The Summer Job

MPR is doing a series on summer jobs right now, and I found myself going back to that one real summer job. It's not that I didn't work before or since, but this was the only summer-only job.

I took it the year I graduated from high school, after somebody in the counselor's office pointed out the ad to me and suggested that I apply. For me it was the first chance to get further away from home than church camp on a lake in the same town where I lived, and stay away for more than a week. It involved working on a resort in Wisconsin called Hughes High Haven. The couple running it were Ken and Helen Hughes, an elderly couple - to a 17-year-old, anyway - who hired two young people every summer. I, the girl, was hired to clean cabins mostly. What's-his-name, the guy, took care of the golf course.

While I don't remember his name, I do clearly recall feeling highly uncomfortable cleaning his cabin when he left out the love notes from the young girls who stayed at the resort. (Somehow there were always young teenage girls staying there but nobody interesting in the male department. So much for any fantasies of a summer romance!) I will admit that my discomfort didn't stop me from reading enough of them to figure out what they were. I'm not sure if it was cause and effect with his romances, but he left suddenly halfway through the summer, and I got his job too. Not more money, mind you, just both jobs.

His was better.

The golf course was across the road from the resort, a cute little nine hole course with sand greens. I knew nothing about golf, and thought being left-handed kept me from ever trying the game since nobody ever had left-handed clubs. What I did know said that greens were usually grass. It's how you see them on TV. Sand greens were unheard of at that time, at least by me, and I've not seen one since. My main job at the golf course was "carpeting" the greens.

I usually did it once daily, in the morning before the golfers showed up. On a day with really heavy use, I might have to do it twice. It involved dragging a heavy frame around with a hunk of carpet attached, starting in the center at the hole and spiraling outward until all the footprints -including mine - and other markings were smoothed over and it was ready for the next set of golfers. It was fun, mostly because I liked getting out and away from everybody. Late in the summer there were ripe chokecherries around the course which I was allowed to pick and eat as long as I kept on working.

To get the heavy rig and myself over to the golf course, I got to drive. I had taken drivers training, but never pursued it and had no license. I was told that it didn't matter since I was to never leave the property. They glossed over the part where I had to cross a public road, and I just was careful that nobody was in sight when I did. It was the only car I ever saw that had a push-button transmission.

The other job I had at the golf course was both more interesting and much less fun. The turf had an invasion of grub worms, the larval stage for june beetles. During the night, skunks would come in and neatly roll back pieces of sod in their hunt for the tasty buggers, and it would be my job to roll them back and tamp them down, just like an ordinary divot, pretending like nothing had ever disturbed the grass. That part wasn't so bad. It was when the skunks didn't finish their treat and left grubs behind that was the problem. The crows would descend and tear the neatly rolled back sod into tiny bits, scattering it all over and making my job miserable.

I remember my bonus job much more clearly than the cleaning cabins part. I have to assume I did my job sufficiently well, or they wouldn't have kept me on.

I lived in my very own cabin for the summer, and it came with a bonus. In its closet, tucked back in the corner in a plain box, was a supply of Playboy magazines. In the evenings after work I devoured them cover to cover. Yes, I read every word, loved the cartoons (especially the series on sharks in unlikely places like bathtubs), found the philosophy and dating advice weird (having never gotten past french kissing myself, which I also found weird), and marveled at the perfection of all those other women. This was back in the days of airbrushing everything, so it wasn't all that much of an education in anatomy.

There was one other advantage to this summer job: Mrs. Hughes was a great cook. We were introduced to all kinds of fare that I'd never heard of, as well as the usual standards. The guests paid to eat, but the help ate free. It worked beautifully except for one very memorable lunch. She made cucumber sandwiches. Cucumbers? Really? In a sandwich? With no protein? I kept looking around for the real food to appear, but nope, this was it. How was I supposed to work after a lunch like this? Nonetheless, Mom had raised me to be polite, and I didn't make a bit of fuss. Somehow, however, I must have conveyed my opinion of the meal, because she never wasted such fine delicate fare on me again.

In the fall, I returned home to start college, a whole $300 richer than when I left.

Arachnophobia

I suspect I first saw it crawling from place to place and picked up the stick, put it in the spider's path, picked it up when he climbed on his obstruction, and brought it close to see what he would do. It was what we'd do for any crawling bug, easier than trying a direct pick up and kinder to the bug than getting pinched by clumsy fingers.

We lived on the resort at the time, Pleasant Ridge Resort on 2nd Crow Wing Lake, in Hubbard County, MN, just east of the town of Hubbard. I recall myself being four at the time, which is likely correct, since we owned the resort from about when I was three until late in third grade. I was old enough to (mostly) mind Mom's restrictions, and was pretty much given the run of the place as long as I avoided the lake, avoided the cabins since other people were staying in them by the week, and I came promptly when Mom called. If I followed the rules they were confident I was safe, since the biggest hazard those days was poison ivy.

Well, it probably really was me, but that's another story or two.

There was a path which ran all around the lake. At some later point in my life I would follow it in both directions to each of the neighboring resorts, but this day I was down in front of a couple of cabins on our own resort, unafraid, watching this little black spider as it crawled up the stick to the end, then with nowhere to go, down the stick toward me. Oh cool! (Except we said, "Neat!" back in those days.) It climbed onto my hand. OW! Not so cool, as it "bit" me right on the tender webbing between two fingers! It hurt, and continued to hurt for some time. Eventually the pain went away and I forgot about it, until some weeks later a big chunk of skin fell off between those fingers and I remembered what had caused it.

I was fine, but one thing had changed. I was now deathly afraid of spiders. All spiders, even spider look-alikes like daddy long legs. If I so much as saw as spider on the wall or ceiling, I would leave the room. Unless, that is, it was coming down its thread from the ceiling somewhere in the middle of the room. In order to leave my chair I would have had to actually move closer to that spider, and that I simply could not do. I was a prisoner of that chair until I yelled for somebody else to come and kill that horrible spider and clear the way for me to move.

They jump, you know.

One thing I could do, occasionally, was kill them. But only if there were some way I could assure myself that there was absolutely no way that spider could get away and come and attack me in the process! Often that took a big towel or newspaper, or even - sacrilege! - a book.

It was still bad enough when I was raising my own kids that I couldn't even bring myself to touch the pictures in a child's book about spiders while I was reading it to the kids. It was part of a great set that was offered in grocery stores, buy a volume a week for a cheap price with a $___ purchase. They covered cats, wild ponies, dinosaurs, and a whole plethora of topics about the natural world. Unfortunately for me, the kids liked the spider book rather more often than I liked reading it to them. But I couldn't let them know how I was feeling. I had to clamp down hard and pretend nonchalance each time we went through it. After all, I had a PLAN.

That plan was, simply, to get my kids to kill or remove all spiders that came to visit our house so I wouldn't have to deal with them. In order to accomplish that, I had to persuade them that spiders weren't scary, just a nuisance to squish and flush, or - best case - deserving of an outdoor home where they could find proper meals for themselves. It worked for years, and in the process I managed to actually conquer my phobia, getting it down to the level where I find them distasteful but can manage to dispatch them myself without a full-blown case of the screaming meemies.

I actually managed a pair of encounters with black widows when we lived in Georgia and I worked at the garden center. Even after being called over to examine one as an alert from the owner that here was something new to be careful of while handling stock, and days later moving a bush by grabbing the stems and feeling one under my hand (Toss! Fast! Nevermind if you kill the bush!), I managed to come away without a case of PTSD.

Pretty amazing, really.

Occasionally I can even appreciate them - usually with a long zoom lens.