cop? Give me a ticket! I was not speeding! It’s Tuesday, fast Tuesday! And my best: Get a life! But nothing seemed either appropriate for the moment or sufficiently devastating. Besides, at this speed, they’d be able to go to their computers and Google “smart replies,” return and shout something equally devastating back at me before I was out of earshot. It was a no-win situation.
So I bore the humiliation with the quiet dignity for which I am known.
Then yesterday, the day before we were to leave, I had brainstorm. I brought my camera. Brilliant. I took a picture of the speedometer as I was driving along. Two seconds later, somebody called out, “Slow down, you idiot!” Even better. This was not just a finger-point. It was an insult, and I was ready.
I stopped the car, jumped out and rushed to the porch. Its occupants, an elderly couple in rockers, a jar of sun tea perking nearby, looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. I’m sure no one had ever stopped and confronted them.
“Look!” I said with authority, “ Look!” I held up my camera. There on the screen was my picture, showing my recorded speed. Five miles an hour on the button. Not a whit more, not a tick less.
But I was not to have my satisfaction. “I need my readers,” said the woman. “I’ll help you look,” said her husband. They disappeared inside.
I stood there, righteous indignation making my heart race, proof that I was innocent in my hand. I had them. I knew it, and they would have to apologize and, hopefully, shut up, at least for the rest of the day.
Five minutes later, I got back in my car. They never came back out.
Betty
Lake Chautauqua
Western New York State
One of the consistent rules of campgrounds is a speed limit. This makes sense, because of the children who tend to roam free in these places. There are no stay-out-of-the-road-Tommy imprecations to be heard, because the road is where it’s at. This is not the big city, nor is it even the suburbs. This is the country, where kids are supposed to let go and go.
The other big reason, it seems to me, is the noise and dust that fast driving causes. Dirt roads are the standard in campgrounds, and the only place you see cement is under your rig. If you’re lucky. These slabs are only in the better places, and they mean that your vehicle tends to be more or less level, and less likely to sink into the mud on a rainy day.
But speed limits bring out the worst in people. Or I should say, the worst people. I call them the road captains. By this, I do not mean the camper-workers, generally retired people who work at the campground in return for free rent, and who generally drive around in golf carts being generally pleasant, generally helpful and generally stern about the driving limit.
No, I’m talking about those fellow campers who make it their life’s work to call out to you as you drive along, “Slow Down!”
This, I’ve discovered is a near impossible thing to do if you are following the signs posted along the way. They range from a nerve-wracking 10 miles an hour to a mind-blowing 2.5 miles an hour. Have you ever tried to go 2.5 miles an hour? It is near to impossible. Besides, the effort of keeping at this speed means you are constantly looking at your speedometer and not at the road, so you are inevitably going to plow down little Shaniekwa, albeit slowly.
Most recently we stopped a campground of season residents in Western New York on Lake Chautauqua. It was a nice place, with a lovely, if distant, view of the lake, cement parking slabs, few children since school isn’t yet out, and a fair smattering of porch police. The speed limit was 5 miles an hour and we were at the far end of the big place, which meant that at that speed I had a three-hour drive to the gate.
I was diligent about keeping to the limit. Even so, the minute my car decided it had better move along or it would die of inactivity, somebody would call out angrily, “Slow Down!”
No matter that my speed was now at 6 mph, the difference from 5 mph all but imperceptible to me. They had me dead to rights, and were letting the world know that I was a lawbreaker. How embarrassing. How belittling. How did they know?
I started to think of smart replies: What are you, a cop? Give me a ticket! I was not speeding! It’s Tuesday, fast Tuesday! And my best: Get a life! But nothing seemed either appropriate for the moment or sufficiently devastating. Besides, at this speed, they’d be able to go to their computers and Google “smart replies,” return and shout something equally devastating back at me before I was out of earshot. It was a no-win situation.
So I bore the humiliation with the quiet dignity for which I am known.
Then yesterday, the day before we were to leave, I had brainstorm. I brought my camera. Brilliant. I took a picture of the speedometer as I was driving along. Two seconds later, somebody called out, “Slow down, you idiot!” Even better. This was not just a finger-point. It was an insult, and I was ready.
I stopped the car, jumped out and rushed to the porch. Its occupants, an elderly couple in rockers, a jar of sun tea perking nearby, looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. I’m sure no one had ever stopped and confronted them.
“Look!” I said with authority, “ Look!” I held up my camera. There on the screen was my picture, showing my recorded speed. Five miles an hour on the button. Not a whit more, not a tick less.
But I was not to have my satisfaction. “I need my readers,” said the woman. “I’ll help you look,” said her husband. They disappeared inside.
I stood there, righteous indignation making my heart race, proof that I was innocent in my hand. I had them. I knew it, and they would have to apologize and, hopefully, shut up, at least for the rest of the day.
Five minutes later, I got back in my car. They never came back out.
Betty
Lake Chautauqua
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