The island house is like an old lady—proud, but a bit stooped and creaky if the truth be told. We make accommodations for her, even as she makes them for us. Literally. But when we invite guests to meet the old lady, we feel required to provide a great deal of detail about her various conditions so visitors will be prepared.
First it helps to know that the old lady sits at the top of a little hill overlooking the harbor. We call her Rockaway, which was her nickname when she was younger and used to host dances in her capacious interior.
When guests arrive by boat, we describe the sandy beach where they can land down in front. Of course, if it’s dead low tide, our visitors will be doing the “Boogaloo Down Broadway” across slippery expanses of rockweed until they reach the sandy strip. If it’s high tide, they will need to climb an escarpment, for which belay ropes are not required but could prove useful.
The old lady has a mooring out front, but it has recently been run over by a lobster boat, which means that the fender marking the anchorage has lost its pickup. Assuming our guests are agile as acrobats or at least double-jointed, picking it up should present no real problems other than persistent back pain for several weeks after their visit.
Once our guests land, with the old lady’s family cheering their gymnastic abilities from shore, they proceed up the hill to be assigned to one of her 10 bedrooms. My dearly departed father-in-law, who was an enthusiast of New England Greek Revival architecture, did not want to introduce too many modern systems into the old lady’s 1857 bones lest it made life too easy or compromised her ambience—last improved sometime in the early 20th century.
This means that the water system generally and the plumbing in particular is a lot like living aboard a boat, albeit a large one with lots of cargo space. Think of the six-masted schooner Wyoming, launched from the Percy and Small boatyard in Bath in 1909, which, as the nautically knowledgeable observed at the time: because of her extreme length and wood construction, she tended to flex in heavy seas, which would cause her long planks to twist and buckle, thereby allowing sea water to intrude into the hold (see hogging and sagging). And you thought Arkansans had the corner on hogging, while Floridians had the franchise on sagging—but our history gives us the boast of excelling simultaneously at both.
The point is her plumbing is a bit from the classical period. There is a claw-footed bathtub, which is one of the old lady’s most elegant features, but unfortunately the 30 gallons that it takes to get a few inches of water in the tub and the amount of fracked natural gas to heat it places bathing in the realm of an abstract concept for our guests. The old lady does, however, offer an alfresco outdoor shower, with views into the nature preserve out the back door, which gives the term au naturel real meaning.
But not to worry, the old lady’s guests can always dab a few drops of water on their salt-rimed bodies with a washcloth and whistle “Nearer My God to Thee” as long as the dug well has been replenished by rainfall. Thankfully this summer, we have had an abundance.
Once our visitors have taken in the salubrious qualities of the old lady’s early 20th century water system, on a foggy day they might want to warm up a bit in front of the Clarion wood stove in the kitchen. But like the bathtub, the stove is actually a quaint museum piece. Sometime back before she can remember, the old lady had kerosene burners installed in the wood box connected to an outdoor tank. The last time the old lady used the Clarion for heat, a greasy black haze settled over every surface in the kitchen and so she has wisely decided that form is far superior to function. Besides which, our fuel dealer has suggested that the condition of the stove would render the old lady uninsurable.
Not to worry, the old lady has a wonderful field stone fireplace in the expansive living room, where Parcheesi and Monopoly boards entertain old and young alike. Just like in the old days!
Ah, but did she mention the cracks in the chimney, which even from the anchorage you can appreciate its jaunty tilt—providing a certain carefree joie d’ vivre—to its posture. The tilt of the chimney means that winter rains every so often find a new entry point before we repair her each spring. But as long as we help her apply her pancake makeup to her face and hands, her liver spots are not too obvious.
We make light of all the old lady’s minor ailments because we have grown accustomed to them. But we cannot help but recognize that each summer she has fewer and fewer visitors. People just don’t have patience for old folks and their infirmities like they used to. Of course, we would never giver her up or put her into an old age home for someone else to look after, would we?
Philip Conkling is the founder of the Island Institute and now operates Conkling & Associates, a consulting firm.