As a kid, I used to cry when summer ended and it was time to go back to school. I’m a boomer, and school back then meant forming long lines in the parking lot and marching into the building. This enforced regimen felt like prison. The wardens — I mean, teachers — ready to chin-clip anyone caught talking. How excruciating to struggle into hard shoes after running barefoot all summer. Itchy, scratchy petticoats. Wool knee socks.
When I got much older, I yearned for September. I’m talking about the summers when I adopted the role of landlady. Eventually, I discovered I wasn’t cut out for that gig, though I have great admiration for the stalwarts who do it.
For two seasons I rented our cottage at Long Beach, Rockport, where we’d summered for 50 years, until my father’s passing. He was 100, although his sister Alice, who attended his (final) birthday party, said he was actually 101, according to the date in their mother’s Irish Bible. “Who’s more accurate,” Alice said, “a mother or city hall?” She had a point.
When the bills started arriving: taxes, flood insurance, utilities, etc., I decided we needed to rent the cottage. This was long before the internet. When prospective renters called, they wanted details: how many beds, etc. Many demanded a tour.
Being new to the business, I was clueless. The cottage, situated in the front row above the (outstanding) beach, had remained unchanged over the years. Upon purchase, my dad had removed the old-fashioned toilet with its pull chain, yet things were basically old-school. The word I used was “rustic.” Rustic meant a bit of rust here and there. It meant a shower, once outdoors, now enclosed. That shower had spiders we’d grown up with to the extent they were part of the “ambience.”
Surprisingly, this became an issue when a lady wearing panty-hose and slingback heels (at the beach) requested a tour. She loved the location, the beach, the views. But when I opened the shower door and she stepped inside, she scooted out, yelping, “Whoops! Wrong door!”
Ah, no, it wasn’t.
It was that moment when I realized there were people who wanted to live at the beach but didn’t want the beach-life. They wanted carpeting — wall to wall — because sandy floors were unacceptable. Nor did they care to fall asleep listening to the ocean waves outside their window; they wanted A/C units, unknown at the time. Soon, I separated the fussbudgets from the beach people. The former didn’t like sand or go in the ocean.
I also attempted to set rules. I’m a cat lover (VP: Friends of Beverly Animals), dealing with allergy prone tenants. Two cat ladies from New Jersey resented the no-pet ruling, but agreed to it. Imagine my surprise when one afternoon while walking outside our cottage, I spotted, in the upper bedroom windows, cats peering out(!)
Just when I thought I had things under control, I got whammed. A family was moving out in the morning with another arriving that afternoon. With no warning, a tall front-bedroom window fell out onto the roof below, leaving a huge hole. Meanwhile, the new tenants were arriving in two hours.
A frantic call to Gloucester builder Bill Sanborn, and the window was reinstalled. Walking back to his truck, Bill passed the arriving tenants: disaster averted. A gaping, open bedroom window with seagulls peering in was not a good look for a vacation destination.
Labor Day arrived and I waved goodbye to the last teary-eyed guests. Back on the porch, I removed the For Rent sign and collapsed into a rocker. Resting my feet on the railing, I inhaled the salt air mingled with wild beach roses. My summer had begun.
Within a week, the spiders returned.
Sharon Love Cook is the author of the Granite Cove Mysteries. Join her at the Friends of Beverly Animals’ Annual Trivia Nite, Saturday, Sept. 14, at the Franco-American Club, 44 Park St., Beverly; 6 to 10 p.m.: Food! Raffles! Cash prizes! Have fun and help our furry friends. sharonlovecook@comcast.net.