The Shanty
My early recollections of The Lake include the “Shanty”, where we lived while Dad built a permanent house. It must have been sixteen or eighteen feet on each side, framed with some rough insulating siding on the outside and probably “Celotex” type material on the inside walls. It was not much to look at, but there is no doubt that every corner was square and that the whole building was “square with the earth” because that is the way Dad did things. I remember it being one room with a kitchen area in the center, next to the front door (the only door) with beds at either end – two on one end for Todd and me and one on the other for Mom and Dad. There was a curtain across the room between the kitchen and their bed. At six years old, I had no idea what purpose that served, but I didn’t question it. I have nothing but pleasant memories of life in that little shanty. There were so many things to explore and experiment with around The Lake, I had no time to be anything but happy.
It must have been pretty uncomfortable for Mom and Dad living in this little shack and pinching every penny to save enough to eventually finish the Lake House. I remember the wind blowing so hard in the winter that it lifted the linoelium from the floor. With every step across the room, it would collapse back against the floor, only to pop up somewhere else. Dad used to say that to measure the wind in Michigan, they would hang a log chain from the barn loft. A gentle breeze would make the chain swing back and forth, and on a windy day, it would stand straight out. If it snapped links off from the end, that was considered a storm.