The Summer Cottage
By Zaslow Crane
I grew up in Western New York and it was a vastly different place in the 60’s and 70’s than it is now. My neighborhood was an insular patchwork of well kept homes and front yards all belonging to hard working blue collar families. Families, who for some reason, decided that for their vacation they needed to rent Summer “cottages” in Ontario, Canada, a scant 30 minutes away, but in another country.
Where they put vinegar and ketchup on their fries there, fer christstsakes!
The cottages were not for sale, except for long ago, when my aunt & uncle and a few other Western New Yorkers were able to buy into the 20 acre complex, so the rest of us planned well ahead and rented two bucolic weeks on the other side of the border.
I should note that to this day, I am mystified why we didn’t go further away for a vacation. I mean, this place had exactly the same weather as we would have had, had we stayed home. The only difference was a unfamilar, somewhat worn and tacky dwelling, a pool and that the lake was quite close by.
It was at the pool where we hung out despite there being a much more impressive body of water a few hundred feet away.
I cannot speak for anyone else, but my preference for the pool boiled down to one thing: Sue Kesseler. Sue preferred the pool and so, so did I.
Sue had turned popping out of her bathing suit top into an artform, remaining “surprised” and “dismayed” every time it happened, which was quite often, almost like “Old Faithful”, which I’d read about and seen films of on the Walt Disney Show, Sunday nights.
I was not the only guy patiently waiting for another watery eruption from the pool wherein her breasts would magically be on display for a second or two.
A second or two was enough time for me. Back when you had to be 18 to even buy a playboy magazine, this was an event to be anticipated. She knew exactly what she was doing, and in retrospect I suppose she did for attention.
In times of reverie, and if my thoughts return to her, I often wonder if she became a stripper.
She wasn’t as cute as Haley LaSoursa, but Haley was going steady with Dick D’Angelo and I had no chance there. So at night, we gravitated to darkened spots away from our parents, where we might make out.
The girls had developed an elaborate sort of close quarters jiu-jitsu to keep the boys’ hands from going beyond “second base” when in reality they wanted to be fondled by us as (however clumsily) much as we wanted to fondle them.
Sue Kesseler, however, had a different approach. She opted away from “defense; and went on a sort of “offense”. Instead of trying to fend off my advances, she just put her hand in my lap…and squeezed.
There were many an evening, when I returned to my home away from home to fall, twitching and frustrated into my single bed, while sharing a bedroom with my siblings in so much pain from stimulation and no release that instead of walking, I sort of shambled, aching horribly and unsatisfied. And rather than go to sleep, I replayed the boobie flash over and thye crotch grope and over in my brain as I was vainly trying to go to sleep. This of course only made the discomfort worse.
I was 14 or 15 what did I know?
Anyway we had all also recently seen some James Bond movie or something and there was a scene where the hero jumped from a great heght and tucked and rolled to keep from getting hurt. That action excited the daredevils in all of us. It looked simple, so we, being young adolescents who innately believed we were immortal and indestructable decided to throw ourselves off the five foot tall (protective) ice wall at the beach onto the sand.
Sand provides a safe landing…right? It’s just sand and sand is soft. Everyone knows that.
Anyway the first dive, tuck and roll went pretty well. We all escaped mostly unscathed. And rather than count our blessings, we, being stupid male adolescents, decided that we should all do it again.
Whether for a desire for a more prefect controlled falls, or for greater glory among our peers, I cannot say. There was no logic in evidence that day. And despite the fact that Hollywood was 3000 miles away and that was the only place that this particular skill could have any worth, we decided to do it again.
This was when things went sideways.
I flung myself off the parapet with uncharacteristic gusto and flubbed my landing, spraining my wrist and jamming my shoulder into that soft sand.
A frustrated paternal lecture later and, after a visit to the emergency room, I lay in one of the cottage’s single bed, meds staving off the pain, but leaving me just lucid enough to replay the boobie flash yet again in my demented brain pan.
Now, it is here that should mention my Mom’s fondness for the light that flows so gently from candles.
She had a few lit around me to comfort me, I believe, as I lay there nursing my wounds and my shattered ego.
And since we were in unfamiliar surroundings, it was an easy thing to accidentally roll over and knock one of those candles onto a nearby pillow, setting it afire.
Oh, the miniture conflagration didn’t get far. I got up and walked it outside to hose the pillow off. At that point my Mom was hyper vigilant and it didn’t take long for her to assess the situation and send me back to my smoky, stinky room.
She took the pillow to the manager and tried to explain. She ddn’t want to be billed for the damage even though she knew that it was my fault. She got nowhere as you might imagine.
On her walk back, she ran into another woman from our neighborhood, who lived a few blocks away. She was there with her family at the same time.
She asked my Mom, without looking at the pillow I suppose: “So how are you and Don and the kids enjoying your stay here this year?”
My Mom wasn’t really listening. Since she was carrying a burnt pillow and had just done battle and lost with the complex manager she simply answered:
“Well, I guess I’m going to buy it, now.”
As I heard the conversation later, I realized that the neighbor lady surmised that my Mom was referring to the “cottage”.
“But they’re not for sale.”
“Mr. Warrington is insisting that I buy it. So I guess we’ll just have to pay whatever he’s asking…”
“But they’re not for sale…”
They walked along the cheesy blacktop with no curbs and meager traffic.
“It’s in the contract we signed, so I have no choice.”
The neighbor lady blinked and went off to harrangue her husband, I suppose telling him that “we” were buying a cottage, and why were they not offered the same opportunity?
I also gather that she stopped at a few friends’ cottages and filled them in (however erroniously) and then en masse they descended upon the poor Mr. Warrington, who had disappointed my mom with his hard nosed business attitude.
There was a lot of yelling in the dark that evening. I don’t think Mr. Warrington, got much rest as he tried to explain that the cottages simply were not for sale, despite whatever rumors that these folks had heard.
Luckily, that was our last night there and we were off for home, thirty minutes away, and early the next morning. My Dad always insisted an early start.
And after a crossing the border nearing home, my shoulder still hurt quite a lot, but I was suddenly comforted by the knowledge that the Kesselers had a built in pool and often hosted small get togethers for Sue’s friends in the Summer.
Life is good.
-END-
