Confessions of a Snoop

Yes, it's true. I'm not really that nice person you thought I was. I'm human, too, and I let this not-so-nice side of me emerge this summer. We rode to Sturgis, you see. On the Harleys. With a group of four others. (The Sturgis Rally for those of you not in the Harley-know is a huge week long party for Harley enthusiasts held in the warm summer sun of South Dakota each August.) It was our first attendance and so we decided instead of roughing it at a campground, we would rent a house. Then we could attend the parties, see the sights and not have to rough it so much. We were accompanied by our best friends and an Aussie couple we met in Queensland several years ago and who fit us like a tee. The six of us were compaticos and we got along beautifully.

I found the house online. Evidently, folks in the Sturgis area like to get out of town if they aren't fond of motorcycles that first week of August. Some of them rent their homes out to Harley riding guests like us. There certainly were not enough hotel or motel rooms to go around. And... like I said, sleeping on the ground with a beer guzzling crowd of bikers didn't exactly sound like my idea of fun. Well, then, this house: It had it all. Four bedrooms. A family room. A living room. A kitchen to die for with a long work table/counter. It was in a little college town twenty miles away from Sturgis with the quaint name of Spearfish. Eagerly, I antipated our much touted trip to Sturgis through the dreary winter months last year.

The house didn't disappoint when we got there that Sunday afternoon. We claimed our bedrooms and then stripped the bikes of all our clothes and accessories and roared back into town to load up on groceries. The local Safeway turned out to be full of other bikers, (strangely... mostly Californians too) loading up on groceries for their rented houses. There was a run on sourdough bread when we got done, I could see.

That night, the first problem we ran into while Tom was fixing supper, was that there was no salad bowl. Leona and I opened and closed cupboards sure such an article was there, we just hadn't found it. But no, we never found one the whole week. Tom finally gave up and tossed our salad in a big roasting pan. But we found it odd.

The house was filled with photos, of vacations, nature and such. The walls were covered with them. There weren't a lot of people photos but we found few wedding photos on a bookshelf. Leona and I wondered what 'our family' looked like that had given up their house to us for the week, but there wasn't much evidence of them in the pictures left there. The second morning while using an exer-cycle upstairs, I looked over the bookcase. I had read the one and only book I brought with me (Listen, when you're vacationing on a Harley for three weeks and your entire wardrobe and make up and shoes! have to reside in one saddlebag, you don't get to lug along a lot of reading material!) and needed to find something more to read. I thought there might be a mystery lurking among the books or at the worst some bodice ripping romance novel. But the only tomes I found there besides textbooks were some ten and twenty year old Guideposts. So I had to go shopping for books in town for the rest of the trip.

On Wednesday night, when our friend Dee joined the group, Leona and I both confessed as to the mystery of the couple whose house we'd rented. There were no sponges in the kitchen, she washed with dish cloths. There were no novels in the house. There was no salad bowl. Did people really live there? We shared a laugh at how awful and snoopy we'd become.

It wasn't until we were ready to clear out the next Sunday that a bit of the mystery was solved. And it made me sort of sad. Dee and Tom left first before the crack of dawn. Leona and Greg were riding up into Montana and then Canada and got away at seven thirty. Bill and I were heading back to California to return to work and stayed an hour longer closing up the house and making sure things were clean. Before Leona left, she took me aside and said, "I'm sure the missus doesn't sleep in the master bedroom. Take a look in there. Only his shoes are in the closet." (The master bedroom had belonged to the Aussies that week.) And sure enough, when I snooped in there to make sure there were no toothpaste stains in the sink, only His shoes were there. Nothing of Hers.

I ducked into Tom and Dee's bedroom. Everything looked normal. But I hadn't noticed a bookshelf there. And there... on the bottom shelf was my mystery solved. Yes, she had liked books. A few of them anyway. High falutin' literature that looked like it had been bought three decades ago when she was in college. There were also a few tomes of photography. So She was the source of all the art on the walls. And last but certainly not least, a number of mixed volumes on weight loss, menopause and how to achieve a better self image. Poor lady! Had she claimed this bedroom as her refuge against the Battle of the Bulge and because she thought she was no longer attractive? It would certainly explain the several pieces of exercise equipment scattered through the house. I tiptoed out and shut the door. I felt like I'd violated her privacy. How would I like it if a group of bikers claimed my house for a week?

I'll tell you one thing though: If I should ever rent out my house for a week to a group of bikers or anybody else and you should happen to rent it, you'll find several salad bowls and a whole host of reading material, some lofty and some just entertaining.