Remember Whensday - Grandma's cabin on the lake

When I was little kid my family spent many a two week summer vacation at Grandma Bea’s cabin. I marveled at this real log cabin hidden in the woods of northern Wisconsin on a peninsula into Enterprise Lake just out of Elcho (between Antigo and Rhinelander). It always seemed like such a long drive to get there from the southwest suburbs of Chicago.

Grandma Bea was fun. She would sit on the floor with me in the evening in front of the huge stone fireplace building houses of cards from her multiple pinochle decks. She taught me to play jacks. Took me hunting for wild blueberries still covered with dew to put in the morning’s pancakes. I’d help her with the compost/worm box as we watched the hummingbirds at her colorful flower garden. When I’d come out of the lake shivering and shriveled from long play she’d meet me with a towel, and the salt shaker to remove any stray leeches. We’d take the row boat across a small bay to fill the huge metal milk tins she used to store potable water. Sometimes the long driveway would sink into the swamp that separated her land from the main road so the row boat came in handy there also. There was running water piped from the lake and even indoor plumbing that had been added at some point in time. She had a huge wood cook stove that I was baffled by and marveled to watch her whip up a magnificent meal. (I respected this many years later when I tried to bake a cake in a wood stove.) I remember sleeping in the screened porch and listening to the night’s nature sounds that surrounded the cabin on the lake.

Then there was Grandpa Butch. Bea’s second husband retired from working on the railroad. He seemed to fish all day and drink at night before passing out in his bed built in an alcove off the big living room. There were two very small bedrooms and my parents slept in one, the other was Grandma Bea’s. The beds were deep in handmade quilts and blankets and I loved to crawl in with Grandma in the evenings while she read detective magazines with exciting illustrated covers.

When it rained the roof of the old cabin leaked in many places. I would help place pots, pans and bowls under the drips and enjoyed listening to the various musical sounds of plink, plop, pip-pip-pip-pip. Then Grandma would complain to Grandpa about fixing the roof and he would always reply that he couldn’t fix it in the rain.

Sally from The (Mis) Adventures of Karl and Sally has started a new meme where the past is remembered through sharing old family photographs and this is #6. I love the idea and hope you will too. So join the fun by clicking here.