Keeping Up with Our Mansion

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Regular maintenance makes taking care of a mansion difficult but manageable. We had let our maintenance program slide after Dad died. We did replace the boathouse dock nearest the beach in time for the 1883 centennial celebration with funds we received from selling the Consuelo, but we not only had to go to court to gain possession of Comfort Island, we also inherited no funds that would have assisted our maintenance efforts.
New York State has the distinction of levying the highest overall taxes in the country, and the local tax collectors have a predisposition to fleece the islanders who receive no services in return. Deb thought we should sell and move on, and I saw her point.
Indeed, it made my blood boil to be informed that we were considered non-residents and would be required to pay the same rate as a transient tourist for a fishing license. We were paying many thousands of dollars in school taxes to help make the resident teachers the highest paid in the United States, but when we wanted to send Coty through the Driver’s Ed Program one summer we got the repetitive, “Sorry, you’re not a permanent resident.” I wonder how the United States Supreme Court would view the fact that New York State actually adds a surcharge to non-residents’ school taxes, but won’t allow the individuals to attend the schools they are paying for?
By 1992 Deb had reached a breaking point and she wanted out. The strain of trying to figure out how to coordinate such a complicated project was too much. I told her, “Don’t give up, Deb. Kira and I will take over for a while and try to right the ship.”
Beginning in 1985 I hired a tennis assistant to help with my group teaching. My first assistant was Tim DiPrinzio. He did a good job, and I was sorry wh...

... middle of paper ...

... This thing is as heavy as a freight train.”
Garlock’s Hardware delivered thirty-three sacks of cement and a barge load of sand with gravel. We used it all in the process of pouring ten yards of new concrete into the seawall inside the boathouse and the adjoining seawall. The weather did its part to make it a memorable stay with persistent rain and cold temperatures. It was another exhausting non-vacation.
Despite the hard work, Peter had a great sense of humor and I would laugh as he reiterated his motto of, “You can’t quit, and you can’t be fired.”
Our idea was to fix problems areas in such a way that it would be at least forty years before anyone would have to fix it again. This was in contrast to some of the work that Dad had funded with a Band-Aid approach, which had only been intended as a short-term fix to a problem that became a major problem for us later.

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