- Aw man, when I was a teenager, I was such a hard-headed asshole. I’m laughing out loud thinking about the way I conducted myself, how absolutely defiant I was, and how much of a hard time I gave my father growing up. My dad was full of one-liners, two cents, and wisdom beyond anything I could comprehend in my youth. Every year when I was a kid, we would take a family trip to the 1000 Islands for Pirates Weekend. As my brother and I got older, we stopped going (man, I wish we hadn’t now). In 2010, we randomly decided to take a trip back up to the 1000 Islands with my dad. It was a trip I will never forget, and not for the immediate reasons you would think.
I found us a rental house on Grenell Island that was $500 for the entire weekend. In hindsight, that should have been a huge
red flag because that price is LOW LOW for the area, especially during peak season. It was on an island in the main channel. I checked out the photos, however, and it looked good! Views of the St. Lawrence, and you could see the passing ships (one of my dad’s favorite pastimes). I gave the owner a call and secured the rental. This was going to be amazing! Fast forward to our trip. We brought down the boat, a jet ski, and all of our supplies for the weekend. We got the boat launched and set out towards Grenell Island. My father, being the expert boater he was, was in charge of captaining the boat, and I had the job of chart/navigation. Mind you, he spent the first 15 minutes of the boat ride correcting everyone who kept calling the chart a map. (EYE ROLL)
We found the island, no problem, and docked the boat. Okay, now we needed to find this rental house. The photos all showed these beautiful views of the water, so this house had to be right on the water, right? WRONG. After about 10-15 minutes of searching, we stumbled across what appeared to be our rental… IT WAS A DUMP. Literally a shit shack with absolutely no view of the water. It was tucked behind two other very large houses that were directly on the water so the view from the front porch of the shack was bushes. The beds were propped up on 2x4s at the head of the bed to level them because the floors were literally slanted. I WAS PISSED, to say the least. I spent the entire first day of the trip bitching and moaning about how we got ripped off, how this house was falsely advertised… Blah blah blah, and how this trip was a waste because of the house I picked.
My dad pulled me aside on the morning of day 2 and said, “Let’s just make the best of it, okay? We can still have fun, who cares if this place is dumpy.” With slight hesitation, I decided to take his advice. My dad named the place “Louie’s Dump,” and that is what we referred to it as for the remainder of our stay and to this day. We made so many memories on that little weekend vacation. I will never forget the laughs we shared and the stories that are still told today, like when my dad decided to take my brother and his friends out to Alexandria Bay and had to navigate home on the pitch-black St. Lawrence River to the Island. He called me and told me to go on the neighbor’s dock and shine a flashlight out onto the river so he could figure out which direction to head to get back. It was literally that dark out; he could see my tiny flashlight acting like a lighthouse on the island. What a dumb idea, dad, to take the boat out in the pitch black of night, but he was always down for an adventure.
I won’t bore you all with all of the memories; I just want to tell you this… The greatest lesson I ever learned in life was to “make the best of it.” Had I not listened to my dad’s advice that day, my negative attitude would have ruined my entire trip. Flash forward to me in my 30s, and anytime I would call my dad to vent about how difficult and stressful being a business owner is and how I just feel like giving up, his response would be, “Hey Linds, I got a question for you. How much would you pay right now to go to Louie’s Dump for the weekend?” We would both laugh, and I’d say, “A lot, dad, I’d pay a lot.” That question became his little way of telling me, “Make the best of the situation you’re in right now.” After all, you could be making a memory.
Tomorrow would have been my dad’s 64th birthday, and I’ll tell you what. I’d pay 1 million dollars to stay at Louie’s Dump and relive that weekend. So if you find yourself on vacation and it’s pouring rain, stuck in traffic during rush hour, or laid off from a job you loved, just remember to find a way to make the best of it because every day above ground is a beautiful day.
**Side note. Louie’s dump is actually back up for rent! $175 a night and it looks like the current owners fixed it up (a bit LOL)
