Fritz-Raife Cabin

03/04/2016

Minnesota Mert

Her name was probably Myrtle but I wouldn’t call her that if I was you. Mert was unlike anyone we boys had ever known: a Mae West meets Calamity Jane. A s***t-shooting, bear-cussing, loon-eating Minnesota moosegal. She could stare down a bobcat and have him making her “pancakes for breakfast, please”. Except Mert didn’t eat pancakes or say please, she smoked ci******es and drank two-dollar whiskey. Talked with a tone like she’d been sipping drain cleaner, and threw cuss into conversations so naturally you hardly heard it. Which my father, of course, liked, as much as he hated bourgeoisie, bourbon pretense.

Mert blasted things with her shotgun. Not just s***t but varmint: squirrels, songbirds, chipmunks… those little baby ducks with no business paddling round her shore. And I think you might, too, Mr. Suede Shoes, if trapped long brutal winters in chest-high snow not knowing what would hit you next in this shoot or be shot up the nose with ice crystals world. For endless months on end. Today’s Minnesota is a p***y state by comparison.

In the 1960’s, a bunch of city people started coming up mid-summer when it grew to be 80 degrees for a few weeks, and these Merts were shrewder than you think, she knew the game. But us kids were shrewd too, wielding insights that hadn’t yet been redacted out by graciousness. And as such we saw the residues in her jaw: The brutal, five-foot winter snows and two and three feet of ice on the lake until mid May. The goddamn power you foolishly came to rely on out half the time and crazy wind literally tearing your shutters off. And hungry animals prowling the lake all night.

Mert played Mert in summer, but she knew damn well. What was coming. And as early September leapt outstretched claws at winter she said, “yeah, you have at it little’uns,” chuck chuck. When our shined-up city faces squealed, “God, it would be cool to live up here!”

Oh indeed.

11/21/2015

Buck, Dode, Janie, Grandpa

10/12/2015

Car Trouble

HERE TODAY, VANAGON TOMORROW.

There’s a joke: A man walks into a car parts store and says, “I’d like a gas cap for a Volkswagen Vanagon.” The proprietor puts his hand to his chin and c***s his head a minute. Then looks up and says, “That sound’s like a fair trade.”
Cars didn’t like my brother Tom either. To prove it they made him have a Volkswagen Vanagon, one of the more storied jalopies ever put on the road for half a day if you’re lucky. It made for good sport each year guessing when, and if, Tom might ever arrive, and to hear his woe-filled tales was a source of mirth and comfort that might assuage a fishless day or mitigate a broken mast, or toe, or towing charge, or two. The VW Vanagon had some fancy, outside the box (the box that’s labeled “Parts Good Cars are Made Out Of”) features that lured Tommy in.

In Tom’s defense (god I hate this part) we all were genetically cursed with terrible judgment regarding cars. My father had every lemon in the grove, which seems a q***r anomaly considering ‘judgment’ was what he ostensibly was all about — if you believed him.
The problem with the Vanagon though is that none of these exotic bells and whistles worked six months after the loan was signed. It started with little things, the horn stuck on, gooey stuff coming up out the seats... then progressed to window roller-downers, broken-off door handles, rogue windshield wipers and eventually a few years in made it’s way to corroding infrastructure: hubcaps sailing off injuring cows, spark plugs catching fire, and finally the inevitable engine failure: cause unknown.
“...Next up,”

08/12/2015

Michael and Kyle out fishing late.

02/17/2015

http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/interests/cabin-vignettes-11253327?vk=759PD8gn7A

I wrote this for the brothers, for Christmas.

Login to Mixbook, the easiest way to create Photo Books, Photo Albums, and Scrapbooks Online!

11/14/2012

11/01/2012

A classic. CW, Gladys, and Joe and Clara in the old cabin's kitchen.

10/09/2012

06/05/2012

Annie and Janie Craiger in the lake.

06/05/2012

Clara Ghettys in the old cabin -- you can tell by the seamed, beaverboard walls. And, of course, the classic picture up there. As for the pose...wow. this is exactly as it came off the slide, no cropping.