Just a Taste (to wet your whistle)
I turn the key in the lock and open the front
door. It was last closed in 1978 by Stuart Marryat, my first cousin once
removed and the final owner of the Marryat Island Ballroom and Lodge. When I
told him why I wanted to go back, Stu gave me the key and said I could go in
and look around before the wrecker’s ball did its work.
Not much has changed in fifty years. When I
step into the spacious front hall and breathe deeply of the musty air, time
snaps shut like a paper fan and I’m young again. Young and idealistic. And
smug, though back then I didn’t know it.
My grandson walks through the front hall,
head bobbing like a pendulum, looking left and right. On the one side is the
vast dining room, still furnished with tables and chairs and the large buffet
table from which we served and refreshed drinks during meals. Across the hall
is the sitting room, where guests reclined to read, converse, play cards or
board games or simply to rest. Straight ahead is the front desk, the mail
slots, the rows of hooks that still held an odd assortment of room keys. “Wow,” Sean says. “Cool place. Why are they
going to tear it down?”
“Too old to pass code,” I say.
“Too bad.” He shrugs.
“Yes, it is.”
“So how old were you when you lived here?”
“Well, I was seventeen when we moved here
from Minnesota.” Seven years older than Sean is now. He probably thinks I was
all grown up. I thought so too, at the time.
“So what are we looking for?”
“Something I left behind when I moved away.
I’m pretty sure it got packed up with some of my other things and was stored
away in the attic.”
“But what is it, Grandma?”
“A wooden box. My parents gave it to me for
Christmas one year, when I was very young.”
“Just a box? After all these years, why do
you want it now?”
I pause and smile. “I’m a sentimental old
fool.”
He laughs lightly. “No you’re not, Grandma.”
“Well, there’s something in the box your
grandfather gave me. I’d like to have it again.”
“All right. So how do you get to the attic?”
“Follow me.”
The attic is a large room with a low slanted
ceiling and windows across the front and on both sides. With the electricity
off in the lodge, the attic is dim and stuffy and smells heavily of must and of
things that have been stored for decades. Sean and I go about unlocking and
opening the windows to let in both sunlight and fresh air. Then we turn to the
task at hand. We are surrounded by an eclectic collection of dusty furniture,
old steamer trunks, floor lamps with tasseled shades, wooden crates and
cardboard boxes.
“Where do we start, Grandma?”
I turn on my flashlight; he follows suit.
“Well,” I say, “we might as well start with these boxes right here.” I shine my
light to indicate the pile.
Sean shrugs. “Okay.” He settles his
flashlight on the seat of a ladder-back chair and pulls one of the boxes off
the pile. He opens the flaps. “While we’re looking through all this stuff, why
don’t you tell me about what happened here?” he says. “You know, the summer you
moved in.”
I step to the box and move my flashlight beam
over what’s inside. “Do you really want to know?” I ask.
“Yeah. You’ve never told me the story,
Grandma. Tell me now.”
I think about that a moment. I suppose it is
time for him to know. “All right, let’s see,” I say, searching for the place to
begin. “You know we moved here in 1931, right?”
“Yeah. But that’s about all I do know.”
I nod. He pulls another box off the pile.
Taking a deep breath, I say, “Well, I’ll tell you what, had I known what was
waiting for me in Mercy, Ohio, I might not have been so eager leave
Minnesota….”
Trivia Question:
3. Which couple, after years of robbing banks together,
finally died together in a hail of machine gun fire?
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