Caretaker’s Forecast: Lovely Overall, but Stress Likely

By KRISTIAN CONNOLLY
COOPERSTOWN

One person is an aspiring meteorologist, a recent Cooperstown Central School graduate who loves her hometown lake and is now a third-year college student at SUNY Oneonta. The other person, also a self-professed lake lover, is a bohemian musician and artist who has spent nearly the last eight years traveling around the world before now preparing to settle into his self-described “golden years” in a recently purchased home in central France.

You might wonder what these two people could possibly have in common. The answer: Each was a live-in caretaker of a beloved, and popular, village park on the lake this past summer.

But Emma Panzarella, 21, the caretaker at Three Mile Point, and Jamie Panzer, 65, the caretaker at Fairy Spring Park, came to their lakeside responsibilities in very different ways.

For Panzarella, the connection was born out of service as a lifeguard for the village for a number of summers, and having the suggestion made to her when the Three Mile Point caretaker position became available in the summer of 2023. With her family—her parents and two younger brothers—already nearby, living on the lake during the summers was an ideal way to continue the transition out of her parents’ house and into living on her own. The stipend for the summer, the free housing, and having her own place for being able to spend time with friends after hours made the decision to pursue the caretaker job pretty easy.

Panzer, who grew up in Maryland, had a connection to Cooperstown via a friendship he’d made a number of years ago while living and working in Austin, Texas. Panzer was in France this spring when it was suggested to him by village Zoning Enforcement Officer Chris Deville that he consider caretaking for the summer. For Panzer, with a house-buying process not going to be completed until later in the summer, the idea of a few quiet months on Otsego Lake, with a paycheck and no-cost housing, sounded like a pretty good gig and a way to manage the transition into the major life change he was about to undertake.

Panzarella and Panzer sat down recently, outside of their respective caretaker cottages, to talk about their experience. Among the common themes to arise as the Labor Day holiday and the end of the season approached? The challenges and stress from being “on” seven days a week, and more or less around the clock; appreciation for the lakeside-park setting as a “home” for the summer; animals in the parks; and baseball teams.

Also shared between the two: Each person highly valued the social aspect of managing a local lakeside park.

“I definitely like having the interaction with people every day,” said Panzarella on a busy Sunday afternoon during a busy summer. “I definitely like that the most, talking to people, telling them about the area. I’ve lived here most of my life, I know a lot. So it’s nice to be able to share that with people.”

On a cool, rainy Friday before the holiday weekend, Panzer, who’d never been to Cooperstown before this summer, said, “You quickly learn that the locals know what’s going on, and that you’re pretty much working for, and with, them…There were some compadres, I enjoyed it when they showed up and we’d chat. You get a nice cross-section.”

This summer, Panzarella returned for a second go-round as caretaker, but for the first time taking on the “head caretaker” role.

“I missed it over the winter, and over that time I thought that I really loved being here,” said Panzarella about her decision to return. “And as I am now packing up and moving out for the fall, I definitely feel like I’m missing it already. It’s a lovely place to be over the summer, even though it can be a very, very stressful job.”

Serving as the head caretaker adds more administrative tasks, like managing both parks’ lifeguard staff. And it comes with greater authority and responsibility, which Panzarella was more than happy to be charged with. Plus, as a self-described “chronically clean person,” Panzarella highly values having more control over aspects of the park like its cleanliness.

“Which is probably why I’d come back, too,” said Panzarella with a laugh. “Because [I’d wonder about] who is going to take it over, and that they’re going to ruin everything I did!”

Panzer’s expectations for the summer were decidedly different from Panzarella’s, in that they were not based on past experience but mostly only by what he’d heard from his friend, in addition to going through the village’s application process.

“It’s not exactly what I understood, but you know, I understood that [Fairy Spring] was much more calm, mostly locals, not that many people, and you get the hang of it real easy,” said Panzer, before later adding: “[The application process] establishes a very casual approach to the whole thing, which works perfectly with the regulars who come here, because it’s mostly their park.

“The maintenance and running of the thing has settled into a certain gear, and I guess it functions, you know?” said Panzer. “And [the village is] probably like, ‘Well, it’ll run itself. We’ll just put [the caretaker] in charge and it’ll be fine, we don’t have to really concern ourselves much with it.’”

After referencing the occasional influx of local baseball teams and their families, and then an alleged incident involving a dog at Fairy Spring on July 4, Panzer said things could get decidedly hectic and a little more intense than he’d bargained for, but that it was all good.

“This was supposed to be my ‘Walden’ for the summer, then it started being a little bit like ‘The Shining,’” said a chuckling Panzer, before qualifying his statement with, “But in a good way.”

In considering the question of whether she’ll return for a third summer next year, Panzarella said, “I don’t really know yet. I love it here. I’m definitely really going to miss it again. But I mean, it’s a lot for a job, it’s a lot for one person.”

Panzarella noted that a previous caretaker, Jacob Zaengle, had made the point to the village that the expected hours, and lack of time off, was a great concern for caretakers.

In a job description provided by the village, it’s made clear that caretakers are supposed to be available at all times when the park is open. But they are also responsible for keeping people from using the park when it is closed. Both caretakers noted that having off-hours visitors, both early and late, does take place. Caretaking, then, sounds a lot like a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job. As it is now, caretaking is treated as a 70-hour-per-week (10 hours a day, every day) job on the timecards, and without overtime.

“They’re not very good about [time off for the caretaker], to be honest,” said Panzarella. “This year they did have a seasonal laborer who was able to do one day a week, but they left for college early in August. I assume next year they’ll just continue to improve on that seasonal laborer position, because it didn’t exist the year before, and the [prior head caretaker] kind of called them out and said, ‘Hey, this seems unfair that I have to work seven days a week, seems a little possibly illegal.’”

Panzer reflected: “I thought about the hours [being illegal]…I guess if anybody agrees to the conditions, it’s okay.”

But then he added, “One shouldn’t have to orchestrate [getting time off] oneself. [I was told] that there was a backup person, but he could only work eight hours, so I couldn’t even take a whole 10-hour day off. But again, there were ways around all that stuff. Rainier days or something, [you could get out for a couple of hours]…They should definitely have a six-day week. Even if it’s a cush job, you need a ‘I’m not on today.’ But I got used to it. I did take one day off.”

Village Public Works Superintendent Mitch Hotaling addressed this subject by saying, “The expectations are that the park is open seven days a week. If the caretaker does need days/times off, the village works with them on getting coverage.”

With regard to animals in the parks, Panzarella explained that part of the confusion this summer was that the village had updated its rules in 2023 to allow dogs at Three Mile Point and Fairy Spring, which was a change of long-standing policy. And so the village website said that dogs were allowed, while the signage at both parks continued to say what the signs had said for decades, which was that dogs were not allowed.

Following the July 4 incident, the village went back to the “no dogs” rule at Three Mile Point and Fairy Spring.

“It’s unfortunate, it would be nice to have dogs here, but it does add another layer of complication,” said Panzarella. “Of course, service animals are always allowed anywhere. But I have had some people not happy with [the rule change] this year…There was one [patron] who was straight-up yelling at me about it, and specifically saying ‘this town gets worse and worse every year.’ [I told her that I was sorry], but that I have a job to do.”

Panzer described the dog incident as a lack of communication, literally. Aside from websites and signs not saying the same thing, there were actual communication tools not being utilized, unbeknownst to the caretaker.

“The incident with the dog [down on the beach], I wasn’t aware of it, and then somebody said, ‘Oh, we have walkie-talkies.’ Oh, that’s good, because nobody alerted me. There are walkie-talkies, but the [lifeguards] didn’t use them to get in touch, and a lady had to run up [to tell me what was happening].”

Reached via e-mail on Labor Day, Village of Cooperstown Mayor Ellen Tillapaugh said that to try to accommodate citizens’ requests, the village had changed the long-standing policy so that “dogs could be in either park, with the requirements that the owner had them on a leash and cleaned up after them. Unfortunately, individuals violated those two requirements, and even allowed their dogs to swim off leash in the public swimming area. That (i.e., having dogs swim in a public swimming area) is a clear violation of New York State [Department] of Health regulations, under which the two municipal swim parks are regulated.

“So unfortunately, we had to re-establish (as noted per the village website) that dogs are not allowed in the two swim parks at all.”

Animals aside, Panzarella said the biggest challenges of caretaking were things like you’d expect in a public park—“when you have to deal with people who are drinking and smoking and who don’t want to stop. Those are probably the worst pitfalls of the job.”

But then baseball teams were also something she’s planning to note in her end-of-summer recap for the village.

“Baseball teams, that is always one of the worst parts,” said Panzarella. “When the baseball teams come here, first of all they’re coming with their individual families, so the parking lot is filling up, and it’s like 20 tween-age boys running around the dock and the beach. That’s actually how the dock broke last year, was that there was a baseball team, and they all jumped off at the same time, and the dock collapsed under them.”

When asked to address the subject of baseball teams and their families descending on village parks, Hotaling said, “All are welcome to use the village parks.”

As the season wound to a close, each caretaker was asked to sum up their experience in three words. For Panzarella, “busy, cozy, and friendly” came to mind, while Panzer summed up his summer with “rustic, refuge, and community,” before sneaking in a fourth word: restorative.

And as the two caretakers move off into the next chapters of their lives, it seems like their shared experience as caretakers is where their common story will end.

“No regrets,” said Panzer, whose art and music can be checked out at jamiepanzer.com and jamiepanzerrockandrollcompendium.bandcamp.com, respectively. “I think it actually was exactly what I needed. It’s not something I’d like to do again, just because there’d be little to no novelty [a second time], and I’ll be otherwise engaged anyway. But it worked for when I needed it.”

For Panzarella, there’s more of an openness to the possibility of returning to the familiarity, the people, and the call of lakeside living.

“Now that I’ve been here for two years, I feel like I’ve really established a life here,” said Panzarella.