Huddle's

My father was selfless in a lot of ways. He worked a job that paid almost nothing, as a graphic artist in the days before all of that work was done on computers. He designed and produced all of the large logos that were used on the sides of cargo trains and semi trucks. If you see a cargo train with a logo on the side, chances are very good that even today my father designed it. How my father made ends meet is a mystery to me. When he died, more than twenty years ago, he was making about eight dollars an hour. With that money he saw it to that my sister and I have nearly everything we wanted. It wasn't until I went away to college that I knew I'd grown up poor.

The one extravagence that my father allowed was his vacation. For one week in August every year he managed to scrape together enough money to take the family to a fishing resort in Minnesota. The first resort was The Rainbow Resort on Lake Osakis. It was called Rainbow Resort because each of the cabins was painted a different color. The year I was five was also the year that the heater in our cabin malfunctioned. The first night there I woke up and threw up all over the bed my sister and I were sharing. My sister screamed and that woke my grandmother, who first was very angry at first, but then she smelled gas and got us out of the cabin. Although that was also the summer my parent divorced, in family storytelling that summer was forever known as "the summer we got gassed." That was also the last summer we stayed at Rainbow.

The next resort was on the same lake. It was Sunset Resort. Although my parents were divorced, somehow they managed to be civil long enough to take a family vacation. There are pictures at Sunset of my mother in a white and blue swimsuit with a little white skirt and the brightest sunburn ever recorded. I remember spinning on the merry-go-around and singing and a lady telling me that I had a good voice. My sister and I invented "Mr. Weatherbee" which was a swimming game. Most of our days were spent running in and out of the lake, tracking sand into the cabin, and being good-naturedly scolded for doing so. It was vacation, so it didn't really matter.

Later, when my mother started seeing another man, she stopped going on the family vacations. When that happened, my father started taking us to another resort, further north, to Leech Lake. The resort was my father's idea of high class. It had a lodge and family events. The first year we stayed there my grandmother would sat with me on bingo night and I remember the year I won ten dollars. She made me stop playing. I have never in my life felt richer than I did that week. That was the her last year with us.

By the time I turned eighteen, I was pretty much over the fishing resort vacations. My sister and I went, of course but we'd outgrown the excitement of sitting in a boat and catching perch. My sister and I dreaded those trips and I think my father resented that. Once I went to college the trips stopped completely.

In 1999 I was working a very stressful job for a multi-national consulting company and when it came time to schedule a vacation I remembered that resort. The idea of being among the trees, doing nothing seemed exotic at that moment so I found the resort online and booked a cabin. Huddle's had not changed a bit. Roy Huddle, who owned the resort seemed to recognize me, but I didn't identify myself. He'd have remembered my father, and probably me, but I just wanted to keep my memories to myself.

Well, as a treat to myself I've booked another week at the end of August. Me, my laptop, a stack of books, and a lake. In a lot of ways it's the closest I have of being able to go home. It will be the perfect vacation.