I recently read how folks, as a result of the recession, are desperately trying to offload their summer cottages. It’s difficult for many in these fiscally icky and iffy times to maintain the mortgage on the primary dwelling let alone a frivolous secondary one.
That said, one of my fondest by far memories of childhood revolves around the summers spent at the Washington State cottage of my aunt and uncle. It was only 50 miles from our Vancouver home and it was a world apart. Their cottage (known to us as ‘the camp’) was on the ocean and my brothers cousins and I would spend our days catching crabs (the big eatin’ kind), fishing and swimming. We’d also pick berries in season and look for deer (successfully) in the woods. Evenings included beach fires, roasted marshmallows and wienies over the fire. It was blissful.
That said, I have never had a hankering to own a cottage. I’ve never seen the point. I’d rather spend money on our primary residence and can’t see the point on forking out money on a little place within easy driving dishes of our home just so I can eat off cracked plates, not receive a cable signal, and deal with the rigors of a well or backed up plumbing in a place where decent repairmen don’t abound. No, if I were to have a secondary home it would be in Palm Springs for the entire winter, Kauai likewise, or the South of France. It would be exotic and splendid and a Porsche or Jag would be in the driveway for our home-away-from-home use. Since such a thing is unlikely to happen, I’ll content myself with our primary residence and traveling to places we adore and in which we can easily rent a nice condo and not have to worry about upkeep, mortgage, taxes or local regulations.
In lieu of a cottage, some people avail themselves of an RV. These are people whom I relegate to the ‘more money than brains’ subgroup. You can boost the GDP of any emirate by driving one of those sonsofbitches. You can also motivate respectable and law-abiding drivers to consider homicide when they are stuck behind you on a two-lane road somewhere in the hinterland.
So, no, I don’t want an RV either. I confess that they fascinate me somewhat and I am consistently amazed at how effectively they utilize their square-footage. RVs are sort of like Tupperware in that everything fits into everything else and wonderful transformations of furniture happen when daytime turns to bedtime.
But, they are expensive — horribly expensive — and I think I could stay in luxury hotels for the rest of my recreational life and not come close to what that lumbering vehicular sloth would cost me. I just do not see the point. I suppose an RV is truly a home-away-from-home and you would be able to satisfy George Carlin’s quest to not only take a lot of your ’stuff’ with you when you hit the road, but that you would actually be driving your ’stuff.’
I love to travel via vehicle, train, ship and (grudgingly) airplane, but I want somebody else to lay on the accommodation and I’ll gladly pay to stay. Added to which, how can you get away for a ‘dirty weekend’ if you’re just going to be in another version of your own place? Part of the allure there is to be in a strange bed in a strange room, and some folks even throw imagining that it’s an illicit liaison into the mix.
