2017 June 4^th

It is a beautiful Sunday in June and I don’t want to write about our national embarrassment. Here is a piece from “A double Dozen and Six” that I published some time ago; it’s all true.

The Cottage

We once bought a beautiful summer cottage on a storied Michigan trout stream. (Virtually all Michigan trout streams are storied.) The purchase included a two-car garage, a large pole barn and its contents, a woodshed, and a bomb shelter. That’s right--- it had a bomb shelter. The previous owner had also owned a construction company and he was apparently made nervous during the cold war, so he added a below ground bomb shelter with concrete walls and layers of railroad ties imbedded in concrete for the roof. Of course, the realtor did not call it a bomb shelter; he called it a root cellar, but there weren’t any roots.

It also came with a green lawn tractor, which had an attached trailer containing a motorized vacuum, and a bin into which the leaves and grass clippings were blown. We had a beautiful expansive lawn with many mature maples and oaks. When we saw the place there was not a leaf on this lawn, they were all on the trees. That would change.

It was such a lovely spot that we decided to make it our year-round home. It wouldn’t need all that much to convert it into a year-round residence; just some insulation in the attic, a furnace, a larger water heater, and a new well. Insulation was totally absent; a huge fireplace supplied heat with an attached blower to send the warm air into other parts of the cottage; there was just a five gallon electric water heater under the sink, so showers had to be very fast and carefully spaced.

We found a handyman who worked with his wife. They showed up in identical t-shirts and set to work laying bats of insulation in the small attic crawl space. As they were taking a break and sitting together with their coffee, the husband told me that his wife wasn’t all that bright but that she was a very hard worker. The wife smiled agreeably at the nice compliment.

 A down-draft furnace was installed where a large closet had been and a substantial water heater found space in the same closet. Three cords of oak firewood were ordered. We discovered that the price did not include stacking; it was just dumped in the yard. Of course it would all have to be split, so a splitting maul was obtained. We were ready for winter. No, we weren’t ready; we just thought we were.

Three weeks after we moved in the beautiful lawn needed attention, so out came the tractor; it was lawn-mowing time. The tractor was not in the mood to cooperate. It would not start, even with the choke carefully set. Perhaps it was flooded; best to wait a bit and then try again. At last it started. Then the motor powering the vacuum on the trailer had to be started. This motor had a hand-pull starter. I pulled, and pulled, and pulled some more. At least there was no possibility of running down the battery, although there was the distinct possibility of a heart attack. I adjusted the choke, caught my breath and tried again. Finally, both motors were running and I started to move around our lawn. The clippings eventually filled the box and I detoured to the woods to empty them. Emptying the box required that I climb inside the box which tilted on its axle and assist things with a pitchfork.

Later in the fall the leaves began to fall. They soon covered the ground to a depth of five inches and it was clear, from the number still on the trees, that many, many, more were yet to drop. It was time to fire up the tractor again. In summer the lawn had to be mowed every two weeks; in late fall the leaves had to be vacuumed twice a week. Soon the trees were bare and winter with its snow was close at hand, but the tractor could not be put away. The leaf vacuum was disconnected from the rear of the tractor and the snow blower was attached to the front. The cabin driveway was two hundred yards down a two-track from the paved road. You plowed your own driveway and the two-track if you cared to access the main road and retrieve your mail, or drive to the grocery store.

We had a neighbor. He was a portly retired factory worker who lived alone about three hundred yards down river from us. He stopped by regularly to say hello and always brought us a little gift. Once it was a pound of butter, another time it was a dozen eggs. He told us that he bought this stuff by the case when it was on sale at a local supermarket and then took it with him when he visited his friends. We always invited him in for coffee and some of my wife’s homemade cookies. He was lonely, so these visits lasted between one and three hours. He had many interesting tales to tell us about other folks who lived along the river, stories about who was unknowingly related to whom.

Winter was finally upon us. The fireplace had a huge one-piece glass door, which, when sealed and when the lower ash door was opened, produced a roaring fire in no time. Of course the glass had to be cleaned daily because of the greasy soot that collected on it. We started the new furnace when we first got up in the morning and it immediately produced floods of hot air at floor level. Naturally, it had a powerful and very noisy fan. This is why most civilized homes have the furnace in the basement and not in a living room closet. Once the fireplace roared to life, we turned on the fan that circulated hot air from the fireplace to the rest of the house. No conversations occurred while both of those fans were on. Certain hand signals are universal.

We had discovered that the walls were not insulated and that the floor was drafty enough so that sheepskin slippers and footstools were a must. We had also moved the bed headboard well back from the exterior wall. It helped to wear a nightcap, although the cold air still rolled down the wall, slipped under the covers and chilled the shoulders. My wife refused to resort to a mummy style sleeping bag. I just wore a sweater and a scarf. We got used to it.

Eventually the isolation outweighed the beauty of the place. It was forty miles to shopping for other than necessities and a ten-mile round trip to the post office for the mail. We will miss sitting on our screened riverside porch and listening to the approaching metallic ring of the aluminum canoes as they come down stream bouncing from bank to bank. The current was swift enough so that they were out of earshot within three minutes, so they were not a nuisance. We lived in that cabin for five years and then sold it to a family who planned to use it only as a summer place. They have several sturdy sons who will have fun with the tractor, the leaf blower, and the splitting maul. We wish them well; we’ve had our fun.