At the end of the summer when I was 15 years old, I received a phone call asking me to babysit overnight. I'd never met the person or heard their name in my life, but on the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend in 1972, a lady in a very ordinary car picked me up.
She was dressed up for the end-of-the-season bash at Bailey's Beach, a very exclusive beach in Newport, Rhode Island, where you have to have the proper credentials and wait for someone to die to even think about becoming a member. Jacqueline Kennedy's family belonged. A teacher at school, who life guarded at their pool, once told me that the faucets were made of gold.
It was the most foul weather we'd had all summer long and we were headed into hurricane season. At 5 o'clock it was already dark with pouring rain, thunder, and gale force winds. The lady delivered me to her house about a mile and half from my family's home. We went off the road onto a long, narrow, rutted lane. It was darkened not only by the weather but by the huge canopied trees bent over it.
Finally, she deposited me at the front door of her house, instructing me to go right inside on my own. With the weather being what it was, I didn't get a good look the yard or anything- I just blew into the house.
My young charge met me at the door. She told me she was 13 years old. She was very skinny and looked younger than she was. I was not skinny at all and maybe looked a year or two older than I was.
The hallway was full of larger-than-life ancestor portraits, mostly in military uniforms and bearing large weapons. All 6 pairs of eyes were on me. My young charge swung her arm out towards the left and said, "And there's the larder." No way was I going to ask her what the heck a larder was, but it didn't sound good to me. Then she delivered me up the huge set of oriental-carpeted stairs to my room on the second floor, where she abruptly left me to my own devices while she disappeared to her own room, never to meet again that night.
There wasn't much to do but sit on the bed and watch the storm out the big hulking window. After reading for a while, I hid under the covers for the rest of the night. The weather was better the next morning, and I was delivered home twenty-five dollars richer.
About 30 years after that long, snackless night under the covers, one of my sisters came home for the weekend and convinced me to go visit a friend with her. Now, I had never been able to or wanted to retrace the path to that forbidding house, but all of a sudden I realized that there we were, the same darn ancestor portraits staring me down again, and just as creepy as the first time.
We were whisked through a narrow crooked hallway off the big hallway to, yes, the larder, where I was introduced to my sister's friend, his wife and in-laws. His wife looked at me, grinning ear-to-ear, and said, "I know you; you babysat me!" Well, so much for my attempt at adult sophistication...
The very same girl that I'd babysat gave me a tour of the downstairs, the tennis courts, the ferryman's house and the pier onto the Sakonnet River. She told me about her uncle-ancestor who'd read a book about how to start a gentleman's farm and according to instructions, purchased 60 acres, had a huge, slate-roofed, many-faceted house built in 1860. It had its own ferryboat landing so he could receive shipments of necessary supplies from the mainland. Of course, all I could think of was hooch deliveries in the dark during Prohibition.
Then she showed me the fields of grapes for the vineyards she and her father had started so the land could be taxed as agricultural land and pay for itself. Finally, she went down to the cellar and fetched up a couple of bottles of their own vineyard's wine.
We are good friends now—but I will never forget that first night I spent at their house!
She was dressed up for the end-of-the-season bash at Bailey's Beach, a very exclusive beach in Newport, Rhode Island, where you have to have the proper credentials and wait for someone to die to even think about becoming a member. Jacqueline Kennedy's family belonged. A teacher at school, who life guarded at their pool, once told me that the faucets were made of gold.
It was the most foul weather we'd had all summer long and we were headed into hurricane season. At 5 o'clock it was already dark with pouring rain, thunder, and gale force winds. The lady delivered me to her house about a mile and half from my family's home. We went off the road onto a long, narrow, rutted lane. It was darkened not only by the weather but by the huge canopied trees bent over it.
Finally, she deposited me at the front door of her house, instructing me to go right inside on my own. With the weather being what it was, I didn't get a good look the yard or anything- I just blew into the house.
My young charge met me at the door. She told me she was 13 years old. She was very skinny and looked younger than she was. I was not skinny at all and maybe looked a year or two older than I was.
The hallway was full of larger-than-life ancestor portraits, mostly in military uniforms and bearing large weapons. All 6 pairs of eyes were on me. My young charge swung her arm out towards the left and said, "And there's the larder." No way was I going to ask her what the heck a larder was, but it didn't sound good to me. Then she delivered me up the huge set of oriental-carpeted stairs to my room on the second floor, where she abruptly left me to my own devices while she disappeared to her own room, never to meet again that night.
There wasn't much to do but sit on the bed and watch the storm out the big hulking window. After reading for a while, I hid under the covers for the rest of the night. The weather was better the next morning, and I was delivered home twenty-five dollars richer.
About 30 years after that long, snackless night under the covers, one of my sisters came home for the weekend and convinced me to go visit a friend with her. Now, I had never been able to or wanted to retrace the path to that forbidding house, but all of a sudden I realized that there we were, the same darn ancestor portraits staring me down again, and just as creepy as the first time.
We were whisked through a narrow crooked hallway off the big hallway to, yes, the larder, where I was introduced to my sister's friend, his wife and in-laws. His wife looked at me, grinning ear-to-ear, and said, "I know you; you babysat me!" Well, so much for my attempt at adult sophistication...
The very same girl that I'd babysat gave me a tour of the downstairs, the tennis courts, the ferryman's house and the pier onto the Sakonnet River. She told me about her uncle-ancestor who'd read a book about how to start a gentleman's farm and according to instructions, purchased 60 acres, had a huge, slate-roofed, many-faceted house built in 1860. It had its own ferryboat landing so he could receive shipments of necessary supplies from the mainland. Of course, all I could think of was hooch deliveries in the dark during Prohibition.
Then she showed me the fields of grapes for the vineyards she and her father had started so the land could be taxed as agricultural land and pay for itself. Finally, she went down to the cellar and fetched up a couple of bottles of their own vineyard's wine.
We are good friends now—but I will never forget that first night I spent at their house!
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