Forty-five years ago our family acquired a summer cottage at Conneaut Lake; my recollections of the first weekend we spent there are still extremely strong. Each child had his/her own bedroom and access to a bathroom with a tub; Nan and I slept in the kitchen but had our own (shower-equipped) bathroom. Our first summer was spent “settling in” and equipping the cottage with our specific needs. The cottage served us well for three and a half decades and is the scene of many happy memories. This month our extended family is repeating this experience, twenty-first century style, at Chautauqua.
We have a long history with the Chautauqua area. I was born in Dunkirk, on the shore of Lake Erie, just fifteen miles from Chautauqua Lake. Although we moved to Bridgeville three years later, we did occasionally return for visits, which always included a side trip to “the Lake”. Long before I met her, my wife worked as a waitress there several summers when she was a teen-ager. A few years after we were married, Nan’s sister Anna Mary and her family acquired a house within the Chautauqua Institution grounds, which immediately became a vacation destination for us; our children greatly enjoyed staying with their Maddy cousins for a week each summer.
After the Maddys sold their house, there was a break in the routine until a few years ago. We had sold the Conneaut Lake cottage after my wife died; one summer our extended family, twelve persons strong, rented a pair of adjacent cottages at a resort outside the Institution. By that time, two of my neighbors, the Alexes and the Foxes, had acquired houses inside the Institution; when we visited them, we were reminded how special a place Chautauqua is. One summer Rachael spent several weeks there at Music Camp. In the ensuing years Beth’s family and I, frequently supplemented by Sara and one of her children, began to spend a week in a rented house inside the Institution each summer during “the Season”, and Beth and Mike began to teach one-week courses there each summer. A year ago we decided to explore acquiring our own house there. After half a dozen disappointments we were finally able to reconcile our desires, our budget, and the previous owner’s requirements and reach an agreement.
Consequently, on a pretty August Saturday afternoon we left Beth’s house in two cars and headed up I-79 to western New York State. Sara and Nora had flown in from Colorado and Rachael was home from Bryn Mawr, so our contingent consisted of six persons, and my grand-dog Gunnar. As Beth and Mike were packing the cars, I was reminded of an incident when our kids were small. I was busy in front of our house, loading our Chevrolet Suburban when one of my smart aleck neighbors walked by. His comment was “Either NASA is preparing for a mission to the Moon, or the Oylers are going away for the weekend.” I had no rebuttal. Fortunately, our new house is comfortably equipped and furnished, and the only things we needed to take were our own personal items. The drive was pleasant, admission to the gated community uneventful thanks to pre-registration, and our occupation of our new home quite rewarding.
Like most vacation homes, there is no shortage of bedrooms in this house. Primary, of course, is the Patriarch’s suite on the first floor. It features a large bedroom, a bathroom, and a comfortable office/sitting room, and is easily isolated from the rest of the house if the Lord of the Manor wants privacy. The first floor has a large dining/kitchen area and a comfortable living room with a cathedral ceiling. Downstairs are two nice bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchenette, capable of being occupied and functioning semi-independently. The second floor has three bedrooms – a master bedroom with a private bathroom and two other bedrooms with a shared bathroom. The architect who designed this house incorporated a number of clever, functional features. A protruding corner on the first floor was converted into a highly efficient built-in desk. A leftover space at the head of the stairs on the second floor is outfitted as a reading bench – it was immediately appropriated by Rachael. The sight of her sitting there with a book in her hands has become a natural part of the landscape. The second floor master bedroom has a private little balcony, an ideal place for one’s morning coffee. Surprisingly, the door to the porch has a “Jamestown Block” brick as a doorstop. My most relevant comment about the house was “I have never seen a place with so many comfortable places for an old man to sit and snooze”.
Unlike the older, Edwardian Era, neighborhoods at Chautauqua with houses very close to each other on small lots with parallel streets, this neighborhood features larger lots on winding dead-end streets with cul-de-sacs. Our lot is tastefully landscaped with a variety of mature trees, shrubs, and ferns. Personally, I like the idea of having a large sycamore in my front yard, communing with a tulip tree, a red maple, and a Japanese maple, as long as someone else is responsible for leaf pickup and gutter cleaning.
A disadvantage to our location is its distance from the “town center”; we are about three-quarters of a mile from Bestor Plaza and the Amphitheater. In a community focused on people walking and riding bicycles, this is not a problem for the physically fit. My category these days is “limited mobility”; that simply is too far for me to walk, and I dread to think what would happen if I got on a bicycle. Not to worry, the combination of frequent service by shuttle buses and trams and our rental of a mobility scooter for me renders that concern moot.
More about our first week at 32 Howard Hanson in next week’s column.