Open Door Policy
The difficulty of living so far away hit home literally on the receiving end of a frantic call from the States half way into our trip to Australia. Spade engaged a young runner from the firm at which he worked as a partner to housesit for us while we were gone. We had always had an open door policy in our house and at least a dozen friends knew where our hide-a-key was or had keys of their own. The nervous house sitter came home one day to a curious staging of The Three Bears. On the driveway he found the remains of a six pack of Miller beer next to an unfamiliar car. When he entered the house, he found munchie wrappers and crumbs on the kitchen counter where someone had strangely devoured a chocolate bar. Approaching one of the bedrooms with its door shut, the easily agitated house sitter was shocked to find a very large Goldilocks sleeping on the bed. The house sitter tried to rouse the confused Goldilocks who stood six feet three inches tall and wore a crumpled business suit.
In the ensuing testosterone fest of who was allowed to be where, the police were called and in turn called the owners eight time zones away to apparently make some sense of who was entitled to be in our house. Turns out, they were both entitled. It was tempting to say we didn’t know our former law school classmate who lived out of town and decided to sleep off some of his drink before driving home. Ironically, this same friend would later become the District Attorney of an outer lying town. We decided quickly not to mess with anyone back home, as the tensions appeared to be palpable. We cleared the matter up such that no one was arrested and had a fantastic laugh at the expense of our friends over XXXX at the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel brasserie occupying the second floor of our small hotel.