NEWSLETTER

BY BENJAMIN POPPER
PHOTOS BY ANDY VERNON JONES AND KRISHNA ANDAVOLU



City folk typically build country houses to relax. They fill them with soft colors and soft cushions and nothing to do. They paint theses houses in pastels and go out there on the weekends to "escape" to the good life. "That's all a bunch of horse shit," says Peter Rittmaster, champion boat racer, inventor, and artist. "A house should challenge you, it should excite your guests, and it should provoke you to new experiences." That’s the mission of Maindelay, his sort of anti-country house, located half an hour from the sea coast in Maine.

The small property is stocked like a Hemmingway novel: 27 boats, 3 vintage motorcycles, elephant rifles, African fetish art, antique French flare guns, Helmut Newton nudes, hundreds of knives, and the coup de grace, a 20-foot-wide buffalo skin teepee. “I like the house to be a game,” says Rittmaster. “Guests should pick up and play with whatever calls out to them, and every piece has a story behind it.”

I recruited a bunch of friends to spend the weekend under Rittmaster’s direction: shooting guns, swinging axes, taking drugs, and generally engaging in whatever mischief he cooked up for us. “I’m a bit like Werner Herzog,” Rittmaster modestly declared over lunch Saturday afternoon. It’s a pretty fair description, in that Rittmaster pursues excitement and originality with a despotic, occasionally delusional fervor. Just imagine Herzog as your summer camp director.

Born to wealth and power as the son of one of America’s first corporate raiders, Rittmaster made his own fortune by the time he was 30 by racing and then designing high speed boats. From there his life became a collection of tall tales, most true, all exaggerated. He says he shared a flat with Mick Jagger in London in the 60s, pumped iron with Schwarzenegger while living in Luxemburg, and hauled Joe Cocker out of a pile of his own piss and vomit just so he could hear him sing.

Now, at 68, Rittmaster has been forced to accept that the glory days of his youth are behind him. But he loves to keep young people around to listen to his stories and to carry out whatever new adventures he can dream up. Like Sunday morning, when he explained he would be directing us in a movie, Artillery S’more, and that I would play the part of the target. There was a bag of marshmallows, a muzzle plug of Hershey’s chocolate, three feet of fuse, a graham cracker, a ramrod, a motorcycle helmet, a condom full of gunpowder, and a 25-pound naval cannon. As we loaded the supplies into a canoe Rittmaster grinned from ear to ear. “You realize, of course, that no one on earth has ever done this before.” It’s hard to say if that’s true, but it makes a good story.

Here Krishna demonstrates what I like to call the “Lacoste Lumberjack”: one part footwork, one part hillbilly chopping power. Splitting kindling is invigorating stuff, and the worst you can do is lop off a toe. “It’s one of the basic skills I like my guests to master,” says Rittmaster, “and it makes city folks feel tough to swing an axe.”

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Comments

Anonymous, on Oct 10, 2009 wrote: hemingway is spelled wrong
Anonymous, on Sep 8, 2009 wrote: the cannons are for lobster fishing. everyone knows that.
Anonymous, on Sep 5, 2009 wrote: Its true, pretty much every mainer has a cabin somewhere like this with a cannon in it. its state law
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: take it from a mainer here, that is exactly what maine is like.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: i wish i had an outdoor shower.
	dangerboy, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: comparing yourself to herzog is bold, but he can pull it off
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: if i was up there i would have a panic attack just deciding what drugs i wanted to do.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: 27 boats. more or less one for each day of the month. makes sense
	thedon, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: i wanna make a pilgramage to that house.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: outdoor shower. thats when you know you’ve made it
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: this looks like the best weekend ever. I am so jealous.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: exaggerations or not, hes lived an awesome life.
	boggle_brains, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: if i ever made a fortune, I would want it to be from racing and then designing high speed boats. what a classy gentleman
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: “I have a credibility problem,” says Rittmaster. “I know that. When I was younger it used to bother me if someone didn’t believe me. Now I don’t really care if you believe me, so long as you’re listening.” ^ The best kind of storyteller.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: oh my god.it is my dream house. my dream life actually.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: that’s the gayest wood chop in the history of wood chopping. he probably whimpered when he made contact.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: Any chance he needs a house sitter? Permanently?
	tanger, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: does the shower come with the girls or do you have to bring your own? damn...
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: from the thumbnail i thought that might have been a recreation of the end of ferris beuller’s day off.
Anonymous, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: what the fuck to you do with 27 boats?
	The Host, on Sep 4, 2009 wrote: Look at that form? Hack it up!