On Summer

THE HOUSE ON LAKE OSCAWANA, 1942

Summer is undoubtedly my favorite time of year. While I am sure I am not alone in this conviction, summer tends to mean something different for everyone, and that meaning tends to change through the stages of our lives. When we were kids, summer was three months of blissful freedom from any perceived obligations we may have had at that age – school, homework, bedtime, putting on a coat! As teenagers, restrictions on these free summer days were already being introduced with reading lists, SAT tests, and college applications. By college, we had summer jobs and internships that were hopefully setting us up for our futures, or at least making us a buck or two. And now, summer has been reduced to a shorter Friday here and there, and perhaps a few vacation days you may have saved up throughout the year. This is, unless you had the brilliant foresight to become a teacher – a profession that allows you to seem like you care about helping people when, really, you just picked a great vacation schedule. I did not. Still, summer is my favorite time of year.

As a child, my summers were spent at my family’s old country house on Lake Oscawana. The lake was an hour outside of Manhattan in a little town called Putnam Valley. While I absolutely loved it there, the house, which was about a thousand years old, scared the shit out of me. It was big and dark and made of stone. It had a huge wrap around porch that covered the entire front of the house, and kept any daylight from entering the interior of the first floor. There were big imposing beams that hung just below the ceilings, and the floors and stairs were made from old wood that creaked and moaned with your every move. The basement looked like a torture chamber from a horror movie, and the attic, which was equally terrifying, sat right across from my bedroom on the second floor of the house. To make matters worse, the house was haunted.

Our ghost’s name was June Webber, and she lived in the little apartment that sat above our kitchen. June inherited the house from the former owner, F.K. James, who not only owned our house, but also half of Lake Oscawana, and a well-known chain of drug stores called Whalen’s Drugs. This was, until he died in the 1960s, leaving all of his worldly possessions to his caretaker, June Webber. June, my family had decided, was in love with F.K. James, and fell into a deep depression after his death. Too sad to be in the other parts of the house where F.K. lived, June spent the rest of her days in her quarters above the kitchen, having only the company of her nine cats. According to some (my family), June stayed in that little apartment above the kitchen for nearly twenty years until she died…up there…above the kitchen…with her nine cats. A few years later, my parents bought the house from June’s brother, who was looking to unload it quickly. Little did they know that June was still living there, and every so often when there was a quiet moment in the kitchen or there was a bad thunderstorm, she could be heard walking around up in that little apartment. Even worse, it still reeked of her cats.

So what kid would enjoy spending summers in a haunted house that smelled like dead kitties? Well, truthfully, I didn’t spend much time indoors when I was there. The house sat on two and a half acres of partially wooded waterfront land that had a stream running from end to end. There was also a massive willow tree that sat smack in the middle of the front yard, with vines that hung almost all the way down to the ground. For a city kid, this kind of space was absolutely priceless.

I noticed early on that Putnam Valley nature was extremely different from Central Park nature, as I didn’t get my hand smacked every time I tried to pick something up and put it in my mouth. I was also allowed to dig wherever I wanted - another privilege that life in Manhattan never afforded a child. My personal favorite was digging for worms. One morning when I was four-years-old, my parents woke up to realize I was nowhere in sight. The only sign of me was the pajamas I wore to bed the night before that were tossed in a little pile in front of my bedroom. My parents spent nearly an hour looking for me, when finally they noticed the kitchen door was ajar. When they walked outside, they found me in the back yard completely naked and covered head to toe in dirt. In front of me was a hole, already about a foot deep. With a smile, I turned to my parents and proudly showed them what I had found. Two muddy handfuls of worms! It was bliss.

Putnam Valley, while a charming town, was not exactly a popular destination for a summer home. However, my parents wanted a place they could easily get to from Manhattan, as my father, an allergist, would commute into the city to see patients during weekdays. This, of course, baffled me. How on earth could he find anyone to treat? Nobody is going to be in the city. It’s summer! They will all surely be at camp. Adults are so stupid.

Since my father was in the city all week, my mother, who - God love her - does not have a domestic bone in her body, would hire a few extra hands to help out for the summer. Now, when I say “a few extra hands”, what I really mean is we would bunk up for the summer in our haunted house with, quite literally, a troupe of young, beautiful Brazilian woman. They were all also somehow related to each other, and apparently, to the former Miss Rio. Seriously, I’m pretty sure Lucia’s sister was Miss Rio.

I absolutely loved my new collection of nannies, especially Rosalie, who treated me like her little princess, and was responsible for giving me any girly bone I may have in my body. Born a natural tomboy, from an early age I gravitated towards sports and dirt, before clothes and dolls (that’s not to say I didn’t have my collection of Barbies who I would use for experimental haircuts, after which, they always ended up bald). Then came Rosalie. She showed me how to curtsy and walk like a lady. She told me that all little girls should take ballet, which started an eight-year ballet career. She dressed me in flowery dresses and put blush on my cheeks. She taught me how to be flirty and bat my eyes, but never easily accept an advance from a boy. She always made sure I finished my dinner, not because it was polite, but because I needed to eventually develop curves – something all real women should have. And at the ripe age of five, she had me walking around Lake Oscawana in a little string bikini that matched hers because anything more covering would just be silly. There is really no better teacher of how to be female than a Brazilian woman.

As you can imagine, in a place like Putnam Valley, where there was a local bar down the road called “Shecky’s Shack”, which had about fifteen Harleys parked out front at all times, our arrival with the Brazilians at the beginning of each summer caused quite a commotion. So while I spent my mornings at Camp Nabby, learning arts and crafts, relay races, and how to start a fire from sticks, I spent my afternoons unknowingly receiving an education on men and the lengths at which they will go to get the attention of a beautiful woman.

Back then I just thought our little corner of the lake was the most popular, as this was where all the boats seemed to congregate. I assumed that Tony, the guy behind the deli counter of the local market just liked to give away free meat. I also figured that Joe, the man who always offered to give us a lift back to the house, even though it was fifteen minutes out of his way, was just being neighborly. I did find it strange that the gardener always seemed to take his shirt off just as we were walking past him, but I concluded that he just always got hot…right then. It wasn’t until later in my life that I realized just what these men were after. Luckily, when it came time for me to be offered the free meat, I could see right through it.

As the years passed, and my brother, Aaron, and I got old enough to look out for ourselves, the Brazilians eventually stopped coming. While at times I missed them, I was a kid, and it only took an ice cream cone or two to help me move on. It was especially easy with the arrival of the Sadek family.

I was seven and Aaron was nine, when the Sadeks moved into a house about a quarter mile down the road, and about a hundred yards across the water. They had a daughter my age and a son Aaron’s, a match-up that worked out perfectly. Bec and Zach quickly became our summer best friends, and for many summers to come, the four of us were rarely seen separately. In the mornings we all carpooled together to camp, and when we returned in the afternoons, it was only a matter of minutes before one pair of siblings had hopped on their bikes and ridden over to the other’s house. Generally, it was Aaron and I that ended up at the Sadek’s house, as the water in their part of the lake was seaweed-free, and their mom could cook.

The four of us spent our days playing endless games; some made up, and some well known. However, the one that is most memorable for me, and perhaps for all of us, was our annual end-of-summer Teich vs. Sadek triathlon. The race was broken down into the traditional three legs, which could be split between brother and sister as seen fit. Of course, Aaron took two of the legs and I was left to do my best in whatever portion he felt I had best trained for that summer.

The first leg was the bike (we didn’t know the proper order of an actual triathlon) from our house to their house. This included biking up the “monster”, a steep hill that sat right outside our driveway, and took me two years to get strong enough to reach the top without walking. Next, was the run from their house to our house, the leg of the race I was most often assigned as I was actually quite a fast runner. The final portion of the race was a swim from our house to theirs, a feat so nearly impossible, I almost always let Aaron do it.

The first year of the triathlon was pretty much just a dare. However, after the Sadeks lost to us that first summer, they insisted on a rematch the next year. By the year after that, formal invitations were sent out to our parents, friends, and extended family to come witness this awesome event.

I don’t remember what year it was when the last race took place. Just as I can’t really remember when we stopped spending our entire summers with the Sadeks. But eventually, it did stop. Some headed off to sleep-away camp, some to sports camp, and I discovered horses and spent my remaining teenage summers riding them. Before too long, my parents sold the old house on Oscawana and moved to a newer, ghost-free model on a lake near by, Lake Mahopac.

It is there that I now grab at any semblance of summer I can find; a luxury that seems to become more elusive with every passing year. Between work, weddings, and other adult-like obligations, my entire summer is now completely scheduled end to end. I used to think a schedule was something summer was supposed to be free of, but as I get older, I realize that is an impossible dream. Even as children, we were on a schedule, we just weren’t the ones who had to keep it.

I hope I can come to a point in my life when I give myself the chance to have a true summer again. I don’t think becoming a teacher is the answer, as I should not be trusted with the lives of small children, or anyone, for that matter. Perhaps it's just a matter of holding onto the memory of what summer once was; a time when we could truly let ourselves go and find joy in something as simple as digging in the dirt for worms. I am hopeful that I can find my way back to that place, but if I can’t, I am confident that summer will still remain my favorite time of year.

Now if only it would stop raining…