Vacation

I was looking out today at the house across the street. I live on the side of a hill, on the uphill side of the street, so as I look out from my house, I can see the roofs of the houses on the other side. Confused yet? It’s Pittsburgh, we’re hilly, and everyone has their house built in either the valleys or on the sides of hills. Suffice it to say, the house across the street is a little further down the hill than my own. In particular, I was thinking about what it must be like to live in that house, where you would have to park your car uphill from the house on a parking pad, and then walk down towards the house itself. I was thinking of how odd it was, and how I’ve had to do something like that before.


I was taken back to a small corner of the Adirondack State Park in upper New York. There, in the heart of Lewis County, sits a small lake, and an even smaller town, called Brantingham. I don’t know how many people reside in the town, but the last time I was there, the town consisted of a volunteer fire department, a bar, an ice cream shack with mini golf attached, a post office, and a fish/game club. Yep. That’s downtown Brantingham. It’s the sort of place where you literally can miss it if you blink. Not far from this booming metropolis is a lake, which was the entire tax base for Lewis County, the last I knew about it. Brantingham Lake was where my family would rent a cabin for a week in the summertime. We spent that week swimming, fishing, playing cards, listening to music, sunning on the small beach, riding bikes, and playing horseshoes. There was no TV or phone, and the only radios were whatever we brought with us.  Yep, it was, by modern terms, slow.

I remembered loading and unloading the car in particular. See, the cabin we rented was on a pretty steep slope, and we couldn’t park the car next to it. We had to park above the cabin and walk down to it, all out luggage in tow, about 60 feet. It really wasn’t that far of a walk, and it certainly wasn’t difficult. For the most part, it wasn’t even that much of a slope we had to traverse. That was when I thought of something I have not thought of in I can’t recall how many years: The Orange Cooler (insert over-dramatic music here). I know not how old this thing was, or from what year, but I’m guessing it was the brainchild of the late 1970s and a bad acid trip….on steroids. This was a simple molded styrofoam cooler, but it wasn’t like those cheap $1 items you can find today at any old convenience store. No, this was classy. This thing was a cube, to start. I don’t remember if it had handles molded into it or not – it might have. The top simply lifted off , but it was actually a tight fit to get it on in the first place. The color was – creamsicle. Yeah, I know, it sounds like my memory is shaky here, but I tell you, it seriously was the same color as a creamsicle. I think it was the ugliest hue of orange I’ve ever seen. Oh, and through years of use, it was also dirty. In fact, I cannot recall a time when that thing might have ever even resembled “clean” on the outside. The inside never saw light, so it was a brighter shade of orange and it was cleaner thn anything, since all it really ever had in it was some well-wrapped food and ice.

Oh, that cooler was with us for many a year, and many a trip to the lake. The lake where we had to park on the hill above the cabin. Like the neighbor’s house across the street from where I live today. Sometimes, I think I’d like to go back there, and see how the place has changed, but I know better. It hasn’t. It’s not the sort of place that changes – it’s the sort of place that changes you, stays with you, becomes a part of who you are, and comes rushing into your thoughts, unbidden but just as potent as before.

Thanks for reading,
The Fat Kid