Something Creative
I feel a little bitter & ranty today so I’m just going to throw some words out and see what happens. Maybe it’ll be entertaining….
Everybody is a tourist at some point. I’ve been a tourist to several wonderful places & dream of going to more locations all over the world. Locals often have a rather interesting attitude toward tourists. The locals feel proprietary regarding homes. It’s an odd thing to have strangers clogging your streets, ignoring the way things are done & generally creating havoc. Of course relying to the money that tourists spend complicates things a lot…the tourists are a hassle & demanding that things be a certain way (especially if it involves doing something totally outside of the way everybody else has done it for 5 generations; like have their toast dry). However, without the tourists the businesses likely wouldn’t exist for any length of time.
As it is Memorial Day weekend my little town is being overrun buy something even more aggravating than tourists: the weekender or cabin on the lake owner. These are the folks from the big city with their fancy SUVs, big shiny boats, jetskis & 2.3 kids. In spite of the rough economy they have enough money to clog the highway directly south of my driveway for miles on Friday night. For the next 4 months it will be absolute chaos every Friday night when I drive home from work. As dusk settles over the northern woods a glance to the south will show a solid stream of mechanized yellow eyes glaring toward the lakes. This steady stream starts at about 10 on Friday morning & hits it’s peak sometime between 8 & 10 in the evening with cars in a holding pattern for close to five miles as they all wait to make the turn west onto Highway 210, then through town & another turn north on Highway 65 toward the lakes.
Now every time I go to any store in town it’ll be mobbed by soccer moms & their kids…all looking around like they are superior & we should be kissing their ass feet. It certainly rankles when I’m perfectly comfortable schlubbing around town in my grub clothes (think plaid pajama pants, semi-matching but dirt streaked t-shirt, flip-flops, baseball cap) only to stand up from crouching in front of plants to see “Juicy” on some rich chick’s butt. Good grief! Can’t a person even walk through the garden center in full “farmer” mode without being confronted with this horrifying sight? (Yeah, I know all you men out there are now clamoring to go with me to the garden center in hopes of catching an eyeful. You can just forget it! I’m not here to help you engage in your sick little fantasises….unless they involve me.)
I guess my biggest thing with the weekenders is how they swarm into town, clog our streets (eat all the bread at Subway) and act like they own the place. Of course not all of them are like this….just the largest portion of them. It makes me more careful when visiting places. I do my best to be courteous & undemanding when visiting. I ask the locals for advise & actually listen rather than doing whatever I want.
Now if only all the weekenders hadn’t bought every single lawnmower battery in town forcing Hubby & I to make a rather ridiculous 120 mile round trip excursion to the closest WalMart (I had free money for there) so that we can wade through even more bad drivers & finally get home later than we want & get our yard mowed. As much as I dislike people it’s hard to imagine that I want to go out & do something this weekend. Of course my idea of going out consists of Hubby, some close friends or family members, myself & a state park to be explored…not gonna happen though. For one thing we are without close friends & the family members we would normally go with are unable to make the trip (TJ & Jenn we miss you! So much adventuring to take Asher on soon. Andy & Alicia—we can’t wait for a weekend to go camping with you…we need to start planning.) The other reason my trip to the state park won’t happen is that the scourge has invaded there as well…so much for a day of wandering in the solitude of the forest with Hubby. Guess I’ll have to relive our Banning State Park trip for a few months…then autumn will sneak in, the weekenders will go back to the city & I can wander among the pines, tamaracks and birch trees to my heart’s content.
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Rick
