By Ann Von Debsen, March 14, 2019 — During the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I was a waitress at a family resort in the Poconos. It was called the Hawthorne Inn and the beautiful stone inn was surrounded by cottages, shuttle board courts, a swimming pool, and hiking trails. The summer staff consisted mostly of college students and we led a fairly easy life.
Breakfast was served from 7-9 AM and then we had the morning off until lunch service from 12-2. We were free to use the tennis courts and pool until dinner service from 6-8. Like the movie Dirty Dancing, staff stayed in a series of bunkhouses away from the main cottages and were happy to party once dinner hours were completed, well into the night. This often resulted in a rather hazy and headachy breakfast service, but we always made it through since we could go back to the bunkhouse and sleep until lunchtime.
So it was a fun job, but it did not exactly pay well. We served the same families 3 meals a day for 7 days and the average weekly tip per family was $10.00 – about 50 cents a meal!
But money was to be made if you signed up to serve the golfers breakfast from 5:30-6:30 AM. These mostly male guests were very happy to have a morning off from the family and head to the links. In their joy, they often tipped us $10 each so you could easily make $60 very quickly and still nap before lunch.
The other moneymaker was babysitting for the families you served. This time both the men and women were very happy to be away from the family. In their joy, they paid very well.
Except for a few casual and brief summer romances, we lacked the drama of the Dirty Dancing movie and most definitely lacked the talent of the Dirty Dancing dancers.
There were many other family resorts in the surrounding area, all mostly staffed by college students and we at Hawthorne Inn began to network with them. at night and took turns traveling to different bunkhouses at night to party. Our parties consisted mostly of drinking beer and lots of dancing to songs like, “Do You Love Me?” “Brown Eyed Girl,” “My Girl,” and “Celebrate.”
That said, we had a great summer and said a bittersweet goodbye on Labor Day. About 2 years later, we received invitations to the wedding of one of the couples who had met that summer. We all went and enjoyed the reunion, laughing at the realization that we still could not dance. Slowly, we lost touch with each other, but that summer experience will always be a happy memory.