Dave Ball, A Simple, Rustic Charm

The cottage is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, along the Mackinac Straits on a lot in the center of West Moran Bay. Originally a hunting cabin, it spoke to a different era. A time capsule of the 30's, 40's and 50's, exuding a simple, comfortable, rustic charm. It spoke of the North Woods, the living room outfitted with hefty, varnished, rough hewn furniture, topped by comfortable old worn cushions that somehow lasted through the decades.

Three framed black ink etchings of native wildlife were grouped together on one wall. The family legend was that they had been done by an artist friend of our grandfather. The professional quality of the work has made me doubt the veracity of this story. Unfortunately, as is the way with family legends, there is no one alive now who can confirm or deny the story.

A large picture window looked out to the vast, pristine panorama of the Straits of Mackinac. Seemingly ever changing, the cast of characters that came into view included waves, smooth seas, wind, sun, clouds, rain and clearing skies. Some days this cast all made their appearance on the stage before us.

The drama was further enhanced by enormous ore boats traversing the Straits, making their way to and from the northern mines to the iron and steel mills of the Midwest. As the Straits pinched the water passage between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to a mere five miles, the ore boats were in clear view close to shore. One time a boat lost its way and ran aground in front of the cottage, improbably filling the entire bay.

A modest bookshelf in the living room held a dozen or so children's books. I relished reading a few of them every summer. One, about the daring escapes of the magician Harry Houdini, is still fresh in my mind more than sixty years later.

There were two simple adult bedrooms on the main floor and an open attic room where the children slept. Our grandmother was an artist. Typical of the time of her youth, she had painted many pictures of flowers in darker, subdued colors. These adorned the walls of the adult bedrooms.

Each of the bedrooms held an ancient, creaky, noisy, saggy, musty double bed. I couldn't imagine trying to sleep in one of them. The attic, where the children slept, held a handful of firmer single and double beds. To my mind, these were far more comfortable for sleeping, although the heat and musty aroma was unbearable on summer afternoons.

Over the years, there were a few adjustments and improvements made. A small black and white TV was added in the living room but received little use as the reception was so poor. A party line telephone included many of the cottages on the bay. It too received little use, but likely provided a source of entertainment for some of the cottagers listening in on others' phone calls.

The lack of technology found favor with me. I saw the cottage as a retreat from the modern world, a place of connection with family, friends and nature. I still believe such a retreat fosters imagination, creativity and growth.

But lest we fly too high into that realm, let's return to earthier matters. Water was a constant concern. The cottage had a well. This was actually an improvement over some of the cottages, which pumped water straight from the lake. However, the ground was porous and sandy, and another of the family legends was that the water had been tested and found to be unsafe to drink! So we did not consume the water, using it only for other household purposes.

Originally, the cottage had an outhouse, a rough and hideously smelly affair used only when really needed. It was thought to be too close to the well. At some point, an indoor toilet was added with a septic drain field, but this was also thought to be too close to the well.

For drinking, our grandfather had a collection of five gallon plastic water containers. About once a week we would make a field trip to fill the containers at either a state roadside picnic area set on a high bluff overlooking the Straits or at Huyck's, a rundown general store on the way to town. Huyck was one of our grandfather's many friends, so we would stop in to say hi and provide some patronage at the store, be it gas, newspapers, cigars or Vernor's ginger ale.

The cottage also sported "the shop," an outbuilding with a workbench, shelves and storage space, along with an ancient refrigerator. For a boy, the shop was a wonder of masculine history and North Woods lore. Ancient fishing plugs, with rusty treble hooks and faded painted surfaces resembling fish eyes and scales littered the shelves and filled tackle boxes. Dried paint cans, with their lids hammered into place decades ago, lined the shelves, resting on yellowed, faded newspapers, also from bygone times. Old coffee cans contained random assortments of screws, nails, hooks, and washers, with an occasional fishing plug tossed in as well, with no apparent thought given to the potential damage to anyone impulsively reaching into the can. Stacks of newspapers, dated decades earlier and saved for unknown reasons, lay on the concrete floor.

One summer, people riding horses appeared on the beach in front of the cottage. Grandpa quickly became exasperated with this activity and the attendant messes. He went into town and bought spray paint, stencils, wooden posts and flat boards. Soon the property had "No horses allowed" signs at each end of his beach front. The transgressors disappeared, and the signs went into storage in the shop, presumably in anticipation of future equine trespassers. The signs are possibly still resting in the same spot, leaning against the right hand wall of the shop, sixty years later. Such is the nature of the shop.

A battered, corroded Weber charcoal grill stood near the door to the shop. It would be wheeled out onto a small sandy spot next to the shop for summer grilling. When needed, I would carry the grill grate out to the front of the cottage, near the lake, where there was good quality, fine grain sand. I would drop the grate into the sand and hand scrub it with a brush. The congealed grease and sand would clump into a mess, but I could get the grate fairly clean this way, using a lot of "elbow grease." I'd then light the grill, rinse most of the sand and grime off the grate, and then drop it back in to let the heat from the charcoal briquets finish the job.

I have shared these memories because the cottage was, and still is, a constant in my life. Since it is no longer in my immediate family, and hasn't been for a very long time, it now exists more as an idea, a memory bank, a place so little changed over so much time, when everything else has changed. This is what makes the cottage so magical: these shared memories, and a thousand more.

By all outward appearances, the cottage is a typical North Woods retreat, little different from thousands of others scattered across the northern boundaries of our Great Lakes states. But it was our cottage. We had little in the way of family traditions, then and now. We rarely saw our grandparents and cousins on our mother's side, and even less so on our father's side. But we had our time at the cottage. Every summer. We saw our grandparents there. Sometimes we saw our cousins. We saw our neighbor cottagers and occasionally old family friends. We celebrated birthdays and wedding anniversaries, had beach bonfires and informal annual sailing competitions.

For my siblings and me it was, is, and will always be, the best place, where we remember ourselves and each other as we were, as we sometimes wish we still could be. Does the magic of this cottage exist only in my mind and that of my siblings? If so, at least for the three of us, this does not make it any less real.