Our mansion vacation

We’d finished our meals at a place so sumptuous it makes Dick Cheney cheerful when Lucy became momentarily agreeable and said she wanted to return to our mansion.

There, a line that seems so strewn with lies and exaggerations, is 100 percent truth.

We did have a mansion, Lucy was momentarily agreeable and, yes, Virginia, there is a place where Cheney’s cheerful.

It’s St. Michaels, Maryland. We just spent the last three days there.

I don’t know which of the aforementioned truths is more surprising, so let’s get to the one that’s most monumental.

Let’s get right to the mansion.

It was Far Away Point (homes have addresses; mansions, like pets and people, all have names and personalities).

It just sold for $6.1 million and rents for the week for $6,500. 

Far Away Point has six bedrooms, six baths, library, pool, bath house, 81 acres, boat dock, guest house (sleeps 8), and a shoreline overlooking the same Chesapeake Bay eastern shore waters as recent retirees Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

I was there to research a story about mansion rentals in a place that’s home to two men who think they’ve never been wrong and how with their selection of St. Michael’s as the perfect place to retire they got at least one thing right.

Doesn’t quite make up for the whole Iraq War thingie, but let’s give the devils their due.

I remain amazed I was able to stay there without having committed any crimes.

We didn’t break in. We were invited.  I didn’t pretend I was someone else. I was legit. We weren’t supervised. We were so all alone the girls spent most of the time there skinny dipping.

As our host drove up the mile-long driveway, I had the uneasy sense I was about to become Jack Torrance from “The Shining.”

That disquiet was only heightened when after a full 25-minute tour, Lucy, 4 (5 next week!) looked with dead eyes at me and said, “We’ve been here before.”

Far Away Point is 93 years old.

That’s Lucy. She has just three speeds: Spooky, sweet or Satanic (nickname, Lucy-fer).

Then, as soon as the realtor departed, Josie got locked in Far Away Point’s elevator, or as we now call it, the “hellavator.”

It was one of those old, rickety, self-operated three-story numbers that are kid magnets. Both the outer and sliding doors need to be closed for it to run.

Josie, naturally, thought it would be the perfect toy. She took it from the second floor to the first.

Then the outer door wouldn’t budge. Then the light went out.

She started screaming. I yelled, “Don’t panic!” and immediately commenced to panic. I yanked with all my might, I twisted coat hangers, I looked around for a fire ax.

She was in there about 10 minutes. We called the caretaker and the realtor and got no answer. Val finally persuaded her to push the buttons again. The lift had been off the landing. It needed to descend two more inches for the doors to release.

We were off to a frightening start.

But it got better right away.

If there were malevolent spirits in the house intent on retrieving our souls for eternal damnation, I think we won them over. They saw we were friendly. They saw we had no ill-intentions. They saw Val naked.

The girls were naked nearly the whole time. Me, a veteran skinny dipper, was envious.

It soon became one of our best vacations ever. It was magical.

The mansion soon felt like home. It embraced us. We all relaxed and just reveled in the opportunity to have such freedom in something so regal.

In the end, the girls decided they preferred our own home for perfectly 21st century reasons.

For all its glories, it’s many books and lavish places to relax and read, Far Away Point has but one measly TV and it’s about the size of a chess board.

Our home may be tiny and under-furnished, but it has three glorious TVs, one of them a real whopper, and all three could kick the butt of the one in Far Away Point.

Who needs mansions when you have hi-def?

For me the best part was overcoming our initial fears and learning to love this big, old beautiful house on the shore. Our memories of it will never fade.

And to think I for even a fleeting moment believed that true evil lurked in the heart of the home, an evil so malignant that it could possess our very souls.

How wrong I was.

I must have been confusing Far Away Point with down the street at Cheney’s place.

Bin Laden death round-up

My first reaction to the news was more somber relief than euphoria. It’s been too long and too much has happened. So I was surprised to see the jubilation outside the White House last night and everywhere today. But it pleased me very much. I like spontaneous jubilation, encourage its outbreak, and wish I could have been there to high-five elated strangers.

More thoughts:

• My favorite celeb tweet comes from Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. She wrote she was pleased to see our president announce the news in a dignified blue suit in front of flags rather than in a flight jacket and from the deck of an aircraft carrier. If you haven’t seen the Chicks’ performance documentary “Shut Up and Sing,” you owe it to yourself to do so. It’s a reminder of the blind hatred the far right unleashed on anyone brave enough to speak out against the Iraq War. The Chicks received death threats and basically chucked their career with mainstream country radio. Did they cow before the hostility? No. Instead they raised their middle fingers and in 2006 released a searing song “Not Ready to Make Nice” about the whole ordeal. The Chicks could release a series of Slim Whitman tribute records and I’ll buy everyone of them. In the never-ending arguments ricocheting around the world, you can take Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, the birthers and all the combined blowhards of Fox News. I’ll take the Dixie Chicks. On every issue.

• I was tickled to see the networks relaunch all those old al-Qaeda training videos that showed would-be holy warriors swinging from hand-over-hand bars like the one down at my kid’s elementary school. If this was intended to menace, it never worked with me. I had a feeling our Navy SEALS weren’t training on monkey bars and playground equipment.

• I’ve found myself becoming more sympathetic toward W. Bush while maintaining my belief he was utter incompetent in way over his head. But my disdain for Donald Rumsfeld remains absolute. His arrogance in the face of his many failures still astounds.

• My favorite post sweeping Facebook shows Obama waving to the crowd saying, “Sorry it took me so long to release my birth certificate. I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden.”

• For purposes of comedic symmetry, I am hoping we’ll learn that bin Laden’s home in Abbottabad is near the town of Costelloabad.

• I was fortunate enough to spend three days doing a bunch of newspaper stories on Navy SEALs back before the first Gulf War. I’ve been lucky my whole life in that I get to spend time around impressive and competent people and around good people who are just a lot of fun. But I’ve never been more impressed by the combination than those exhibited by Navy Seals. Truly, they were the best men I’d ever met.

• For the record, a Navy SEAL is an elite tactical soldier and SEAL stands for their capacity to operate on SEa Air and Land. These SEALs are not to be confused by the cuddly ones insulated by a thick layer of subcutaneous blubber.

• I’ve watched more Fox News today than I have since the 2008 presidential elections. It’s a joy watching their anchors tie themselves in knots trying to ensure all the home team Bush administration gets at least half the credit for the successful kill that eluded them for seven years. You’d think Karl Rove was flying one of the choppers. Once I’m done here, I’m going to scan the channel guide to see if there’s a Contortionist Network nearly half as entertaining.

• My heart kind of catches when I watch the videos of the Philadelphia fans at the Phillies-Mets game when news of bin Laden’s death started to break. I wish I could have been there with them. And, man, I wish I could get Josie out of school and take the whole family up to Shanksville about an hour away. But I wouldn’t want the kids to see me cry and cry I always do whenever I go to Shanksville.

• I don’t think you can underestimate the impact this will have on the 2012 races. I believe it will thin even further the already weak Republican presidential field. That Haley Barbour, an attractive and savvy campaigner dropped out, shows he doesn’t think Obama can be beat. Now, neither do I.

• Just learned bin Laden's full name is Osama bin Muhammed bin Awad bin Laden. Give him four more bins and he could be Dollar General store.

• I wish I could take the week off and just immerse myself in The New York Times and other top media to devour every word of the story. It’s too over-the-top to call this our generation’s V-E Day, but it’s sure something to savor.

• Love the historic coincidence that the day bin Laden was killed was the same day Hitler died and the same day Bush donned the flight jacket and did his “Mission Accomplished” thingie.

• Rock on, America, and God bless the men and women working at home and abroad to defend the greatest nation on earth.