The Cabin


Many of my childhood memories centered around going up the lake to the cabin.  The first trip I can remember was when all 7 of us went up in a very heavy wooden boat with a 3 horse motor on it.  It was a very slow trip up to the top of the lake to the cabin that Dad had built many years before with 3 or 4 other single guys.  Apparently the rule when they built it was that if any of them got married they were out.  I guess that's why I only remember going there once.

Mom and Dad bought the current cabin along with a good sized boat, a larger engine and a boat house for what I remember was $1200.00.  I could be wrong as that was over 60 years ago.  We spent a lot of time every summer up at the cabin, sometimes for a week or two at a time.  I have a lot of good memories from our time there such as building rafts from the logs that were in the area; Brian casting off the rocks; going over to the Cruickshanks River where Dad tried fly fishing; and many days where we went fishing or water skiing.  There are lots of small things that happened that stick in my mind as well.  A mouse ran over Nanny's bed when she was sleeping on the floor -- I think it was the last time she slept on the floor.  It was always a scary trip to the outhouse when we woke up in the middle of the night, but I guess you might have had to go through that as well.  We always took the dogs up to the cabin with us and there were a couple of occasions where they would take off together and not come back for a day or so.

One event that I will always remember and still believe is true is fishing from the dock when everyone was up at the cabin. I just had a little rod with a hook and a worm and was dangling it into the water when 2 big fish (HUGE fish) swam towards my hook.  I panicked and lifted my rod out of the water, as I wouldn't have known what to do if one of them had actually taken the hook. I remember trying to put it back in almost immediately but it was too late by then. I ran up to the cabin and told everyone what happened and nobody believed me.  I was pretty young at the time but I'm still sure that it happened, except the fish have probably tripled in size in my memory by now.

There was a little creek up the logging road a short way from the cabin that Gary and I walked to and we found a trout in it.  It was big enough to catch but we didn't have a rod so we kind of trapped it by putting rocks around it and damming it in. I remember going back later on to see if it was still there and it was but I think we decided it was too small to keep so we let it go.  Funny the things you remember.

We had one very scary trip back from the cabin.  It was mid afternoon when the lake always gets a little choppy but Mom and Dad decided to head back anyway.  The lake got really rough and even though we were in a fairly good sized boat I think all 7 of us got really nervous because it felt like we were going to capsize.  The waves were huge, (once again probably triple the size now in my memories). We were able to make it to shore about halfway back down the lake at Little Italy and waited until evening when it calmed down.

I have lots of other memories about the cabin like getting to take the boat out on my own for the first time, and the time David got mad about something and tried to row to the cabin from the point on his own.  He also made it about halfway to Little Italy.  When Mom and I were just dating she came to the cabin for the first time with Nanny and Papa and decided to go swimming.  She was warned that the water was pretty cold but she just dove in anyways.  She says that she was trying to get back out about a second after she hit the water.

I always remember all of the good times that I had at the cabin but it's a very emotional place for me now because many of the people I think about when I'm there who are no longer with us.  Hopefully, you and the boys and the rest of our family will continue to make new memories there for a long time. 



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