The Lake
In the dead heat of the summer the best of families go somewhere.
The Kennedys have Hyannisport, Massachusetts.
The Bushes have Kennebunkport, Maine.
The Windsors have Balmoral, Scotland.
And my family has Mt. Storm, West Virginia.
Summer cabins, unless you can afford the Hamptons, are traditionally rugged. Fortunately, L.L. Bean has built an empire out of plaid flannel sheets, matching dog beds, and gum boots. Plow and Hearth sells plastic champagne flutes and shiny barbecue sets. Some people slum it with highball glasses that are out of style, or suffer through Nana’s tarnished silver. William Sonoma sells lovely picnic hampers with homespun red-checked cloth napkins for bucolic catered picnics by the water, or at Tanglewood or Wolftrap.
At The Lake in Mt. Storm, we don’t need to purchase designer rustic housewares from the Eddie Bauer home collection. We use red solo cups and paper plates and generations of mismatched stainless steel cutlery rejected by the members of the family. And old sheets that don’t match (and are neither flannel nor plaid.) And oil cloths on the table. And pot-holders and beer coozies that we picked up for free at the opening of a new car dealership, or at a school spirit rally, or 3 for 99 cents at the end of the season. The barbecue tongs are fashioned out of screwdriver handles and wire, and some of the serving platters pre-date any involvement the United States has ever had with a land war in Southeast Asia.
To call our estate a cabin would be generous. There are no vaulted ceilings. There is no post and beam architecture. A designer didn’t meticulously match the drapes to the bearskin rug. The furniture isn’t part of the Ethan Allen “Rustic Farmhouse” collection.
Instead we are blessed with slightly imperfect redwood stained picnic benches and tables crafted by my husband’s grandfather. The large mouth bass stuffed and mounted on the wall may not match the curtains, but at least it doesn’t sing.
We stay in two trailers at right angles adjoined by a deck hand-built by husbands, fathers, nephews, grandfathers, and uncle or two. One trailer is at least 50 years old and is the exact replica of the ones many of my relatives used to live in during the early 1970s.
(Steven King used to live in one just like it in Maine. Legend has it that he wrote *Carrie* with his legs jammed against the dryer in the tiny half-sized laundry room. We use that same room for storage now.)
My father-in-law bought the other trailer from the University of Maryland. It was used as overflow dorm space for college age Baby Boomers. The entire trailer consists of nothing but bedrooms (of which there are four) and bathrooms (of which there are two). Each bedroom has a set of bunk beds bolted into the wall and a desk and a set of bookshelves. Each bathroom has a shower and two sinks. One can easily imagine hippie college students listening to The Doors and Jefferson Airplane on eight-track tapes in this place as they brush their teeth and prepare for class or a campus protest. The rooms have been repainted many times, and some of the bunk beds have been dismantled and replaced by cast-off double beds for the little boys (there are only little boys, no little girls) who grew up, got married, and brought their brides back.
To the Lake.
I am one of those brides, or I was 20 or so years ago. Now I have a white streak in my hair… and instead of water skiing and drinking beer, I spend time reminding my teenage sons to wear sunscreen, and preparing my famous potato salad. And as I inch closer to 50, I understand why the menopausal women in the family fled the heat of town for the cold mountain air.
And sometimes I drink the gin and tonic that gets poured into my red solo cup.
We don’t sail.
We motor and troll on a pontoon boat my brother in law and sister in law practically rebuilt from scratch.
The speedboat is gone…no one is into speed anymore. But people fish. And the kids swim.
Sometimes I sit in an inflatable raft tied to the dock and read a book. Sometimes I sit on the porch and write. But This isn’t Maine, and I’m no Stephen King.
Our meals aren’t catered lobster bakes, and our charcuterie boards aren’t supplied by Dean and Delucca. But my father in law built a huge barbecue pit out of cinder blocks (just like the ones the firemen have in town), and on every summer holiday we slather my mother-in-law’s special sauce on 8–10 whole chickens that are sacrificed to our hunger. There are campfires at night. And s’mores. And on chilly evenings there is a jar of ‘shine.
And games.
Like generations before him, my husband deals hands of Canasta, and Spades, and Liverpool Rummy to my sister-in-law, and my sons.
And there are books, and comic books. And newspapers. And magazines. Granddaddy likes to read the *National Enquirer*, and the rest of us sneak it as a guilty pleasure.
There is no television, per Grandma Lila’s decree five decades ago. There is no WiFi, and most of us can’t get cell service here on the mountain. We have a landline, and if you want to hear the football game over Labor Day weekend, you are welcome to find it on an ancient transistor radio. (Reception seems to be best in the front yard near the fire pit.)
On the Fourth of July there are fireworks purchased by the last person to drive through South Carolina. On Memorial Day we open camp and clean out mouse droppings (and, once, a raccoon!) On Labor Day we cover the beds and close it down on our way out.
There are ghosts, too, of Maw, Pap, Lila, Chris, Ida, and Aunt Virginia. There are tales of the glories of house parties of long ago. There are stories of the time the fireworks flew through Aunt Virginia’s legs, the time the motor on the boat quit in the middle of the lake and had to be paddled back, and the time the dog got nailed by a skunk.
The people in the next lot have a continual Appalachian-style Gatsby party raging at all times. The people on the other side appear to have several generations gathering on any given weekend, not unlike (I imagine) the Kennedy compound.
We aren’t at the South Hamptons, nor Mar-a-Lago, or even West Egg.
But we do have our spot.
And we know who we are.
