Family History Writing Challenge: Day 6 - Memories of Up North

My biggest challenge the past two days is being to exhausted to sit down and write by the time I actually have time in my day. Yesterday I'll be honest I didn't even think about the fact that I didn't write anything.

Today, I blame the lack of nap on my son's part. I'd have had an hour to write if he'd have slept like he usually does. Oh well... Here I sit, ignoring my poor husband downstairs, trying to get my 250 words done as fast as possible so I can end my day.

When in doubt, write about what you know, right? Well, here goes.

I love thinking back on my family's time up north. Spending summers up north where we didn't have running water or electricity were the best of times for me. I probably enjoyed the fact that we didn't have to shower everyday a little more than I should have, or than I should admit to publicly. My mom referred to our set up as "a step above camping." And she would know, because she grew up camping in a huge tent with her parents and 8 brothers and sisters. With that many kids, it was the only kind of vacation they could afford.

My brother and I had it a little better. We camped the first year after my parents bought the 80, but we didn't use the property all that much. It wasn't long before my parents had contacted a builder and the 24 x 40 pole barn with heavy duty rafters went up. The builder needed sand to level out the area my parents had picked for the barn, so the building of the barn led to "the sand pit" out off of the go-cart loop. That provided hours upon hours of entertainment for my brother, cousins and me over the years.

The barn had to have the heavy duty rafters because the top of the barn would be used as a loft. This is where we slept and played games and constructed puzzles on rainy days. My dad built bunk beds modeled after Mom's Uncle Bob's set-up which she slept on for many years and are still in use at his cabin today, some (I don't even know how long) years later.

Somewhere, my parents found some huge "walls" that we set up as a changing room so people would have some privacy in the large open communal bedroom. I'll never forget the paining those walls. My brother had a friend up with us and when my parents were in the process of painting the walls, one blew over and fell on my brother's friend. We had to take him to urgent care to have his ankle checked out as it was pretty swollen. Luckily, he turned out to be okay.

After a little while, maybe a few years, my dad and Uncle Joe converted the kitchen out of an RV to be suitable for use in the barn. In the bottom of the garage, they walled off the last 16 feet and that served as our kitchen until Mom and Dad bought the place on the lake. We had one light that ran off the car battery if it was parked out back and hooked up. That was the only light aside from flashlights and Coleman lanterns. The tiny RV oven ran off a propane tank (the size you would use for a barbecue grill) and cooked many a Stauffer's lasagna to feed our crowd. The water tank had to be filled regularly from the trash of hose water we brought up from the neighbor's house until my parents finally put in a well after we'd had the place a good fifteen years or so. The shower consisted of a ring with a showerhead mounted on the underside of the stairs. We connected a rubber hose to the "kitchen" sink and that was the water source. Our bathtub, half a blue barrel that normally one might fill with ice to keep a keg of beer cold. Oh, and about now, you’re probably wondering about the toilet part of the bathroom. That was down the trail a bit. An outhouse. Pretty fancy if you ask us, a two-hole-r (take a friend) complete with a moon in the door. I remember pre-building the outhouse at Aunt Louise and Uncle Bob's place. We have some great pictures which Mom now proudly displays in the bathroom at the lake house.

For some unknown reason, the house we lived in downstate when my parents bought the place up north had a wood burning stove in it so that got moved up to the 80 and heats the barn in the winter. There were a few winter nights Dad would over fill the stove and you might be in three layers of clothes when you went to bed, but would undoubtedly be down to a few pieces of clothing as possible because he'd have it over 90 in the middle of the night.

 

Word count: 730. I guess that makes up for not writting anything yesterday.   Total FHWC word count: 2423.