Duties Of The Caretaker
You can never take your responsibilities too seriously. It therefore behooves you to explore just what are your responsibilities. As caretaker at the weekend resort community of Mt. Pleasant the delineation of my duties is a picture best sketched with care and a creative eye towards the details of future enjoyment for all.
Many caretakers in this area rich with weekend properties concentrate mostly on yard work or house work or other maintenance issues, either hands on or the management thereof. I mostly suck at management. My own visiting guests will attest to this as they make phone calls for me to plumbers or other trades people whom I occasionally require to pick up the slack regarding those things in which I may have some skill deficiency. Sure, in answer to your raised eyebrow, I do have a skill deficiency or two. But I try to improve my skill set and as example I offer that six weeks ago I could not operate a fly rod at all.
The Polaris Ranger is a four wheel drive vehicle with a low gear and transmission lock which is often used simply to drive people around the property. It is every so often also used to perform amazing feats of work. The other day I backed it up to the pond and tied one end of a 30 foot tow strap to the limbs of a willow tree which had crashed half into the pond and half into the bog and the other end to the Polaris and then climbing out onto the biggest limb over the water and chain-sawing the limb almost in two I dragged it onto land with the Polaris and cut it up into smaller pieces. Mr. BC had come out for a meeting with a town administrator and caught me working and before he left he said he hated to see me working so hard, and I took this to heart.
The next day I only did light work--altered a few cobwebs in the bighouse, ripped some boards into an approximation of the existing siding, hung those two lights out on the front porch' and hauled some garbage to the dump. I then paused to consider how to best serve the needs of my master BCs and I could come up with nothing better than hiking along the Hughes River with Mr. BCs new fly fishing rod. While Mr. and Mrs. BC miles away in the DC area prepared to attend a Democratic fundraiser with Mr. and Mrs. Clinton I was flicking my wrist back and forth from my perch on a boulder in the middle of the river downhill from the mountain called Old Rag.
I recently heard of a PETA campaign against fisherman. Fishing, they contend, is hurtful to fish. I am only a very occasional fisherman and yet have been stuck a time or two by a barbed hook so I know it is true that those hooks hurt.
But as a nascent fly fisherman, not only do I catch and release, I don't actually catch, anything. So you might say I am a PETA certified fisherman, or fisher-person.
That day I was out there on the Hughes, was yesterday, and while I did not catch any fish, I did have the whole river to myself, except for the reluctant fish, and the eight black bears I saw over a few hour period.
Anyway, back to my duties as I see them--someday perhaps will come a moment when all the BCs are out and while the Mrs may want to hike and the Mr may want to fish, the Jrs will probably see no activity shy of bear wrestling as worthy of their consideration. I will be ready for that moment. I am the caretaker, my training never complete.
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