At a recent charity event, my neighbor Lynn won THE primary door prize: A weekend at a cabin in the Sierras, and I was one of three friends she invited to go along.
We could hardly wait for the date to roll around. We’re all pals and relished the thought of being together for three whole days. We planned to hike and swim and just loll and read in the comfort of our alpine retreat.
Lynn got the key from the generous owner, a San Francisco businesswoman who described the cabin as rustic. She told us how to operate the burglar alarm and gave directions on how to get there.
After a three-hour drive we found the house and saw what we had expected. A mountain cabin in the pines with an inviting porch. The inside was another story. It was a disaster. One look and we wondered how we could last through a whole weekend. My first impression was that we had arrived at the home of the Addams family and that Morticia would appear any minute. Or maybe Lurch.
We had thought it would be an old cabin with tired furniture, but a dirty old cabin was not in our plans. Cobwebs festooned walls and ceilings, some with hard-working spiders spinning away inside. King-sized ants marched around the bathroom and few reacted to the insect repellent we sprayed on them. The bathroom fixtures were rusted, the mirrors mottled. Tattered draperies hung unevenly from occasional hooks in the living room.
To judge by the stuff that crowded every shelf, corner, and closet, the cabin had been in the owner’s family for generations. It looked as though anyone who had anything he didn’t want drove it to the mountains to molder and die.
We took our own sheets, so we were sure of that much. The blankets, however, emitted clouds of dust as we made the beds. As a matter of fact there was an inch of dust on everything.
It was hard to understand how anyone could donate the use of her home and not clean it up--a little anyway. We decided that the owner wanted to appear generous at the charitable event and didn’t care about the comfort of his guests.
It never dawned on us to go to a motel. We liked the idea of making our own breakfast coffee and lunchtime sandwiches, after scouring the counters, of course. Good restaurants within walking distance supplied our dinners.
We walked among the pines, lazed on the porch, visited friends, and inspected the shops. Most of our cabin time was spent outside on the porch where we laughed and giggled over the bridge table and everything else. I stopped laughing when the bridge scores were totaled and I owed the most money---$2.95. This, of course, had no correlation to my skill.
When it was time to shake the dust from our things and go home, we searched out the cleaning equipment. The only broom must have been a wedding gift to the owner’s grandmother. We found it hard to sweep with only an inch or two of straw. We folded the lint-filled blankets but left the spider webs for the next tenant’s pleasure.
I think we were all glad to leave, but I don’t know when we’d had more fun. All anyone needs is good friends, good food, and a sense of humor. Were you to ask if we would go back, at this moment I’d have to say, no, but then, maybe we would.
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