It was the old Pond’s Lodge, long before Carl and RJ resuscitated the place. Patrons ate at one end and drank at the other. The part where food was served smelled like tourists and home cooking, but the bar was dark, dank, and smelled like old fishermen, tobacco, and stale beer. On a sunny fall afternoon, I took my office staff to Ponds after hiking around Harriman. My medical assistant asked the waitress for a slice of lemon for her Diet Coke. The waitress pointedly asked her why she would want to put that “expletive” into her drink. She left and shortly clanked a plate of lemon slices on the table, turned, and left again without a word. It is hard to offend people who work in a urology office and grew up in farming communities in southeastern Idaho, so we were not offended and found her matter-of-fact attitude moderately amusing. Other, more sensitive customers may not have found her to be quite as entertaining, and she did not work at Pond's very long. Of course, before being resuscitated, Pond’s Lodge was not known as a popular stopping place for the overly refined and delicate types, however, it was selected for several gatherings of more rugged groups like The Island Park Quilting Guild.
On the way up to our cabin one snowy evening, we stopped at Pond’s for supper with Britta, my son-in-law’s sister, who was raised on the east coast and was then a student at Ricks College. As she started eating her salad, she looked up and saw the hunting trophies mounted on the walls above us and froze. Wide-eyed, she stammered out that there were wild animal heads on every wall at Ponds Lodge. She had never seen this before. Fortunately, her timidity resolved by the next morning and did not interfere with her first snowmachine ride to Big Springs.
Walls adorned with animal heads and stale beer did not deter Wes and me from meeting up with our wives after a 50-mile summer mountain bike ride on the Centennial Loop Trail, then over to Harriman State Park. Our bright blue and yellow Italian racing outfits with matching gloves, helmets, and shoes were not part of the usual Pond’s Lodge dress code. Most everyone else in there was dressed in fishing or camo gear. When we tried to tiptoe across the wooden dance floor, our metal toe clips and bicycle shoes sounded like we were doing a tap dance. Attempts to remain inconspicuous were futile. The more we tried to remain quiet, the more we found ourselves on tiptoes, feeling awkward. From the looks on the faces of the other patrons, you’d think that they had never seen two 60 year-old-men, dressed in fluorescent Lycra, prancing around on a barroom dance floor.
As soon as Wes sat down at the table, he stood back up and left to go to the men’s room. I ordered drinks and followed Wes a few minutes later. I knew he would be in the stall. He was always in the stall. Whenever he used a public restroom, Wes was in the stall. Not me—the stall is just an impediment to efficiently getting into and out of a public restroom as quickly as possible. As I walked down the hall I asked myself if I wanted to leave Wes alone in the stall or if I wanted to set him up. Not being one to let an opportunity like this go to waste, I decided to set him up.
I was right, Wes was in the stall. The only other person in the Men’s Room was leaving as I came in. It was apparent that Wes and I were the only ones in the restroom, so, I chose my big, growly woodsman voice and boomed out, “Hey, Arnold! Did you see those two fairies prancing around out there in them blue panties? Someone should grab those weirdos and beat the snot out of 'em!” Immediately, from behind the stall door, I heard what sounded like someone letting the air out of a tire—it was Wes taking in a big whistling breath in and then out through pursed lips. I was laughing so hard that when Wes came out of the stall and realized that it was me, we were both laughing so hard that we couldn’t speak. About that time another man came through the restroom door and saw two men, with tears in their eyes, alone in a men’s room, dressed in brightly colored Spandex, gasping and laughing hysterically. The color left his very puzzled face and before we could explain, he just turned around and left—which made us laugh even harder. We eventually regained our composure and returned to the table where our wives soon met up with us. They were so busy talking about the Playmill Theatre that they did not hear anything we said about our bike ride and we did not have to explain our adventures in Spandex at Pond’s Lodge on a beautiful fall afternoon.
Ever vigilant,
RT
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