Editorial
Front Page - Friday, September 18, 2009
I Swear...
Vic Fleming
“How I spent my summer vacation” or “How to avoid being jailed for breach of the piece in an undisclosed jurisdiction”
Just in from vacation on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Sunday through Sunday in a rental house.
Daughter, son and son’s significant other arrived Tuesday night. Son-in-law arrived Wednesday night. I choose to keep the exact location a secret.
My youngest niece’s wedding was Saturday. Rehearsal dinner was Friday night. Both were held on a lawn appurtenant to property half a mile down the beach being rented and occupied by the bride’s family and the groom’s family.
We’ve rented beach properties for years: Carmel, Cape Cod, Pawley’s Island, Charleston and on and on. We’ve had things go wrong before. But never anything quite like this.
Thank heaven we got the TV, the water pressure and the dishwasher fixed on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, as we discovered the malfunctions. The fixers came when we were not on the beach, so the inconvenience was minimal.
The same may be said for the leak in the outside shower. And the delivery of towels for our guests. The worker who brought those said she’d return to drop off a broom, so we could sweep up sand if we wanted. She never came back.
I was going to call about this Thursday, when we discovered bloodstains on a sheet on one of the beds (not caused by us). I called Maintenance. No answer. I left a message, asking for a new sheet and the broom. I never heard back.
We e-mailed the owner about the first few issues. So, it occurred to me that perhaps a dispute had arisen between him and the management company. And that Maintenance might have decided to stop responding to us. We did not want to get into the middle of anything like that. The week being almost over, we just made it through with what we had.
The light fixture in the shower that fell on my daughter’s head was plastic and very light—no injury. The roaches were not that huge and were spotted only on the lower level and really caused no damage. The Jacuzzi’s bathtub stopper did not quite hold the water in the tub, allowing it to drain, albeit slowly, prompting bathers to use more hot water, which we only ran out of twice. A cheap piece of cork would have fixed the problem. But what the heck! A cold shower is good for you once in a while.
Friday night at 8:45, a neighboring property owner called the local police and asked them to shut down the rehearsal dinner for disturbing the peace. The band was a middle-aged couple with keyboard, saxophone and guitar, playing Jimmy Buffet tunes. The noise level was ridiculously low, and everyone was behaving. The groom and bride are professional folks in their mid-30s. A very nice party? Yes. A bash, a blow-out? Hardly.
The groom’s dad is a lawyer. He and I put on a show of diplomacy, apologizing to the complainants for their inconvenience and asking what the true nature of the complaint was. After all, they were not dressed for bed, did not say that they could not sleep or that the party was making their lives unbearable.
Their complaint was against the owner who, they claimed, had no right to rent his property out to people for weddings. Ours was no. 22 in three months, they said. Fortunately, we were able to get the owner to intercede and prevent any similar occurrence from happening at the wedding Saturday afternoon. The police could not have been nicer; they did not close us down because the local noise ordinance was not in effect until 10 p.m.
The groom’s dad later told me that the police were not called until right after my toast to the bride and groom, which drew heavily on a crossword puzzle-related metaphor. He figured the neighbors must be Sudoku fans.
© 2009 Vic Fleming
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