Tales of the Sinclair and Other Summer Stories

A Bethlehem Summer Story, by Dave Goldstone 

It Always Rains on Labor Day – (Rainy Day Women) -

I’m waiting for the rain to stop. Half of the country is praying for the opposite to happen but its Labor Day, a day that I equate with rain. Tourists come up to the White Mountains by the thousands to breathe the pure air and trot on horseback on trails through the woods, to hike to waterfalls and mountaintops, peruse through open air markets of home grown fruits and vegetable stands and handicrafts, to glide through the air on chairlifts and gondolas, visit wild animal exhibits, rock formations, amusement parks, pulling golf bags and tennis rackets out of the trunk of their cars and a valise filled with Bermuda shorts, tennis sneakers, bathing suits, beach towels, and suntan oil… but it’s raining. They’re wearing sandals or sneakers for the daylight hours and have already unpacked dress shoes to wear at dinner and for dancing in the nightclub but no rain boots or rubbers at least not the ones you wear on your feet. 

I was the lifeguard. If the sun was out or even a bit overcast, it was a workday for me. There was no substitute lifeguard or relief lifeguard. Harry Pool the cabana man couldn’t cover for me. He worked at that hotel pool ever since it was built which was before I was born but his domain only included the pool deck, the card tables, the chaise lounges, the umbrella tables and chairs, pool towels ash trays and the coke machine when a dime stuck in the slot, but not the pool. If guests complained about the heat he would throw ice cubes in the water, if they complained that the so-called heated pool was too cold he would come out of his pool shack with a glass coffeepot of hot water and pour it in, but if someone called for a lifesaver his retort would be “What flavor? I had to be there for that.

If it rained on Labor Day the hotel’s weekend special was no longer a bargain. When the natural beauty of the White Mountains and the medicinal quality of its pollen free air was discovered in the 1800’s hotels sprang up from the rocky ground like wildflowers all blooming in the late spring dazzling the landscape throughout the summer. In September their showy petals dropped went into hibernation.

It was 10 glorious weeks exploding with color and fanfare on July fourth and ending with a bang on Labor Day, a truly all American tradition.

But the 1800’s were over. City hotels had TV’s in every room, not a TV room with a bunch of old easy chairs in a semicircle around a 19inch black and white set watching the weather report on Mt Washington. They had air-conditioners, not just windows that opened with the help of a bellhop and private bathrooms rather than the ones shared with the adjoining room or across the hallway. It was best to keep these hotel guests out of their rooms as much as possible.

There were 400 guests in the hotel, mostly on the porch sitting on old iron rockers, wicker easy chairs and web pool chairs. The rain was coming down in buckets. Main Street began to sound like the Amonoosuc River as the buses and touring cars made waves that splashed against the curb. That was the main attraction on this Labor Day weekend. The real main attraction, the hotel’s pool, was desolate. Harry the cabana man was playing checkers with a guest in one of the parlors.. It was the one service Harry provided that didn’t require tipping him unless they were playing for money. Harry was a checker shark.

 At the end of lunch when the last guest waddled out of the main dining room after his third dessert all that was left to do was wait for dinner. Hoping to get a day off during this deluge I began to slip away from the pool shack where I was sheltering in place and see if I could find a lonely waitress in distress. “Hey Dave!” I heard that familiar voice. It was the voice that talked me into taking this job, which I was so uniquely unqualified for: the general manager. “Go into the office and get the Bingo out” Then I heard it on the Hotel’s 1950’s modern P.A. system: “Attention Sinclair guests! We will be calling Bingo with Dave the Lifeguard on the porch in 5 minutes! Cards are 25 cents each “. That was repeated three or four more times since most of the guests are either hard of hearing, not paying attention or just like to turn to the person next to them to say “What did he say? When is it starting? How much is the card?  Can I get two cards for 40 cents? Can I charge it to my room? Are they going to set up tables? Is this instead of Wednesday? What will they do on Wednesday! You think I can get a refund if I don’t play?”

Although I had to call bingo, thankfully, I didn’t have to sell the bingo cards. The boss’s daughter did that. When someone thought they won and called out “Bingo!” she would go over and check to see that they actually won and then give them the winnings. Usually she got a tip out of it.

I was told by former lifeguards that bingo was a racket set up within the owner’s family. They skimmed some of the winnings off the top in addition to the tips the guests gave the daughter, a pretty blonde who made the old guys drool in their ginger ales. I was the only one on the books getting $10 bucks to call it. Which set of books? I couldn’t tell you.

My love life sometimes soared at the pool when the sun shined. Most of the waitresses and chambermaids were high school girls from the boondocks who couldn’t pronounce half of the items on the menu. “It’s not ravioli soup, Terry, its Kreplach, the dumplings are matzoh balls, and that stinky fish is kippered herring!” I did meet a couple of women who were more intellectually inclined. They loved Harry’s antics and my humorous stories without me having to always explain to them when I was being sarcastic. The days were long and hot but some of the nights really sizzled. Then Labor Day came and the summer’s fires were extinguished. The rain came down like a cold shower.

Dave Goldstone, center, at the site of the long gone Sinclair Pool

My first year working at the hotel I met a woman from Maine.  A simmering relationship ended in a downpour on the slopes of Mt Washington. A year before that a late August cloudburst sent my car out of control at a hairpin turn on route 100 in a place aptly named Mad River Glen. The woman I was with, who had seen herself as my future wife, survived the accident but the relationship became drenched in conflicts.

I spent those first couple of decades of my life lighting up fires until things turned cold like the seasons. It took a long time for me to realize that for some of us, that was the natural order of things.

The day is over and the rain has stopped. Some believe that everything was “meant to be” by some higher power, or a combination of biology, chemistry and physics or perhaps just a crapshoot. I used to stare at those wooden bingo balls. Were they all perfect spheres in that steel cage? Then why did it seem that some numbers dropped out of the cage more often than others,  like the way it always seemed to rain on Labor Day?