Living the Lake Dream, Then and Now

Paradise Lake was truly paradise--until it wasn't.

I have always loved living on or near water.  I used to be an avid lake swimmer, not a sport one can pursue in Florida unless you want to dodge alligators. 

My first lake was in Catskill, N.Y.  I’d been a city dweller for my entire adult life but at age 40 house hunger came upon me like a disease so my husband (now my ex) and I moved to a house on Paradise Lake in the woods outside of Catskill, miles from anywhere. 

  After almost 40 years I have moved to another place on a lake—this time in Florida.  Eventually I got over the house hunger, but never recovered from a longing to live on the water. 

OK my current lake is more of a canal but it looks like a lake.   Paradise Lake was more of a pond but had lake pretensions.  And I’m now living in a rental apartment not a house, but that’s fine with me.  I’ve recovered from house hunger.

 I’m still unpacking so haven’t written the story of this move but will soon-- I promise. 

In the meantime, here’s the saga of how I followed my dream when I left New York City in 1991 to buy a house on a lake in the Catskills—a move that changed my life profoundly in ways I never could have imagined.  

I’ve always been impulsive, and that is what drove me to leave New York despite swearing that I never would.    I loved Manhattan, loved my life there, but the Catskill mountains—and the siren-song of homeownership with a place to swim-- were calling to me.  As for my husband, I pretty much dragged him along on this adventure.   I dragged him along on everything until he left me for someone else—but that’s another story

Homeownership 101

No one could believe we were actually doing it. Two lifelong city dwellers, neither of whom had ever survived without regular psychotherapy, who didn't know the difference between leaders and gutters, or what a septic tank or forced air heat was or how to fix absolutely anything were leaving New York city to buy a house and move to the country.

When anything went wrong in our apartment, we called the "super," who didn't speak English and was drunk most of the time, but eventually more or less fixed whatever was broke. In any case, it wasn't our responsibility and that's how we liked it.

Escape from New York to a bucolic little town in upstate New York was a popular fantasy among our friends and acquaintances at the time, but it wasn't something anyone actually did.  That would have to wait 30 years until a pandemic uprooted New Yorkers from their precious apartments.   Back in 1990, giving up a rent stabilized apartment was just too risky. Friends reacted to our prospective move in tones ranging from awed to disbelieving. We got used to hearing either "How brave of you," or "you must be crazy."  I felt both sentiments were correct.

Not only couldn't we afford to buy a brand-new house, but we couldn't even afford to buy a house in good shape. We bought what our house inspector said might be called, if we were so-inclined, a "fixer-upper." Actually, considering our limited income, we weren't so inclined.

My mom, who was giving us the down payment, was horrified when she saw the house. My father had been an architect, and he'd designed and built their elegant home in a Jersey suburb. She had insisted on contraptions like a blender that fit into the countertop.  She wasn't used to a kitchen that looked like it belonged in an Appalachian cabin. She kept insisting that the kitchen had to be at least 100 years old. I told her that wasn't possible since the house was only 20 years old, but she refused to believe me.

The real estate agent said our house was such a mess because it had been "abused." I knew children were abused, but who would batter a house? It turns out that the dread "renters," had done it. We'd been renters all our lives but we'd never been tempted to abuse our surroundings. These renters however had punched holes in the walls, loosened stair bannisters, and stolen the refrigerator.  

In my mind the abuse was the least of it. Every room had wall to wall shag carpeting in bilious tones of green, mustard, orange and brown that made me nauseous to look at, a bathroom with navy blue wallpaper and black fixtures, a dining room with welfare hotel wallpaper and linoleum with large chartreuse flowers on it--not to speak of serious defects like an unvented attic (who knew an attic needed air), two inches of water in the basement, leaky skylights, a hot water heater that vented into instead of out of the basement, and a leach field that didn't leach properly (whatever a leach field was).

But oh, what "possibilities" our house had. It was tucked into tall woods of maple and oak, had two-story (leaking) cathedral windows with a view of a babbling brook, and a lake across the road I could swim in.

Who knew that the babbling brook was actually the overflow from the lake and in wet weather if we didn't clean out the drain every day the road would be flooded since the beavers plugged it up every night?   And how was I to know that the charming dirt road that wound down a hill to our driveway turned into a solid sheet of ice in the winter and a series of axle-crunching potholes in the spring?  All I knew was that I was in love.

It took three different expert opinions, including an architect friend of the family, to convince mom that the house was a good buy. Everyone said it was "structurally sound" and only needed "cosmetic," repairs. It turns out that to construction types if the beams aren't buckling and the foundation isn't crumbling, it's structurally sound--never mind what else is wrong with it.

We were lucky to find Larry, a neighbor and temporarily unemployed carpenter, who came over every day the summer we moved, and fixed what needed fixing.  Neither of us knew how to fix a hole in the wall.   I quickly learned the meaning of soffits, flashing, attic vents, leach fields, cornerboards, window trim, foil-backed insulation, chimney caps and other esoterica.

While installing those items, Larry educated me in Homeownership 101. He said houses are alive, and they need to be tended like living creatures. If you don't vent them, and caulk them, and paint them, and patch their roofs and waterproof their decking, they'll turn on you.  I learned to listen to the house, and when it leaked or groaned or creaked or whined, I worried as though it were a sick child.  I found out that what you don't know someone else surely does--and if you call, they will come.

 I assembled a bunch of talented, if rather eccentric, workmen to call on, who even hung out and had coffee with me during the day when I was lonely or bored. A far cry from my old "super."

 Over time the house became the gracious, welcoming home it only hinted at on first sight.   I tended to the house and it tended to me--a more intimate, and mutually satisfying, relationship than one could ever have with an apartment.

Eventually I had to sell it because I was getting divorced, which was like getting rid of an old friend.   I’m told the dirt road to Paradise Lake is paved now, and there are lots of houses around the it, not just the three that were there when I moved in.  The lake is covered with algae—too polluted to swim in. 

Paradise Lake is paradise no more.  I’m glad I got to live there when it was remote and unspoiled.  My lake view now is paradise enough.  

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