The Dull One

Once in a while I have a customer who decides, against my better judgment, that he or she might be better off not buying a vacation home and that, instead, renting is a more prudent decision. The thinking is somewhat based on good solid sense. If you don’t buy a place, then you’ll never be bound to one location. You can travel wherever you wish, forever. Nomadic existence has for thousands of years been thought of as being a less than preferred situation, but recently some of the very rich have thought it might once again make sense. Geographic freedom, they think, is not only priceless, it’s cheaper than owning.

I’ve been away from Lake Geneva for a little bit. I did the same thing last April, and I hope, God willing, to do the same thing next April. The reason for this seasonal absence should not be difficult to understand. April is the worst month of the year in the upper Midwest. It’s rainy or its cold or its hot or its not. Maybe it’ll be super windy or just sorta windy, and yes there will be a few daffodils and we will celebrate those blooms. But beyond that the month is misery and I feel as though I have almost earned the right to eliminate it from my life.

In this, I have become like the renter types that I feel compelled to rail against. But I’m only vacationing in a far away foreign land where I wouldn’t buy, so this is not like the Lake Geneva buyers eschewing ownership in favor of renter-ish behavior. This year I stayed at various hotels in various parts, and then settled into a single family rental overlooking a big blue salty sea. The rental agency was kind and assured me that I would have everything I need for a lovely stay. Having done this before, I didn’t necessarily doubt them. Sure enough, an hour in and we found a few towels, some lounge chairs by the pool, and even a sauna with a bucket and ladle, although the bucket, like a springtime wooden boat in Lake Geneva that has not yet been soaked up, leaked. Renter, meet renting.

But soon the cracks were visible, and not just in the sauna bucket. The towels were too small and very scratchy. The pool furniture had that distinct patina that can only be achieved by many months or years under a scorching mediterranean sun, which is to say the furniture could have used some covers when not in use. The couch in the living room was uncomfortable, the pétanque court in need of a weeding, and the outdoor landscape lighting decidedly not dark sky approved. But none of these things matters as much as the thing that mattered most. The kitchen knives.

What sense is it to buy market goods and bring them home if you cannot properly cut a leek? And if the leeks aren’t being cut well, don’t even think about the butchery of the fennel and the carrots. I wanted to buy fresh fish the other day, but who could filet anything with these rental house knives? Everyone knows these sort of knives. They’re cheap and they’re usually serrated and not usually with nice big serrations, but rather with those little jagged serrations that cut and mangle and drag and pull everything they touch. I’m not sawing wood with someone on the other side of the log helping with the work, I’m just trying to cut a carrot.

And beyond the knives, what of this cutting board? And I do mean “this” cutting board, because there is just this one. It’s as small as a man’s hand, so long as that man has a rather small hand. I have more cutting boards at my houses than does John Boos at his plant in Effingham. I love cutting boards. Big, tall, marble counter-top saving cutting boards. But here, I pay a handsome premium to cut with these unserious knives on this similarly laughable cutting board and I find it all intolerable.

And so that’s why renting is dumb. That’s why it has nothing in common with true vacation home ownership. It cannot compete, because why should I spend my entire life to earn the right to find my way to someplace else for a while and then be forced to prepare my meals with these haphazard utensils? I refused to live like this, even temporarily, and if me, then you, too. Buy a vacation home. Buy the fluffy towels. Buy the comfortable couch. Buy the Japanese knives and the Illinois cutting boards. Because life is quite tragically far too short to mangle yet another dinner.