Auntie Mae’s Various Ramblings on Life in a Small Town

Ida Mae Nowes

Nubbins Special Correspondent 

Face it: January is not a fun month. Most of us just trudge through it, enduring the long nights and dreary weather, dreaming of spring. 

But January’s misery makes it the perfect month for a friends’ get-away, which is exactly what I and the other members of my Walkie-Talkies group decided to do.

It started with Pepper, a member of our group of six ladies who walk together every week. Pepper’s husband got a drastic cut in pay at his job last fall, which means she’s been working more and enjoying life less. The rest of us thought she needed pampering, so we treated her to a weekend away at a spa resort located about two hours from Nubbins.

Now, I know what you’re picturing: Grecian columns surrounding an indoor pool with a waterfall and people wearing plush white robes and eye cucumbers. Well, just put that out of your mind right now. I’m talking about a spa resort for normal people – namely, Harriet’s Hot Springs Heavenly Haven.

Harriet’s Haven has been around since the late 1800s when somebody decided to take advantage of the local lore claiming the naturally warm water had miracle healing properties. Of course the first “resort” wasn’t called Harriet’s Haven, and over the years it’s had many incarnations. The latest – started by Harriet Hornbuckle of the Missouri Hornbuckles – has been around since the 1950s, though it’s now run by Harriet’s granddaughter, Honeysuckle. (Yes, that’s her real name.)

Here’s how it works at Harriet’s Haven: Most people stay in the “lodge,” which is really more like a clapboard motel with a café. Groups can rent cabins that include two or three bedrooms with bunk beds, a small gathering room, and a little kitchen. That’s what we did. 

We brought snacks and breakfast food, but ate our dinners in the café. I’m sorry to report there was no seaweed risotto or lemon-raspberry water on the menu, but plenty of good, homestyle dishes made by Honeysuckle. I recommend the vegetable soup followed by the mile-high lemon meringue pie.

For fun, there are games in the lodge common room and hiking along the river. And like any self-respecting resort, it is possible to get a massage at Harriet’s. These are performed out behind the lodge in the massage trailer, either by Honeysuckle’s husband, Clyde, or an older Hungarian woman named Hilde. 

The highlight of course is the hot springs. There are eight outdoor hot tubs at Harriet’s, each surrounded by a wooden fence. Groups must reserve their hot tub for a particular time. Before each group enters a hot tub, it’s drained and cleaned, and refilled with water from the springs, which is naturally toasty at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Our group took advantage of all these wonderful amenities. Though it was cold out, we took some short hikes along the river. We are the Walkie-Talkies, after all. We also decided to splurge on massages. Of course I planned to chip in on the hour-long massage we were buying for Pepper, but I hadn’t thought of getting one for myself. But when I saw how my friends were transformed into relaxed, happy noodles after their massages, I decided to go ahead. I confess, I was hoping for Clyde, who is tall and has a tattoo of a dragon curling up his muscular arm. (Okay, I’m human.) But instead I got Hilde who is just as muscular but only 5-foot-1 and wears a braided bun over each ear. Let’s just say she was very capable at kneading the kinks out of my back.

We made our reservation for the hot tub for 3:00 on Saturday afternoon. We bundled up as we left our warm cabin and headed for the outdoor hot tub. As we entered the fenced-in area we saw the tub filled with glittering water and billows of steam rising above it. It looked very inviting, but before we could enjoy it, we all had to strip down to our birthday suits and crawl in.

Of course I’m not going to describe this to you – who do you think I am? I’m sure you’re already using your imagination anyway. Let me just affirm the fact that nothing is more interesting and hilarious and beautiful than six old(ish) women of varying sizes and shapes, disrobing in frigid weather and helping each other climb into a hot tub. Nor is there anything more fun for the participants involved.

The hour in that hot tub started with the oohs and ahhs that come from relaxing in such luxurious warmth in the middle of January but moved quickly into laughter and a bit of hooping and hollering. We compared scars and hospitalization stories, told some slightly off-color jokes, sang a song or two, and even shed a few tears. When Clyde knocked on the fence door and said our time was up, we giggled like the girls we were.

“You ladies are having an awful lot of fun in there,” he laughed, which only made us giggle more.

As we were drying ourselves off and bundling up for the walk back to the cabin, Pepper thanked us again for taking her on the weekend.

“I feel a million times better!” she said, smiling for what seemed like the first time in weeks. 

“Must be those heavenly healing waters,” Roberta said. Or maybe it just takes any old tub full of hot water and the right friends to share it with.