All our married lives, it seems, people have been living with us. At first it was just for overnights, or long weekends; but then, my friend who came for a week and stayed three years moved in. That was the beginning of a long period when our family grew and shrank and grew again, sort of like an accordion.
The closest we ever came to being formal about entertaining all these guests was on our farm in NH. We had decided to look for a house that could be made into an Inn, and the one we found fit the bill perfectly. It had 14 rooms, a "milk room" in which we put two huge freezers, two wonderful barns (one housed the flying Lyra on one occasion), and a big kitchen that could have accommodated commercial appliances with a little work.
What it didn't have was bathrooms; we only had one very small one off the kitchen. This meant that we would have to put a great deal of money into the place to be able to rent out any space, and this was during one of our (many!) broke times. So we lived there for almost four years, growing all our own food, including the meat, and dreaming about how we would run an inn. DB would have been a great host for an inn, and I was a dandy cook.
Instead, we seemed to entertain all of RI at one time or another, plus relatives from England and Scotland. This did not add to the coffers; on the contrary, if it weren't for all the food we grew, we'd have been in very dire straights with all these extra people. But the farm produced abundantly, and we could always feed extra people without much trouble.
And it was a good thing! For instance, we had a house party one year at which 16 extra people stayed for the weekend, and a few extended that for nearly a week. Our baby sitter from RI called one day and sobbed that she and her husband were having problems, could she come stay with us for a while and try to figure out what to do? So she came, and three weeks later, her husband joined her. They lived with us for 6 weeks or so, and she went back to RI, but HE stayed for a couple more months.
They eventually divorced, and he MARRIED MY SISTER. Big mistake. She divorced him, too. (And has been happily married a second time for 20-some years.)
And there was the family who came with their two dogs and one child. Actually the child was more trouble than the dogs, except for the winter when there was so much snow the little, low-slung dachsunds couldn't maneuver the out-of-doors. We found their "presents" behind the Christmas tree when we took it down.
This particular family came at least once a month for a weekend. One Friday night, they arrived very late, and the couple had been fighting all the way from RI. They continued the argument at our house, with husband chugging down the beer. I gave up and went to bed, and so did wife, leaving poor DB to deal with loud and obnoxious husband.
Next morning, DB told us that husband, by now three sheets to the wind, saw a train coming down the tracks, went out on the back step and shook his fist at it. He thought it was coming right for the house. The track took a sharp turn just before our barns and went safely behind the house. He was too drunk to remember this, and so was going to save us all from disaster by swearing and shaking his fist at the train. Sure enough, it swerved and went behind the house. He went to bed satisfied that he had saved us all.
DB was just glad he went to bed.
And then there was the time we decided to make maple syrup. DB got an old 55 gallon drum, cut holes in it to put big pots in, and builT a fire. The first batch of sap from our enormous maple trees boiled down fast enough, and I took it into the kitchen to finish it off. And finish it off I did; it became caramel, then hard candy, in an instant.
The best part of this weekend was the seats we carved in the snow around our makeshift sap boiler. We sat there with the above husband and wife, and another young man who worked with DB and finished off a case of beer and a fifth of Chivas Regal. That was most expensive pint of maple syrup anyone has ever had. And, because of the open fire, it resembled grade Z motor oil. But was it delicious!
One summer weekend, this same family, plus my brother and sister-in-law and their four kids and one dog, was visiting. I got up at five to milk my Jersey cow, and after I had strained the milk and cleaned the milking utensils, I went out to the garden and picked three dozen ears of corn. I sat alone on the steps outside in the beautiful early morning (probably around 6 a.m. at this time), and husked those ears. Then I made two batches of corn bread from the organically grown, stone ground corn meal and put them in the oven. While they were baking, I cut the corn kernels off the ears, and fixed the batter for corn fritters. I put our own homegrown bacon coming on the woodstove, fixed the coffee, and cracked a couple dozen eggs to scramble. It was now nearly 8:30.
The fritters were frying, the bacon was snapping in the pan, and the coffee was ready when the wife came downstairs. "Everything smells so delicious, and people are stirring upstairs," she told me. "Good," I said, "I'll put the eggs on." While was pouring them into the hot skillet, she licked the bowl I had mixed the corn bread in...and choked and coughed, and made a terrible face. I had put canning salt instead of sugar into the bread, AND THE FRITTERS.
The men arrived downstairs, and my sister-in-law shuffled out of the little guest room off the kitchen, just in time to see me burst into tears. "When's breakfast?" a very immature and insensitive DB asked. I explained what had happened. "Well, how long will it take to make more fritters and corn bread?" he asked. !!!***@@##^%$#@. "Well, we can't wait; we'll just go into the village and eat at the diner," said VERY INSENSITIVE DB, and off the men went.
You can imagine how many times I've reminded him of THAT!
9:20 PM It was a beautiful walk this evening. The air was comfortable, the sun was warm, and the trees are beginning to bloom with their funny little flowers. The lake was serene, compared to the roily water we have had for several weeks because of the wind. I spent the walk thinking about this entry. The Inn story has been fun, and has brought up many memories about the REAL house we bought in NH, thinking we would have an Inn.
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