In 1976, my parents accidentally bought a hotel.
If you draw a 100-mile circle around New York City, you'll notice a largish wedge to the north-northwest of the city without any major roads running through it. No trains, no famous resorts, not even any towns you've heard of. That's where it is, sunk deep in the rural vastness of northeastern Pennsylvania. It's 30 minutes to a supermarket, 45 minutes to a movie theater, almost an hour to any divided highway and the nearest Whole Foods is—well, I don't know where it is.
It started with their building a cabin in a patch of woods. Then the land next to it came up for sale, and they worried that someone would subdivide it, so they put in a bid. With the land came Silver Lake House, an old farmstead-turned-fishing lodge. It had seven bedrooms, a huge kitchen, an even huger dining room, termites, bats, about an acre and a half of leaky roof, and an unfinished basement that literally had a stream running through it. Financially speaking, the smart thing would have been to push this ramshackle white elephant over with a bulldozer. But my parents didn't, and, when its management eventually fell to us, my wife Karen and I didn't either. In time, we stopped wanting to.
Maybe it's just that we finally got used to it. Sure, in my early twenties I made mayhem there a couple of times with my college buddies during the off-season. (In those less-fussy days it was possible to rent out a pile like that as a summer house.) And in my early thirties, Karen and I went up occasionally with friends, but it was hard to get to, and there was nothing to do there once you did. Nice and quiet, to be sure, but we were typical restless New Yorkers and we liked a little more zip in our leisure destinations.
(Photo: Nicholas Noyes, nicholasnoyes.com)
Then we became parents, and so did a couple of our friends. Now New York City might be a wonderful, stimulating place for a child, but raising one there definitely calls for all hands on deck, all the time. Suddenly, we began to see Silver Lake House in a new light: "Wait—we have a large house where we could let the kids run feral while we sit around sipping cocktails and swapping survivor stories?" Hell yes. Fields and frogs could do the babysitting. And if we played our cards just right, we could lure some friends who didn't have kids along and maybe get some conversations going that weren't related to child-sleep issues. Memorial Day weekend 1999, we put this scheme into practice. Five couples, three two-year-olds, a big stack of CDs, two board games, and 50,000 diapers. Also, an extravagant supply of barware and cooking gear.
Karen, you see, was a former maitre d'. I was, and still am, a drinks writer. Our friend Melissa is a food writer. At least one member of each couple (and usually both) was a demon cook. That year set the pattern. The kids ran free, the adults talked and cooked and ate and drank. Expeditions were mounted, bocce balls tossed, woods explored. Sunday night was reserved for fireworks and bedlam with a homemade potato cannon that also, incidentally, is the appropriate caliber for limes and small stuffed animals. Each Memorial Day since, the same crew has come back for more. One or two couples have undergone a personnel change, and there are a lot more kids now, but it's still a remarkable run.
Not that it's always been easy. One time we all arrived to find that the gas company had turned off the gas because the old cast-iron restaurant stove had been deemed unserviceable. Did you know that you can make pasta on the grill? The water pump has seized up, beds have collapsed (we're still getting around to replacing all the Howdy Doody–era furniture), the leaky roof has, well, leaked. Some of the annoyances have been minor, if constant—mouse turds and the carcasses of their makers have turned up in the most unexpected and unpleasant places. Some have been self-inflicted (hint: never play William Tell with a potato cannon—sorry, Andy). But we've always managed to get three squares on the table, along with cocktails, after-dinner drinks, and, on one (shakily) memorable occasion, Fish House Punch. (When the recipe says to add a quart of water, add the quart of water. Thank God nobody had to drive anywhere.)
During our earliest trips, we brought everything edible along with us. Josh and Bryony hauled flour and butter and sugar for Bryony to refashion into some flaky baked confection or other. Nick and Jessica, responsible for making a proper Sunday dinner, packed at least six or seven varieties of chile pepper, which Nick toasted, seeded, and ground down to a powder for what has got to be the best pot of chili ever made (and by a Brit at that). Mike and Katherine supplied pretty much an entire trunk of seltzer, plus the traditional Saturday morning breakfast of eggs fried in bacon fat, and the bacon to go with it. Melissa, who walks around New York City with flaky sea salt in her purse, brought it with her, along with cruets of extra-virgin olive oil, artisanal fruit jams, and once, a bag of stupefied lobsters who were quickly turned into lobster rolls.
(Photo: Andrew Scrivani)
But as the years passed we learned to live off the land. What looked to us in our New York snootiness like a culinary wasteland—30,000 cows and not a steakhouse to be found—turned out to have its secrets. You just had to learn to look for them. In Honesdale, in the back of the diner on the edge of Main Street, there was a bona fide farmers market. Some weren't even secret: it wasn't until 2007 that we thought to see what exactly the hand-painted sign over on the next hill that read "Quails R Us" was promising. (Quails, it turned out, plus chickens, guinea fowl, and the freshest eggs you'll ever find.)
Some findings took a little more digging. It took us seven years to discover that behind an anonymous picket fence three miles down the road lay the famous Four Story Hill Farm—purveyor of milk-fed poulards, amongst other flesh and fowl, to the likes of Thomas Keller and David Chang. Eventually, new traditions were born: simmered spring greens to accompany Nick's chili; hard-boiled quail eggs for Sunday breakfast (at $2 per dozen); rare roasted côte de boeuf for dinner on Saturday night (pricier, but far less than a meal at Per Se).
(Photo: Andrew Scrivani)Thankfully, we hadn't yet discovered the fine local beef on the night a few years ago when we all sat down at the long, rickety table just as a pipe burst overhead, soaking the assembled company. Or the time when the refrigerator conked out. Sometimes the headaches mount, and I wonder why my family was never wise enough to just let this house fall apart for good. But when I sit on the little kitchen porch with a glass of, say, Golden Fleece Punch in my hand and gaze down the sweeping meadow that leads to the lake, or watch the kids (we're up to six now) dance with glee at our traditional Sunday night fireworks display, or—best of all—sit down with a dozen old friends at a table so covered with their excellent cooking that we can't find room for another dish, I can't help but think… to hell with wisdom.
More drinks
Golden Fleece punch
El Dorado cocktails
Frozen iced tea
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