By Brittany Smerling
As a young girl I moved to an unusual place for a city person. It was in the middle of nowhere, 20 miles east of Bemidji, Minn., on Moose Lake. I would now know this is the place that made me who I am today. My tasks included lodge duty, mowing the yard, cabin cleaning, and many other jobs. This made me think what I thought was a job were my glory days.
I would have to get up around nine or ten a.m. to watch the lodge, as many people didn't get up to early while they were on vacation. I would go down stairs with both a sweatshirt and sweatpants on, or if I had planned to go swimming that day, I would put my swimsuit on under my clothing. I would walk down into the lodge from our house that was attached, turn on light and the games and open the front door to let the sun shine in. I would help guests in getting many things: fishing licenses, bait, groceries, pop, candy and help them with their purchases from our apparel section. Between all of these tasks, there was a lot of downtime where there would be nobody in the lodge for hours at a time. I would find a comfortable chair and turn on my favorite TV shows while eating candy off the shelf usually sour patch straws or Swedish fish.
When I would get off lodge duty, or on a bright and beautiful day, I would have to mow our five-acre yard. This may sound like a hard job, but it wasn't. We had a riding lawn mower, so all I had to do was get on and cut that grass. In my two cup holders I would never go without a bottle of water of course what was usually nice and cold. In the other cup holder was my spraying tan lotion and my IPod. At the end of the day I would have a nice tan and would appreciate the work that had just been done. I would stroll around and make sure there were no spots missed and soak in that freshly cut grass smell. This was my favorite part, the clear blue sky and fresh cut of grass flowing through the air. My dad would then say, “you did I great job would you like to do the neighbors”, and I would usually say yes as they were good friends and senior citizens.
The last two jobs were mostly performed during the week. People might say my next task living on a resort was the worst job ever, but it was fun and entertaining at our resort.
Cleaning cabins wasn’t all bad. I would roll out of bed around 7:30 a.m. in my pajamas and would head out to the cabins, sometime forgetting to brush my teeth. The women who helped were a mother and daughter that lived up the road from us, a friend from school also helped and of course the boss lady, my mother.
We all had our tasks. I was known for heading straight for the TV to put on a music channel. After getting the TV set on a channel, I would also begin to work. I dusted, vacuumed, and cleaned the windows. It was a girls’ day; chatting up, gossip, and listening to music all day. The cabins were never that dirty, we still did our tasks through every cabin no matter what the cabin looked like. When all the girls were done with their job, we would then move on to the next cabin and so on until we were done. Now all my friends wished they could have got jobs cleaning at the resort.
Growing up on a resort is something I will never forget. Every moment was a blast and I wish I could go back to those simple days. I was paid in a very useful way, as my parents agreed to pay my college tuition. I did get paid enough cash to get me by as a young teenager. In my free time I would usually invite friends out to go swimming or other activities or run into town and hang out with friends there. So a couple of fun summers at the resort ended up to be worth a debt-free life out of college. And from my experience now at two retail stores, I would have to say this was the best job ever.
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