Charles Gordon - At the Cottage

Copyright 1989 by Charles Gordon

First published in hardcover 1989
Trade paperback edition 1992

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Gordon, Charles, 1940
At the cottage

eISBN: 978-1-55199-467-3

1. Vacation homes Humour. I. Title.

PS 8563. O 632 A 95 1989 C 813.54 C 89-093473-8
PR 9199.3. G 662 A 95 1989

Parts of the following chapters have appeared, in different form, in The Ottawa Citizen: Sort of the 24th of May, and in Macleans: Good Riddance and When Can We Go Back?, The Landscape Is Strong, Still Not the City, and Great Thoughts With Sunglasses On.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

A Douglas Gibson Book

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
The Canadian Publishers
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com

v3.1

For King and Ruth Gordon,
and for the people at The Lake

Every year, it is the same routine. Load up the car, leaving almost enough room for all the children in the family. And the dog. Drive. Listen to children and dog complaining about overcrowded conditions in the back seat. Drive. Argue about the non-essential stuff that is causing the overcrowded conditions in the back seat and should have been left at home-such as five teddy bears and three bottles of hair conditioner. Drive. Listen to complaints from back seat about absence of sixth teddy bear, which has been left at home.

Drive. Curse the city traffic. Drive some more. Finally reach the country. Curse the country traffic. Drive. Traffic finally gets moving at a reasonable rate. Stop, because somebody is very thirsty, or somebody has to use the bathroom. Or the dog looks like he is about to be sick. Undertake complete unpacking of car, in order to reach dogs leash. Reload car. Resume argument about hair conditioner and excessive number of teddy bears. Drive. Traffic once again at a crawl. Admire scenery, through the rain. Tell children to put down Archie comics and admire scenery, if they know whats good for them. Dog gets sick.

The road is to the cottage and the day is the 24th of May. Well, not exactly the 24th of May, as such. The weekend is the 24th of May. And even when it is not, precisely, the 24th of May weekend, it is still called the 24th of May weekend.

It is a long weekend. The actual day of the horrendous drive could be the 21st or 22nd. All that matters is that the Monday of the long weekend be the one preceding the 25th of May. This is the law, has been since 1952. Before that, May 24 was always a holiday no matter what day it was on. Life was simpler in those days, but weekends were shorter.

May 24 was, back in 1819, the day Queen Victoria was born. Early Canadians, for reasons of their own, perhaps because they were Victorians, decided that the day should be a holiday. Later Canadians, noting the invention of the long weekend, decided that something around May 24 would be nice. Parliament, trying to help, decided that May 24 could just as easily be celebrated on the nearest Monday before May 25 and that not only would Queen Victorias birthday be celebrated but also the birthday of whichever king or queen happened to be reigning at the time all of which is lost on people in an overloaded car full of children and hair conditioner and a dog who might be sick again at any moment.

By the end of the 1980s, there were more than half a million vacation homes in Canada. Six per cent of families had one. Using a magical coefficient of 3.2 invented by Statistics Canada, it is possible to estimate that 1,763,200 people are on the highways on this Friday evening. That does not count friends, grandparents, uncles, aunts, dogs, or police officers. It also does not count people who drive trailers, which do not count as vacation homes but count as trailers.

On this weekend that is called the 24th of May weekend even when it isnt, the cars pulling trailers slow down the cars pulling boats, which slow down the cars carrying windsurfers on the roof. Children refuse to enjoy the sight of the rainy countryside and begin arguing over possession of comic books. Dog whimpers. Children, ordered to stop arguing, demand that car stop at roadside stand to buy blueberries. Told that blueberry stands do not open for months, children say: But they were open last year.

The four-lane road becomes a two-lane road, which becomes a dirt road, unimproved since last summer. Worse than last summer. The car, smelling of sick dog, bumps and slides along the washboard. Driver, with no traffic to curse, curses the road. Children, sensing an end to the long ordeal, begin to fight. Dog, sensing an end to the long ordeal, tries to climb out the window, on the drivers side.

Car stops at marina where boat has been stored and serviced to be ready for summer season. Children leap out and continue fighting. Dog finds another dog and sniffs. Groceries, teddy bears, childrens ghetto blaster, and a supply of hair conditioner are unloaded, ready for transfer to boat, which is not waiting at dockside. Marina personnel cannot, at first glance, locate boat, but say it must be here somewhere. Two dogs discover they are both male and begin fighting. Children stop fighting and begin crying. Driver yells at everybody to remain calm. Marina informs driver that boat has been found and will be ready in two hours. Driver yells at marina.

Following a two-hour picnic in the parking lot of the marina, a picnic punctuated by remarks concerning how cold it is for this time of year, the boat is ready. After an uneventful voyage, the boat, still leaking and still conking out at slow speeds, still doing all the other things it did last year that were supposed to be repaired, arrives at its destination and crashes into the dock. In the semi-darkness, a child slips on the same loose board as last year and scrapes his knee. A parent promises a Band-Aid, once they are inside.