StoryCorps: Rebecca Boothman and Jeffrey Parker

Rebecca: My parents had a hotel that was about 5 miles up the road. We moved in the spring and we came back in the fall. Moving twice a year is like getting a new bedroom, twice a year. It was great! To this day in the spring and fall, I get an urge to move a couch or a chair.

My grandparents owned the Ravine House in Randolph Valley and my great aunts owned the Mountain View House on Randolph Hill, and my grandparents owned the Mt. Crescent House initially before my parents took it over. So, our family owned all 3 major hotels in Randolph at one point in time. The summer hotels back then, that was in the steamer trunk days. That was when little old ladies came from the city on a train with all of their belongings in steamer trunks and they stayed the day - they came the day you opened and stayed until the day you closed. It was their summer home. They had the same room every year. They ate pretty much the same things every day.

I started waiting on tables when I was 12 and when I was 17, Dad’s cousin, who had been the pastry chef, called about the week we were to open and said that she couldn’t come that summer because her parents were not well. So, they approached me and asked me if I’d be interested in trying it. I’d always liked to cook; dabbled in it a little bit. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how or what to do, but I’d never done it on any scale like that. So it was by the seat of my pants I said, “Okay, let’s go.”

Jeffrey: And ran with it.

Rebecca: And ran with it.

Rebecca: We had some very interesting people. James Bryant Conant – CIA or something. I can remember Dave Clark was the front desk guy and he came out to the kitchen one day and his eyes were big as saucers; “I just talked to John Dulles. He left a message for James Conant!” And, I mean, he was just so impressed that Washington was calling Randolph and at that time the Mt. Crescent House was the only telephone and that’s how we made our little bit of spending money. We’d get on our bicycles and go deliver telephone messages for 25 cents.

Jeffrey: Now in the early 70’s when your parents had the hotel torn down, what kind of experience was that for you?

Rebecca: I miss it to this day.

Jeffrey: Why did your parents close it? Was it just…

Rebecca: Our clientele were mostly older members of families that had summer cottages and what happens when people get older is that they can’t come anymore or they’re just not there anymore. And so we were losing clientele. That was when hotels were coming in big, campgrounds were coming in big. Big hotels were not a popular thing.

Jeffrey: So, it was just basically a shift in interest from…

Rebecca: Yup.