Haven of Bliss

 “For 14 straight years, our vacations were spent in southern Michigan on the shores of colorful Clear Lake.  Clear Lake – it was many things, but one thing it wasn’t was clear.”  Jean Shepherd

In the short story “Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss,” found in “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters” and made into a 1988 TV comedy film, Shepherd notes, “It was never very clear why we went there, but we did. Such are the vacations of the humble.” Haven of Bliss was the name of the green cabin the old man reserved in Marcellus, Michigan, for the two weeks.  Others bore the names Dew Drop Inn, Rest-a Spell, Bide-a Wee, Neva-Care, and Sun-N-Fun.  Ollie had upgraded the grounds, he informed the old man on the phone when he confirmed the reservation, by putting two more holes in the outhouse.

In anticipation of the trip the old man took the “goat-vomit green” Oldsmobile to Paswinski’s Garage for a “cabalistic ritual” – a tune-up.  Setting the alarm for 4:30 a.m. in hopes of beating the Sunday traffic, the old man overslept and then began the morning as he “had begun every day since the age of four with a Lucky [Strike] and a cup of black coffee.” Then it was off to the bathroom from which he emerged “with a wad of toilet paper plastered to a nasty gash on his chin.” Hardly moving once they reached the highway, the old man cursed out the “lousy Chicago drivers” and unleashed a “vast catalog of invective learned in the field, so to speak, the back of the stockyards on the South Side of Chicago.” Once traffic thinned out in Michigan “the Olds had a habit of thrumming, resonant vibration at about 50 that jiggled the bones, loosened the molars, rattled the eyeballs, and made all talk totally impossible.” Finally, after a flat tire and other misadventures, the family reached their destination only to find the cabin – their Haven of Bliss – without electricity. The saga concludes:

    The rain roared steadily on the roof – as it would for the next two weeks – and drummed metronomically onto the bare wooden floor beside my bed. . . . My kid brother tossed and whimpered softly from beneath his pillow; and across the room, my father’s low, muttering snores thrummed quietly in the night. We were on vacation.

When I was a kid, it seemed inevitably to rain whenever our family went camping in the Poconos.  Midge referred to the phenomenon sarcastically as “Lane weather.” Perhaps because of those experiences, I’ve never been a fan of “roughing it” in the outdoors.  Fortunately, when Phil and Dave attended Alternative Public School up to seventh and eighth grades, on the agenda, thanks to teacher Del Meyers, were annual fall and spring three-day camping trip, relieving me of any guilt over denying my sons that experience. 

In her eighties Midge, along with my 92-year-old stepfather Howie, joined us for a week in Saugatuck, one the main highlights being a Dunes buggy ride; the following week, we rented a cabin in southern Michigan with Phil’s family near a small lake resembling the locale described by Shepherd [a small town named Marcellus actually exists near a body of water called Fish Lake]. I recall evening campfires, days spent swimming and boating, and not being cursed by “Lane weather.” We looked into repeating the adventure a couple years later only to discover that the area had been gentrified and the rentals were no longer available.

For the 85-year-old protagonist of Kathleen Rooney’s “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk” (2017), recommended to me by Gaard Logan, New York City remained her “haven of bliss” in the mid-1980s despite signs of decay and social unrest.  On New Year’s Eve Lillian walks its streets to dine at Delmonico’s and attend a party in Chelsea. Born near the end of the 19th century (although she lies about her age), she was a nonconformist who preferred a career in advertising at Macy’s to getting married and raising a family in the suburbs. Though she did eventually wed and bear a son, Lillian only lasted two months in the suburbs. growing up, her role model was an Aunt Sadie, a nurse at St. Vincent Hospital (poet Edna St. Vincent Millay got her middle name because doctors at St. Vincent saved his life shortly before  Edna was born), taught Lillian to have a social conscious, and died at age 50 during the wartime flu epidemic. Once the highest paid woman in her field, a poet, and a published author, Lillian was forced to retire from Macy’s when pregnant and in her old age has been largely forgotten but still vibrant.  When she meets a woman from Garrettsville, Ohio, she notes that it was the hometown of poet Hart Crane, who committed suicide by diving from an ocean liner.