The Lodge

Green acres is the place for me.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep Chicago, just give me that countryside.
Lyrics to TV show, adapted

Some years back, Tom invited a mutual friend of ours -- a Carmelite priest I have known since he was a student -- up to the farm to camp with Michaelangelo and him. Michaelangelo is another friend in Hyde Park (a doctoral student at the divinity school at the University of Chicago) who teaches at St. Rita Catholic High School -- the big football rival of the guys at Mt. Carmel High School where Jerry teaches. So they all knew one another in various church connections and in the overlapping ways that people in Hyde Park do, much like a small town in the middle of a big city.

Jerry kept talking in advance about their trip to The Lodge. The Carmelite community he belongs to -- not the same one I belonged to -- had a number of places they called "camp", places they could escape to for a weekend or for vacation -- meaning a house on the shore of Lake Michigan or a lodge in the mountains in Colorado or a place like Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario. Roughing it meant you might not have all the cable networks you were used to or that you had to cook your own meals.

He was a little stunned to discover that when Tom and Michaelangelo went camping, that meant sleeping in tents on the ground with no running water or electricity anywhere around. We still joke about The Lodge and threaten to get a sign for when Jerry visits that says, "Welcome to The Lodge."

At least we are not sleeping on the ground in tents, and there are wonderful things about living in the country -- like the meadow flowers (I stole that picture from Tom) around the edge of the yard.

But there are other things in the country that I had forgotten about. In particular today I mean bugs.

When I got my pajamas out of the closet last night, a spider fell out of them and I stepped on it. This morning there were two more in the bathroom. Helen is coming to visit for a week, and Jay is bringing her down next Sunday along with Buddy the Dog. Today when I did laundry, I took the linens from the guest room to wash and make the bed up fresh. Under the quilts and on top of the sheets was a cricket. I grabbed it and tossed it out the back door.

At least, I think I got it out the back door.

And when I went to make the bed up, there was a spider on one of the pillows.

Oh, well. Helen was born in Texas. She should be able to cope.

PS -- Don't get me started on the gophers, but then they aren't bugs anyway.