The Best Job...

Mountain Lake Hotel, Giles County, Virginia

Dang, has it been 42 years?

Yes, it was 42 years ago, the summer of 1976, I was a desk clerk at Mountain Lake Hotel in western Virginia.

The probability is high that you’ve seen Mountain Lake Hotel. Most of the movie “Dirty Dancing’’ was filmed there. It’s a resort on the south shore of the highest natural lake east of the Mississippi. Here in the future the lake’s levels fluctuate wildly…for a bit a few years ago it was totally dry.

Mountain Lake wouldn’t be famous for “Dirty Dancing” until about 11 years in the future from the time I was there.

I had always wanted to work at the hotel from the first time I saw it. It was miles from anything and on the cool top of a mountain. For $66 a week I got place to live (I had to share a room with the bellhop), three meals a day and one day off a week.

The hotel was so rustic. The main building was made of native stone. There were wooden cabins scattered around the property. There was only one television in the place and it was in the drawing room off from the lobby.

I greeted guests, took reservations, sent out material on the hotel and ran the switchboard — an ancient wires and plugs affair.

My roommate was Chad the bellhop who spent his idle hours reading comic books. I spent mine wondering when I’d meet the girl of my dreams. We spent the summer having almost nightly parties with the rest of the staff. I worked from 3 in the afternoon until 11 at night when I’d get off duty, hop in my car, zip down the mountain, buy “party supplies” (read that as booze) and return. In the morning I’d wake up and swim in the lake.

On staff were a hippie or two, girls from the town at the foot of the mountain who were the hotel maids and an assorted cast of characters.

For instance there was Phil the Chef who was hired at minimum wage and prepared all of his meals step-by-step from a Betty Crocker Cookbook. Phil had told us that he had been in the Vietnam War and that he was supposedly legendary for his nightly bow-and-arrow raids on the Vietcong across enemy lines.

There was Karen the hostler…the horse handler. This was a big, strong woman, from Pennsylvania the likes of whom I had never seen before. She lead the guests on horseback rides. She often stunned my southern-born sensibilities by walking around with little if any clothing on.

There was the time I had fallen asleep on the boat dock after work and was awakened by Karen’s big toe in my ear. I opened my eyes and there was Karen standing there totally nude in the night…she was ready to go skinny dipping.

“Wanna join me?” she asked in her big voice.

I smiled back, “No, thanks, I’m kinda tired” and I was, so I started walking back up to the employee’s lodge. I may have missed some kind of significant life moment there but I was just flat-out tired.

It was a summer of lots of memorable moments like when Chad and I chased bats out of the lobby with badminton racquets, or working with a guy I called “The Bard of the Blue Ridge,” a fellow who had once lived a staid middle-class life, lost it all in a swindle and became a vagabond, a storyteller, a bullshitter. He worked at the hotel as gardener and maintenance man.

It was a great place to spend the summer…most days were mild on the mountaintop, not hot at all.

You know what “They” say, “All good things must end.” So it was with the best job I ever had.

I’d say about 95 percent of the people who came to Mountain Lake enjoyed it. That disgruntled 5 percent, ah, I let them ruin my summer with their mean-spiritedness.

I had been yelled at, cussed at, grabbed by the collar and subjected to obnoxious condescension.

I knew it was time to leave when a lawyer and his traveling party from outside Washington, D.C. came in one cloudy August afternoon. He had reservations and wanted to see his room before he checked in. He came back down and proceeded to tell me how awful the place was...going down some kind of mental list he had made up: That the hotel was like a “class C” roadside motel, there was no television in the room, the room was dingy, the window faced the mountainside, he expected he’d have rooms with a view of the lake because, after all, we should’ve known who he was and that he was worthy of the best rooms in the place.

I’d heard stuff like this all summer and had to put up with it with a smile and a “Yes sir”/”No sir.” But on this day I’d reached my limit. So in an uncharacteristically loud voice I looked Mr. Attorney right in the eyes and yelled, “LOOK ASSHOLE, IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT HERE WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET THE HELL OFF THE MOUNTAIN!!!!!”

I composed myself and apologized for what was truly an uncharacteristic outburst.

I took a sheet of hotel stationary and a pen, presented it to Mr. Attorney and asked him if he’d like to write a note of complaint to my boss.

“Yes I would, young man,” he said. “And in it I will recommend that you should be terminated.”

“That’s your right, sir,” I said.

He finished his note and I called down the mountain to a nice motel with a golf course and made reservations for him and his party.

A couple of hours later the boss got back from his trip down the mountain.

“Something happened while you were in town,” I said and I handed him the note from the lawyer.

He stood there and read the note.

He laughed.

“Hell,” he said, “I might’ve done the same thing.”

He handed the note back to me.

“Just don’t do it again,” he said.

I felt bad after the incident though and two weeks later I packed up my stuff and left the mountaintop.

I liked that work…I even gave serious consideration to being a resort hotel worker, in the mountains in the summer and south Florida in the winter… “working the circuit” it was called back in the day.

I don’t even know if “the circuit” exists anymore.

And desk clerk jobs? I’ve been watching kids do that kind of work these days and “laid back” is not a term that comes to mind when I see them go about their work: They are far more tasked with multi-tasking than “back then” and they do that thing that I so don’t dig here in the future…trying to monetize every human interaction.

As the years would go by I’d call it the best job I ever had. Some would say that was because there were no responsibilities. Others would understand: The simplicity, the camaraderie, the mild summer days, the peace.

Isn’t it something how others can even mess that up.

-30-

*All names changed…