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2003-03-27 - 10:07 a.m.

This year, B and I decided, we would look for a house to rent for the summer instead of taking a week-long vacation someplace. It would be nice to be able to just get out of the city every weekend and we could still take a week off and just go canoeing or hiking and other assorted outdoorsy sundries.

We weren't particular on where we wanted to rent, as long as it was within driving distance from NYC. We've been (actually I've been - B's not one for the planning processes) searching on-line, emailing realtors, scanning the buylines and classifieds but it seems like every place is either too big, too grand or just too damn expensive.

I'm thinking little log cabin in the woods, they're showing me deluxe, five-star accomodation complete with jacuzzis and in-ground pools. Its not that I wouldn't like those things - I just can't afford them.

I grew up lower middle class and every year for the Summer my family went to a bungalow colony in Accord, NY (a small town outside Rosendale, which was a small town outside New Paltz). These were clapboard two room shanty shacks with no heat, no frills on about an acre of land with a tire swing and a small inground pool to amuse us.

It was the happiest time of my life.

I remember waking up to the delicious smell of frying bacon and burnt rubber (my mother dried the dew off our shoes by putting them before the open oven), walking up to the PX for candy bars or to the ice cream parlor for cones was the purest bliss and the biggest bonanza was the weekly trip to Grand Union and Jamesway.

We went to church (I was a true believer then) in this tiny white chapel straight out of Little House on the Prairie, there we'd donate a quarter for the thrill of lighting a candle from a punk. Then saying a prayer that I was sure would be heard and granted.

I guess I've been trying to recapture that innocence by going back to a simpler world but that world may no longer exist.

The bungalow colony of my youth became a home for migrant farmers sometime in the mid 80s. I no longer go to church. But still I long for that kind of small town where the drive in movie theater is six months behind new release, and the biggest shopping center is a two store strip mall, where everyone goes out to see the high school football games. I want to sit on an adirondack chair and sip my cheap wine from a paper cup and watch the sunset, make a wish on the first evening star. Is that too much?

Drink of the Day: Riunite on ice - so nice!

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