I went from homeless miscreant to respected Parks personnel overnight
The shocking transition coincides with a shift to the most brilliant summer weather I’ve ever known. I plan on renting a room in a house with a single woman, Gina, and her two young girls, but a coworker insists that I move in with her, in the house she grew up in, while she’s home from college for the summer. She turns out to be a real angel – among the sweetest people I have ever met.
I’m dumbfounded with this twist of fate. I’m not just surviving, but living glamorously. I went from park intern, to squatter, and wound up a golden boy. I get a bike to commute every morning with. Barefoot and shirtless, I work while swimming, catching a tan, and enjoying fresh local ice cream sandwiches and pizza from the nearby deli.
On days off, I explore nearby mountains and waterholes. Tim visits often, announcing his presence by playing on the downstairs piano. Justine takes me to family functions, and local get-togethers, where the atmosphere is never less than enchanting. Coworkers take me boating and wakeboarding. I spend one particularly glorious Saturday doing nothing but enjoying a perfect breeze from the open window of my room, lying on the old wooden floor, watching the clouds roll by, and listening to stories on National Public Radio.
Enjoying perfect stillness late one night from the patio, I watch a gray fox trot down the street
A local police officer tells me that the first time he saw my Texas plates, up on the mountain before the park reopened, he was afraid to stick around long enough to meet me. I remember that night well – running towards his car in my underwear with two large knives, thinking him to be a burglar. I keep it to myself, and imagine what a different outcome it would’ve been for me if he hadn’t left. My Dad is sent nearby on business, and I get to show him around for the weekend: the beach, the mountain, and the local Marzelli Deli.
One morning before work, I take a rental kayak out for a few hours. Paddling in the middle of the vast lake, I entertain the concept of infinity. I settle that one day, eventually, after exhausting every other possible outcome, the universe will be forced to play out again, exactly how it is unfolding right now – with me in a kayak out on lake Sunapee, enjoying a quiet morning alone before work.
I make the trip back to Monadnock, after work one day, to visit a ranger intern I once bunked with back in Bear Brook. We catch up and reminisce on the good old days. In the morning, we make it to the summit at sunrise. On the way back down, I’m sidetracked and become separated while picking blueberries. Luckily, the window to the cabin is unlocked and I’m able to break in, grab my keys, and make the drive back to the beach in time for work.
The rest of the world fades away as the lake becomes the center of my world
There are the regulars: the tan man who never misses a day of sunbathing, the chicken-legged floaty guy (who once fell asleep and floated clear across the lake before he woke up again), the professor, and the gorgeous Polish lady and her kids.
While on watch, I always stay vigilant, especially after I’m told about the shocking save in which the nearest guard was asleep on the stand, and the victim had only one eyeball. Remaining alert is key, which is why I like to spread chips around those who fall asleep – later to awake by the swarming of seagulls.
In no time at all, it seems, summer abruptly begins drawing to an end
The crowds are thinning. I start to feel the pressure of finding work and housing to get me through another winter. Ashley and the others will be finishing the program in another couple of months, and I’m still bent on continuing towards Alaska, come spring.
It dawns on me that New Englanders remain so busy throughout the summer in order to get it all in before winter comes again. I can’t help but feel like I’m slowly waking up from the most amazing dream. I make an effort to stop at more of the local festivals and visit more of the parks. I’m never disappointed at what I get at the local creameries.
We take the boat out for a last hoorah, and make an appearance at a few house parties before everyone heads back off to school. I happen to open up about my internship fiasco, at a graduation celebration, to a woman who works for the very program I was fired from. She remembers hearing about it at the time, but figured that Mike, the director, was just being dramatic. She confides to me, clearly that was the case if I’ve made it this far since.
I’m told that, over the winter, all the houses around the lake are vacant. Worst case scenario, I could try squatting. But rumor has it, that a guy found a suitcase filled with different women’s hair that way. Supposedly, it has a connection with the Kelleyville Killer and a house in the vicinity with a neon Always Open sign hanging in the window.
It reminds me of a story I was told at Bear Brook (the site of it’s own set of unsolved murders) in which a woman was out camping by herself. When she awoke the next morning to pack up her things, she found one item in her tent that she did not bring herself: polaroid picture of her sleeping the night before…
The end of the season is weeks away
Talking with a couple girls over my lunch break, I find out that the mother of one of them just put in her 2-weeks’ notice at the Marzelli Deli. I excuse myself immediately, and drive down to snag the open position. The owner’s son, Vinny, is there, and says, hesitantly, that it’s a lot of work to train a new-hire. I tell him I understand, and that a lot of people don’t feel comfortable upselling or working with meat slicers. He hands me an application and a look that says, “You’re hired”.
They keep me on, despite putting a paper plate in the pizza oven on my first day. Justine moves out. Tim and I share Maine lobster and watch City of Gods before he goes back home. The beach closes up. I drive to Dartmouth and find hardly a sign of life. A bartender tells me she thinks my Texas ID is fake and that I’ve got some kind of Boston accent. I get angry, take it out on a local farmer by telling him that Mexicans are on the way to take his livelihood, and wind up back home with a sweater he lent me.
Ashley and I move into a room in a house shared with Gina and her two daughters. The first red flag is when she tells us she kept the (unvaccinated) girls home from school to help get the place ready for us. The dogs are inbred, not house-trained, and when one starts dribbling period blood everywhere, the girls get a kick out of letting it’s father, Tippy, loose on it to do what dogs do. Tippy whines and scratches our door late one night, and when I let him out to pee, I slip, barefoot, in his shit trying to get him back inside.
Every morning, the three of them wake us up by singing karaoke. The mother is a nervous wreck since her husband left. Without a job, she’s given two free cords of raw lumber to process in order to get her through winter. She delegates this job to her boyfriend, living off the grid down the mountain, who prefers drinking instead. Vinny offers us a room at his place. The local cop, who knows the lady well, says he checks up on the place regularly to make sure I haven’t hung myself already.
We find a room somewhere else, and make an escape one afternoon while everyone else is away
It’s not easy fitting into a small town as an outsider, especially in New England, but I quickly realize that the Marzellis have already taken me in as their own. Working at the Deli, I can feel the pulse of the community. In time, interactions with regular customers become as heartfelt as the sporadic visits from old coworkers from Sunapee beach. A renowned reflexologist comes in one day. After a short conversation, she lays me down on a bench in front of the store, and in five minutes of working on my legs, cures me of a foot ailment plaguing my life for over six years.
Keeping up with the quick-witted Marzellis is an acquired skill – something that attracts business as much as the food. Regulars include: Steven Tyler, mechanics from across the street, construction workers, firemen, skiers, business moguls, professors, 90-year-old ice boaters, and a famous artist who once ran with the likes of the Beatles and Janis Joplin, before retiring nearby to drive school bus. His stories can run indefinitely, so we know to set the timer when he shows up.
Because of our proximity to New York and Boston, there’s no telling who will walk in at any time. At times, the job feels like a TV show (for which we never got the script). The place is said to have been built on Indian burial grounds, which explains why the daily occurrences are so happenstance. The owner and legend, Vinny’s father Lou, undergoes cancer treatment. In his absence, I play an even greater role in keeping the business running smoothly. The extra work, plus skating frozen Sunapee in my time off, keeps me afloat through the dark winter, after news arrives of the tragic death of a best friend, Jeff.
I spend an afternoon with Gina’s boyfriend, a hermit living off the land, and face the reality of the path I was headed down. He even drives the same model truck I had once. I gift him a ticket to the yearly Halloween performance of a bluegrass band from Vermont, Hot Day at the Zoo, since I’ll be in Alaska by then. That evening I serve a man who congratulates me on being young and taking pride in earning my keep, and adamantly warns me that smoking marijuana brings nothing but problems. Later, I meet a local carpenter who invites me to the private performance of Hot Day at the Zoo for his upcoming birthday.
Lou takes me to his old neighborhood, New York’s “Little Italy”, Arthur Avenue, the Bronx
I hear the stories about a simpler time, and see firsthand the changing face of America. He later invites Ashley and I to a home-cooked meal of stuffed quail and seafood pasta. There, I’m told that I’m not allowed to leave, unless I want to sleep with the fishes. He doesn’t understand why I would want to leave such an ideal place to watch ice melt and live with polar bears. For someone who left the Bronx for New Hampshire, I suspect that he does.
Before leaving, we’re given care packages from the landlady, our housemate, Vinny, and others. The artist makes me a CD with a handmade cover. A group of local college kids, an Anchorage native, and a loads of regular customers bid me farewell. The man who always threatens to call ICE on me, insists that I fabricate a letter to Vinny, a week after his wedding, addressed from an unknown child of his. A new coworker, married to a Swiss national, assures me that Alaska is said to be the most amazing place in the world.
I will miss the late nights hanging out with Vin, who’s become like a brother to me, the family who I grew to love, my coworker Nick, and all our practical jokes. I’ll miss New England, the four seasons, and the attitude and atmosphere of the region that gave birth to the United States. In a strange way, what I’ll miss most is the innocence I lost when transitioning from an ideological romantic to a more experienced young adult making his way in the world. For me, this would prove to have been the greatest adventure of all.