Vermont

   Every summer my family goes on vacation with another family up in Vermont. I believe the first year was 1981. We rent out an old ski lodge called the ‘Norse Lodge.’ It’s owned by a couple named Olaf and Connie. They were always nice, but as a young child I was scared of them. Olaf was older than Connie by quite a few years was a Norwegian immigrant who came to America right after World War I. He told stories about life as a teenager in those days, luckily when I was old enough to appreciate them. He told stories of trying to find work during the Great Depression they were told there was work up in Canada. He had a green card but was warned told not to leave the country because they wouldn’t allow him back, but he said if you have to choose between following rules or eating, you follow your stomach. So he and some friends tried to cross into Canada. They stopped him at the border and didn’t allow him in, but the U.S. didn’t allow him back. He was stuck forever in ‘limbo’ which was a detention area in the border crossing area. After about a week of neither country wanting the financial responsibility for deporting him they literally left the door unlocked and let him decide which country to sneak into. He chose the U.S. He became very vocal politically and had called to voice his opinion to every president since Johnson It was comical hearing his ranting from the days when he was a young liberal to a staunch conservative. When as a young grade schooler, I saw an irate Olaf come out of his house and announced he had just given Ronald Reagan a piece of his mind. Maybe that is why I feared him. Not because he called the president, but because the President called him back. This old man who to me, lived up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere had this mystical clout with the President. And of course, to a little kid the President is the most powerful man in the world next to Santa Claus.

  Connie, his wife, was a blonde hippie flower child. She always picked flowers, walked barefoot, and did handstands up on the hill when it rained. Watching a 50 year old doing handstands was something to behold.

  The large red house with the shiny silver roof had multiple bedrooms that made it perfect for our two families. I always shared ‘the Bunk room’ with Charles who was about a year younger than me in age. My two brothers shared the adjacent room. And Charles’ sister, Barbara, being the only girl was always allowed to bring a friend that she shared a room with. Down the hill from the house was a small pond/stream for fishing, canoeing and swimming. Up the hill in the other direction was a tennis court which Olaf meticulously tended to every morning when not mowing his lawn on a huge ride on lawn mower. Beyond the tennis court was the Green Mountain National Forest. From the property was a trail mostly used to collect firewood, but if you followed the trail to a huge ominous tree that had one large branch sticking straight out pointing to the direction to the Baker family burial plot. Here in the middle of the woods is a cemetery with about twelve headstones from the mid to late 1800’s of adults and children whom had died living in the area. You can see the remnants of either the house frame or property line fence of this mysterious family. Years later, Olaf located descendants of this family and led them up to the graves and for the first time the cemetery was cleaned up of brush and looked presentable.

Something that became a yearly tradition was to spend one night that week trying to scare each other which inevitably led to someone daring people to go up to the cemetery in the dead of night. Naturally, my father would duck out while we all got ready to go and he’d be hiding in the woods ready to snatch our flashlights when we got up there.

 Another event that became a yearly tradition was the yearly water gun fight. It started off as a simple toy pistol fight running around the property. The following year it was an ambush inside the house while playing cards when others were least suspecting it. Each year the fight got more sophisticated and destructive. Strategically placed water balloons. Then buckets and pots. Super Soakers. Finally, one year one of the participants bought a professional bug sprayer which was known as the nuclear option. The following year we had water hoses running up to the second floor of the house. After that, the ‘responsible’ adults decided that enough was enough, mostly because one of the elderly occupants slipped and hurt their knee on the slippery linoleum, and not because the old wallpaper from the 1950’s was peeling.

  At one point or another each of us kids brought a friend with us on our family vacation. The first ‘friend’ I brought up was Erin and that wasn’t until his year. She was always close with my family from the get go and a logical choice for me because she would love it. The living condition for the week could be considered ‘rustic’ at best. Around 18 people sharing 3 bathrooms and the closest thing to electronic entertainment was a disco ball that looked out of place in the center of the living room surrounded by animal heads. Televisions and radios had no reception so we needed to entertain ourselves. Erin loved everything about it.

  Erin and I talked about everything those few days she was there. I told her everything I fellt about Jen. My hopes, my reservations, my feelings of being absolutely head over heels in love. She opened up about her relationship with Victor. Her hopes and worries. The one thing we could agree on was that relationships weren’t easy ifyou don’t know where you stand. That weekend was the weekend we became each others ‘backup’. If I couldn’t have Jen, Erin, to me, was the ultimate consolation prize!