skelgas

One day while Carl and I were at the cabin, the stove stopped working. It didn't take us too long to figure out that we had run out of gas. We drove into town later that day and went to the gas place. I think it was across the street from the IGA grocery store. We ordered a replacement cylinder of gas, and told them where the cabin was.
They had a showroom area with some gas appliances. There were some water heaters, stoves and clothes driers. One of the more interesting appliances was a gas powered toilet. It was a toilet seat on a metal box, with a metal cabinet behind it, and a vent pipe which would be directed to the outside. I was fascinated by this alternative to the outhouse. Evidently, the device burned the human waste so completely that there would be only a fine sterile ash left when it was done, a few tablespoon's worth per use.
It seemed a little extravagant to me somehow, especially since it was well over a thousand dollars, not counting installation and operating costs. But I guess it was worth it in some situations, where people didn't want an outhouse and didn't have plumbing. There are some places where soil conditions or environmental considerations won't allow for an outhouse, so this would be a workable solution.
The gas was delivered the next day, and the stove was back in business in time for lunch. It looked like they had changed the kind of gas cylinders they used, because the old thin green gas cylinder was replaced by a shorter thicker silver one.
The day after that, we went back into town to buy some supplies for fixing some things and re-roofing part of the cabin. Grandad had promised to reimburse us for any expenses we had, so after we got the supplies, I called grandad and read him the information from the receipts. I told him we had run out of gas, and gotten more, and read off the amount, and the name of gas place on the receipt.
Grandad said, "What? You got the gas there? Damn it, we get our gas from the hardware store!"
I told him I had no idea the hardware store sold gas, we needed gas, so we went to the gas place. He wasn't too pleased, but what was done was done, and he said he'd send us a money order.
It made more sense then, the different kind of gas cylinder. I felt bad for depriving the old guys at the hardware store of some business. Then I wondered what had happened with the old gas cylinders. Maybe the gas place and the hardware store had some kind of agreement to give each other the old gas cylinders when someone switched suppliers, or maybe they just used whatever cylinders they got. I wondered if the hardware store guys would get their empty cylinders back and think that grandad decided not to buy gas from them any more.
When we drove back by the hardware store, I noticed a little SKELGAS sign next to the hardware store sign.

throne room

There was no electricity, telephone or running water at the cabin, but it did have an old red outhouse. Originally, I think the outhouse was about thirty yards from the cabin. On a cold night, or at certain other times, that always seemed a little too far to me. It had a bit of a lean to it, and sometimes the whole thing seemed to shift slightly when one sat down. When I used it, I sometimes got the uneasy feeling that it would be possible for the whole affair to tip over backwards.
Sometimes grandad called it the outhouse, sometimes the crapper and occasionally the throne room. He always seemed proud of its most outstanding feature, the fact that it was a two seater. It was actually a sort of wooden bench with two holes in it. When I was younger, I was a little too private to ever use it at the same time as someone else, but it was nice to be able to choose a hole to sit on. The wood was worn smooth, and it was actually more comfortable than a lot of toilet seats. In the winter, sitting on very cold wood wasn't too comfortable, but as I was to find out later, it seemed to warm up faster than a conventional toilet seat.
The bottom of the outhouse was somewhat open at the back. I'm not sure if it was originally designed to be like that, but it was the state of affairs I remember. This was a problem, because it allowed mosquitos a direct attack vector to a person's most sensitive regions at a most inopportune time. It also allowed for the somewhat irrational (I hoped) fear that some wild animal like a squirrel or weasel might come into the shelter from below, and then somehow take revenge at the insults dropping down from above.
I always tried to remember to bring toilet paper from the shack. There was usually toilet paper in the shack, but usually isn't always good enough. Sometimes the toilet paper left in the shack would be rendered inoperable by dampness from rain or melting snow. It was very discouraging to sit down on the throne, only to realize that although there were three rolls of toilet paper to choose from, all three were rather soggy.
I think it was in the autumn of one year that the cabin was vandalized. The culprits drank all the booze they could find, and smashed every glass in the place, but didn't break a single plate. Or maybe it was the other way around, and they smashed all the plates but not a single glass. They also broke the ancient window panes. Not content to wreak havoc on the inside of the cabin, but evidently content to relieve themselves elsewhere, they did what I had sometimes feared would happen naturally, and pushed the outhouse over backwards. One might hope that they did that while one of their number was using it.
I think one of grandad's friends who used to come up to the shack a lot discovered the damage. He noticed a boot print in the mud and recognized the brand of boot as a relatively expensive and not very common brand. Later when he was in town, he saw a group of teenagers, one of whom was wearing this brand of boot. He confronted the lad, and I'm not sure of the details, but somehow ended up getting a confession, and the guilty youths were apprehended. I don't recall exactly what happened, but some or all of the perpetrators were from out of state, and got off fairly easy, either by doing some kind of pretrial diversion program or just posting bail and leaving the state.
The cabin was repaired, and restocked with glasses, or plates, whichever had been broken. The outhouse was moved to about half its original distance from the cabin. A new hole was dug, and a concrete floor was poured. In some ways this was an improvement, especially with regard to distance as considered on a windy winter night, and the fact that it wasn't open in the back. But its most endearing feature was lost. It was recreated as a single seater. If I remember correctly, a cinder block platform was constructed on the concrete floor, and plywood bolted on top of that, with an ordinary toilet seat bolted to the plywood. It had lost a little of its charm, and that toilet seat did seem colder in the winter, but it remained quite functional.

no parking

A lot of times on the way back to grandad's house after deer hunting at the shack, I would see cars heading back south with a deer strapped to the roof or across the trunk or even the hood. We always brought some extra rope or clothes line to tie a deer to the roof if one of us got one, but the only thing we ever came back with strapped to the roof was Christmas trees. That was usually the last major task we did before leaving the shack. Sometimes grandad would have already seen the candidate tree and remembered where it was, and we'd go right to it. Other times we'd slowly drive along the logging roads looking for a nice tree in relatively easy reach. Often we would get two trees, one for grandad and Carolyn, and one for uncle Bill and aunt JoAn, or someone else who needed a tree.
It was amusing to me to be going out for deer and coming back with trees. If someone asked, "Did you get anything?"
I might reply, "Yes, we got two." Then pause for a moment and add, "Christmas trees."
The last time I went up deer hunting with grandad, he was getting pretty old, and his driving didn't seem as good as it had previously. One thing that he did, which concerned me a little bit, was speed up any time someone tried to pass. We were on a divided highway, so it didn't really seem too dangerous, but I could tell that some of the other drivers got annoyed.
Someone would come up behind us, going a little faster than we were, and change lanes to pass, and as they came up next to us, grandad would accelerate, and unless they really sped up a lot, we'd go zooming ahead of them, only to have the same thing happen a little while later. I couldn't figure out why he was doing that. I thought maybe it was his competitive spirit, but it seemed kind of petty and a little strange. I thought if he did the same thing on a two lane road in a passing zone, it could be pretty dangerous.
I finally asked him why he kept speeding up when people tried to pass. He asked me what I was talking about. He was completely unaware that he was doing it. Maybe subconsciously when he saw a car approaching in the rear view mirror, he thought he must be going to slow and hit the accelerator. The next time someone passed, he started speeding up, and I said, "See, that guy's trying to pass, and you just sped up."
He said, "Oh," and kind of chuckled, and slowed down to let them get by. I volunteered to drive as much as possible on the rest of that trip.
It reminded me of another trip up to the shack when we got stuck behind a car which was going the same speed as a big truck in the next lane, blocking all traffic from passing. We were in a line of cars behind this guy for maybe ten minutes. I think the truck driver must have eventually noticed, because the truck slowed down until the traffic blocker had to pass him. A stream of annoyed drivers flooded past the offending car, shooting angry glances at its driver. We were no different, and we saw that it was an old man with a head of fluffy white hair. Grandad looked over at him and said derisively, "Wispy haired old fart."
I laughed and looked over at grandad, who had his wispy white hair stowed under a Sherlock Holmes style cap.
Another time when grandad was driving, on the way back, we had our trees on the top of the car, and we stopped at a truck stop for gas. I filled up the car, and paid the attendant, and got back into the car. Grandad said he wanted to go for a pee and a cup of coffee, so he drove us over to the restaurant and store part of the truck stop and parked the car out in front. We got out and went into the bathroom. I had to pee too, so we went into the bathroom at the same time. As he was finishing at the urinal, he said, "Ah, it feels good to be empty."
I had never really thought of it that way. I had always thought of having to pee, then afterwards not having to. I said, "Yeah, it does."
We went out to the store and grandad bought a cup of truck stop coffee while I headed back out to the car. On the way out to the car, I noticed how large the parking lot of the truck stop was. I also noticed that there was a single "NO PARKING" sign painted on the huge parking lot, and that grandad had parked right next to that sign. I went to the car, got my camera, and took a picture.

drive

It was almost exactly three hundred miles from grandad's house to the cabin. Driving up there could take anywhere from five to eight hours, depending on traffic, weather and the inclination of the driver. For many of the years I went up to the cabin with grandad, he had an AMC Eagle station wagon. It had four wheel drive which could be turned on and off. That four wheel drive turned out to be essential at times, especially on snow covered logging roads. One of the times I went up during deer season, I had just gotten my learner's permit and was always itching for a chance to drive.
I had a few chances to drive once we got past Milwaukee, and I thought I was doing pretty well. Grandad drove again for a while again, then we stopped for gas. I had asked him if I could drive again after we got gas, and he had said yes. I started to regret my request a little bit when it started snowing heavily. I told him I had never driven in snow before, and asked if he thought it was okay. He said we could turn the four wheel drive on, drive slowly, and it would be fine. He turned the four wheel drive on, which involved pressing a button or something, then driving slowly forward, then doing something else, and driving slowly backward, or something like that. We switched seats, and I pulled out of the gas station parking lot into my first snow storm driving experience.
I was pretty tense, and I was constantly adjusting my speed, and turning the windshield wipers from fast to slow and back, depending on the amount of snow. The road was getting covered with snow, and as we drove north, the snow seemed to be coming down faster and thicker. It had gotten dark, so I was frequently switching the headlights from low beam to high, for oncoming traffic, and also because sometimes when the snow was falling heavily, the high beams would reflect back and make it more difficult to see.
We were getting closer to the cabin, so more and more, I was driving on smaller roads which hadn't been plowed, and had little if any traffic. At one point, we were on a road which no one had driven on since it had started snowing. Fortunately, the road was straight for miles, but I could barely tell where it was. There was about twenty yards of flat white field on either side of the road, then trees. I tried to stay in the middle of the road based on the slight slope down on either side, and little poles with reflective markers which were on the side of the road every few hundred yards. Sometimes it would look as if I was driving straight toward the poles, so I might have been driving off the edge of the road surface.
For an inexperienced driver, it was nerve wracking to try to keep adjusting the headlights, the windshield wipers and the speed, all while trying to guess where the road was. It was only later when I would drive in similar conditions with a non-four wheel drive car that I came to realize how good it was to have the four wheel drive. Instead of sliding all over the road, or off the road, as happened during a later snowstorm in my own car, the Eagle barely slid at all. When we finally got to the cabin, I suddenly became aware of how physically drained I was. My hands, shoulders and neck were tired and sore from gripping the steering wheel and craning forward to try to get a better view out the snow covered windshield. I was wiped out, but I was glad that we made it, and a little bit proud that grandad had trusted me enough to drive with all that snow.
Another time while driving up to the cabin, we stopped at a little cheese shop in some small town. I was trying to rearrange some things in the back of the car so I could recline my seat some more, so I didn't go in. After a few minutes, grandad came out with a little package and said, "I got a nice cheddar that just had its fourth birthday."
We weren't five miles away from there before grandad suggested we try out that cheese. I undid my seat belt and had to half crawl to the back of the car to find the crackers we had packed in a box of food supplies and a knife. I think about half of that four year old cheddar was gone before we ever got to the cabin.
When grandad was driving on the highway, sometimes he would have one hand on the steering wheel, and the other arm would be against his side, sort of resting on his belly, with the free hand sort of hanging in the air. It always made me think of a gesture some people make when they're about to explain something, or start talking about something, so he perpetually looked like he was about to say something. On a long stretch of highway, he might remain in exactly the same position for half an hour without moving, except for slight steering wheel adjustments. Sometimes I'd look over at him and it would look like he might have fallen asleep, except for the fact that he kept the car in the lane, and would occasionally clear his throat, which made it seem even more like he was about to say something.
Once, while he had his right hand on the steering wheel, and his left hand was hanging in the air partially upturned in faux gesture, he had a little coughing fit. With the last big cough, a little white glob of phlegm flew out of his mouth and landed on top of his right hand. For some reason, I didn't say anything about it. I thought maybe he would notice eventually, but if he did, he didn't do anything about it. It seemed like an inconsequential thing, but it also seemed pretty disgusting. I thought maybe he would eventually wipe his hand on his jacket or something, but then I thought maybe he would reach over to the glove box to get a map or something, and accidentally wipe it on me. I kept my eye on his hand, ready to take evasive action if necessary.
We started talking about something, and I kind of forgot about the phlegm. He asked me for the bag of pretzels we had been eating earlier, which was on the passenger side floor. As I reached for the bag, I suddenly remembered the glob of phlegm on his hand. At the same time, he was shifting around in his seat and had switched hands, so the left hand was now on the steering wheel, and the right hand was floating in the air, waiting for the bag of pretzels to appear. I looked at his hand, and the phlegm was gone. I wondered if it had dried and flaked off, or if he had brushed it off against something after I had forgotten about it. I looked around and didn't see anything, but I got this feeling that everything around me might be contaminated. At any rate, as I handed him the pretzels, I decided that I wouldn't have any more of that particular bag of pretzels.

jar

When going to the cabin, it was always a good idea to bring food along, or stop in town on the way in, and stock up. There was usually some food in the kitchen, but it was hard to tell how good any of it was. The canned food was questionable because it had usually been frozen in the winter and thawed in spring. Any boxes of cereal or pancake mix might have a little hole in the bottom where mice had gnawed through, and there might even be a mouse nest inside. There's nothing like pouring out some corn flakes, and instead of a little toy surprise in the pack, some shredded paper, mouse droppings and an old dried mouse skeleton.
You could usually count on sugar though. There was a large jar of sugar with a lid. Grandad said there might be pre-war sugar in that jar, since people would just kept adding sugar over the years. I told my dad about that, and he said he cleaned the jar out one time in the fifties, so it was all post-war sugar.
When grandad, uncle Bill, Ross and I went up to the cabin in the early eighties, we stopped at the IGA grocery store in Phillips and bought food for a few days. We had a cooler, but the ice wouldn't last indefinitely, and the gas refrigerator hadn't worked in years, so we got mostly things which didn't have to be refrigerated. A staple lunch item that doesn't need to be refrigerated is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There might have been half a jar of peanut butter and/or jelly at the shack, or maybe even two half jars, but even if there was, it might have been rancid, or otherwise undesirable. Grandad bought, among other things, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly and a loaf of bread.
We got some ice for the cooler, and I think it was the first time I had seen block ice for sale. I was used to seeing only crushed ice or cubes in bags, but crushed ice melts a lot faster than a large block. We got a couple blocks of ice for the cooler, which didn't leave too much room for food, but it lasted a lot longer.
When it was time for lunch back at the shack, grandad called my brother and me in and told us to get the bread, peanut butter and jelly and bring it out to the table. We made ourselves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ate them, then he sat down and made himself a sandwich.
I went and sat down on my bunk to try to organize some of the things I had gotten out of my duffel bag. A few minutes later I heard a clinking sound from the direction of the table, like metal on glass, but I didn't really think anything of it. The sound continued for a little while, and I wondered what it was. I looked over at the table to see grandad using a spoon to scrape the last of the jelly out of the jelly jar. I wondered how the hell he had used up all the rest of the jelly and looked to see if he was making another sandwich, but he wasn't and as he put the last spoonful of jelly into his mouth, I realized he had just eaten the remaining jelly a spoonful at a time.

well sure

When my brother and I visited grandad and Carolyn in Racine in the summer, one of the things we did a lot of was work in the garden. Grandad liked to take advantage of our visits to get as much "stoop work" done as possible. We did weeding, some planting, digging and turning over dirt, spreading fertilizer, watering, harvesting if anything was ready and more weeding. We both favored the digging and turning of earth because anything with a shovel had an element of fun for us. Sometimes we argued about who would get to do the digging, and who would have to do the weeding.
The soil in the garden was dark, rich and fertile. I was surprised when grandad told me that when he first started the garden, the soil was very sandy, almost completely sand. Lake Michigan was just across the road and past another row of houses, and sandy soil was common in areas near the lake. Decades of gardening had added organic matter, fertilizer and compost until the soil had become the gardener's delight it was when we were pulling weeds from it.
Grandad always had a little trough dug from one end of the garden to the other. He would dump any organic kitchen waste in the trough then dig a shovel or two full of dirt from the wall of the trough to cover the organic waste. The next batch of kitchen waste would be placed a little further down the trough, then covered. In this way, the trough would slowly advance along the length of the garden, distributing organic matter throughout. He also liked to burn the paper trash in the corner of the garden, and distribute the ashes judiciously amongst the plants that liked a more alkaline soil.
There were raspberry and blackberry bushes at one end of the garden, and an asparagus patch at the other. He grew peas, lettuce, various greens, beans, corn, herbs, cabbage, green peppers and many other things I cannot remember at the present time. He told me he got some tobacco seeds one time and tried to grow them, but I don't recall whether he had any success.
There were apple and a few other fruit trees in the yard. The apples were usually on the small and bitter side. At some point he got a little cider press for them, so they wouldn't just be enjoyed by the local wildlife.
Grandad really loved working in the garden, and would stay in the garden for hours if not called away by some other obligation. Once when I visited, maybe fifteen years ago, grandad was out in the garden weeding in the morning. I went out to talk to him, and ended up doing some weeding too. I took a break and went back in the house to get my camera. I took a picture of him working in the garden, then Carolyn came out of the kitchen and said, "Come on in, the kringle and coffee is ready."
Kringle is one of the things we always looked forward to when we visited Racine. Danish kringle is a very delicious flaky pastry that's made in a large ring with icing on top. My favorite kind was raspberry. Sometimes during the holidays, grandad and Carolyn would send us some kringle. It was never quite as good when it wasn't fresh, but it was a wonderful rare treat that always reminded us of a visit to Wisconsin. There would usually be two or more kringles, one of which always seemed to be pecan. I didn't like pecan very much, and I think my mother was the only person who really liked it as much as a berry kringle, so we would often argue about portion sizes of the non-pecan kringle to make sure everyone got their fair share.
Grandad finished up in the garden, and we walked across the yard to the house and went into the kitchen. We sat down at the kitchen table and Carolyn put down some slices of kringle on plates and poured us each a cup of coffee. I looked over at grandad and noticed that his hands were caked with dirt from the garden. It had started to dry and flake off, so as he grabbed his slice of kringle and took a bite, little chunks of dried dirt fell off onto his plate, and onto his shirt. He set the kringle down on the plate, which now had more dirt crumbs than kringle crumbs. He picked up the cup of coffee and took a sip, leaving another trail of dirt crumbs on the table and his shirt.
Carolyn had just finished pouring herself a cup of coffee at the counter and putting the coffee pot back in the coffee maker. She picked up her cup of coffee and turned around, and saw grandad taking another bite of his kringle with his dirt caked hands. She seemed a little bit embarrassed and exclaimed, "Dick! Your hands are dirty!"
Grandad paused, looked down at his hands, saw that they were indeed dirty, and said, "Well sure," and continued eating.

split pea and ham

After Paul, Jörg and I returned from our slightly misadventurous boat trip up to and over the beaver dam and back, during which light springtime rain turned to light springtime snow, it took us some time around the wood stove to warm up and dry off. Having satisfied our need for shelter and warmth, we realized our need for food was becoming paramount.
I went into the kitchen and scanned the cans on the shelf. Some cans looked very old and in not very good condition, while others looked reasonably intact. I threw away a few old cans which actually had holes rusted in them, and a few that appeared to be bulging. It seems likely that they had all been through at least one winter, during which they might have frozen and thawed multiple times. A large can of split pea and ham soup caught my eye. Judging by its condition, it couldn't have been more than two years old. I opened the soup, and it smelled and looked rather edible, at least as edible as a can of condensed split pea and ham soup ever does.
For a later meal, I opened a can of green beans that was a little more suspect. The can seemed intact, but it looked like the can was not quite as full as it should have been. I should've taken that as a sign that maybe those green beans had been through a few too many freeze-thaw cycles, but I figured maybe it just wasn't filled completely at the cannery. They looked okay to me, but it was starting to get dark by then, so I couldn't really tell too much in the low light. I heated them up, served them, and I told Jörg and Paul that maybe those beans were a bit suspect. We cautiously tasted them, and decided not to eat them, since they tasted somewhat like soggy cardboard. I brought them closer to the lantern, and saw that they looked like soggy cardboard too.
But back to the soup. I emptied the can into a pot and added some lake water. I lit a burner on the stove and started heating the pot. As it was warming up, it started to smell pretty good.
I looked around on the shelves some more, and behind some cans and empty jars, there was a very old looking box of Celestial Seasonings tea. It looked like it had gotten damp once or twice, and the cardboard was starting to deteriorate. I looked over the label and saw a copyright notice for 1974. I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean it was that old, but I think that's about when our family came up to the shack when my brother and I were very young. My mother was kind of into health food back then, so it seemed plausible that she would have brought some Celestial Seasonings tea on that trip. I opened the box, and the inner wax paper bag seemed intact, and whoever had used it last had folded it over competently, so I thought maybe the tea bags were still good. I filled another pot with water and set it on the stove to boil.
There was an old ceramic teapot in the kitchen, which looked like it hadn't been used in quite a few years. I cleaned it up, warmed it with some of the heated water, and put about five ancient Red Zinger tea bags in it. I felt a little strange about actually using these historic tea bags. I imagined how an archeologist might feel, after finding an unbroken ancient ceramic pot, then deciding to try to cook her dinner in it. But it was hardly a museum quality find, and some hot tea would be nice on that cold day.
We had brought some bread and butter, so I put that out on the table, and some bowls for the soup and cups for the tea. The water came to a boil, and the soup was just starting to boil, so I turned the burners off and poured the water into the teapot.
Paul, Jörg and I sat around the table and had hot split pea and ham soup of unknown age, and hot Red Zinger tea from the seventies. Along with slices of buttered bread, it seemed like a meal fit for royalty. The soup was delicious and warming, and the tea, which still had its zing after all those years, warmed us to the depths that were still chilly from our cold wet boat ride. It was with great contentment that I mopped up the last of the soup in my bowl with the last bite of a slice of bread, and swallowed the last sip of Red Zinger tea to wash it down, while looking out the window at the falling springtime snow.