TERRE HAUTE —
One thing that many of us probably have in common is that when we were kids we were given the annual “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” writing assignment on the first day back to school. And, each fall, I imagine, most of us had the same trouble coming up with a few lousy paragraphs.
Since I didn’t go anywhere or do much of anything in my childhood summers, I rarely produced work that, let us say, would have intrigued publishers. But, boy, did I do something this summer. Get out your red grading pens. This may not be on notebook paper, but here’s my report…
I built a cabin this summer. Well, my friends and I built one. Call it a studio; call it an office; call it “cute,” as a few of my buddies’ wives have done, but we started from scratch on June 22, and by the end of August, I had something that I have yearned for and dreamed about for a long time.
I was originally determined to spend this past summer writing a book — a real, write-from-scratch story — a memoir of sorts about growing up in the country amidst a kooky menagerie of relatives and animals and friends. But late last fall, I submitted an application for an Eli Lilly Teacher Creativity Grant, and lo and behold, by winter I was informed that I had won one on my very first try. The grant, a generous sum, would go a long way toward making my own crude floor plan, scratched out on the back of a church bulletin (sorry, Pastor), a reality.
The proposal I sent to the Endowment folks called for me to build a “Cabin in the Woods.” I wanted to use their money — for which I am eternally grateful — and a good-sized chunk of my own change, to drive my family to Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., walk the walk that Henry David Thoreau took, take a long look at his famous “experiment in living,” and then get myself back home to build something just about like the small cabin he had built on property owned by his good pal, Ralph Emerson.
My cabin isn’t actually in the woods. My heart originally told me that it would be located well away from my house and that I would walk a beaten path to its vine-covered door. But when I discovered exactly what the cost would be to run electricity to the building, and the difficulty of getting materials down into my woods (the Creator personally designed my property to train Big-Horned Sheep for life in the Rocky Mountains), I opted instead for a location much closer to my house. After all, I want to be able to get to it in cold, snowy weather without a team of Huskies and an ice pick.
Duplicating Thoreau’s cabin board-for-board never really entered my mind. Although my cabin is within a few inches of having the same measurements as his (10 feet by 15 feet), has a cedar exterior, and a similar pitch to its roof, there is little else in common with the great man’s place. Thoreau hardly had triple-pane windows and a heat pump; I have no fireplace or bed. Instead, my cabin is really a reflection of my wants and needs, and a certain kind of improvisation that led to wall-to-wall bookcases, a small deck, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired entry door, and a floor made of Douglas fir planks that were recycled seats from an old high school gymnasium (one of the cabin’s conversation pieces; a special thanks goes to my Virostko family friends for those).
Before I ever saw any of the grant’s money, I made my way to my big brother for a floor plan. Brother John has never let a lack of actual training keep him from doing things, and he soon produced a more polished design for me. For help with ramrodding construction, I considered no one else but my buddy, Joe Huxford. I mention Joe often in my stories because the man knows tools, never shies away from hard work, and is always willing to lend a hand; we enjoy our time together. Along with his capable assistant, Torre Lynn, a former student of mine who has already forgiven me for my rather rough treatment of his English essays, we laid the cabin out and had most of the posts in the ground in a single day. It was blistering on that first day, but it proved to be just the first in a long succession of cruelly steamy days in a long Sahara-like summer.
My son, Evan, soon joined the crew on days he wasn’t working; it is always nice to have someone on hand who is 6 feet, 5 inches tall and can bench press small automobiles, so making Evan a “material handler” was a perfect fit. Another friend, Joe’s brother-in-law, Dennis Weber, soon came to the job site, too. Dennis is an amalgam of perfectionism and common sense, of mathematical accuracy and creative craftsmanship. Considering myself more a student manager than an actual player, I knew the team needed at least one more all-star to make the roster complete. I called Charlie Wheat, an old school buddy who knows more about electricity than Victor Frankenstein; he wired my building, most often in the hot late hours after his work day was done.
By the time the cedar siding went up, Jared Weber, Dennis’ younger son, entered the picture. Jared, an engineer, runs job sites considerably larger than a cabin, but he says he doesn’t get to wallow in the dirt and sweat enough doing that job, so he got involved with mine. I’m not suggesting that the cheese has slid off Jared’s cracker, but on a few days when the temperature was pushing 100 degrees, he stood on a stepladder in the withering heat and said with upturned arms, “Come on Sun, you can get hotter than this.”
This story couldn’t be complete without mentioning one other assistant, and he was there from the very first day. As I stepped around the east side of my barn in search of a tamping rod on that initial first shift, I came across — or he came across me — a skinny, little striped kitten, who stood at my feet and seemed to announce, “Well, you’re surely going to pick me up.” So, Henry, named in honor of Thoreau, not only joined my work crew, but also joined my family, too. His work mostly involved inspecting our daily progress, then napping on building materials.
Well, my assignment is pretty well done. I’ll admit, it’s incomplete — I can’t fit my whole story in this tiny space. I can’t tell you much about how Dennis built a gorgeous work table out of wormy oak for me (and totally disregarded even a modicum of ladder safety); how Joe cut my trim out of sassafras and didn’t want paid for it in honor of his dad, Herman, who would have given it to me, too; about what an honor it was to work with friends and my son and never have the first cross word; about how beautiful the changing season is through the 5-foot picture window that sits before me right now. I now have, as Gaston Bachelard said, in reference to the best reasons for owning a house, that it, “…shelters day dreaming, protects the dreamer, and allows one to dream in peace.”
His line is perfect, but I think another is just as appropriate. In an early scene in Frank Capra’s “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” Gary Cooper’s Longfellow Deeds stands on the rear platform of a train car and says, “Gosh, I got a lot of friends.”
Now, I have a place in which to dream, and I most certainly have a lot of friends who made it happen.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at http://tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com to learn more about his books. Check out the website soon for more cabin photos.
Mike Lunsford
Lunsford: What I did on my summer vacation
- Mike Lunsford
-
-
A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
-
Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
-
Raw: Aftermath of Deadly Attack in London
Okla. Teens Get Video of Deadly Tornado Overhead
Man Shot While Questioned in Boston Probe
Raw: Kevin Durant Tours Moore After $1M Pledge
9-year-old Tornado Victim Loved Family, Singing
Okla. City Mayor: Up to 13K Homes Hit by Tornado
School Storm Protection Spotty in Tornado Zones
Raw: New Video of Deadly Oklahoma Tornado
Weiner Launches Bid to Become NYC Mayor
Oklahoma Survivors, Heroes Survey Damage
Britain Attack Believed Linked to Radical Islam
Today in History May 22
Raw: Costa Rica Volcano Roars to Life
Paperless Scanner, Vision of the Future
IRS Official Pleads 5th Amendment
Florida FBI Shooting Has Boston Bombing Links
Moore Native Toby Keith Tours Tornado Damage
Raw: Students Clash With Police in Chile
Lawyer: Feds Investigating Susan Powell Case
Raw: Scuffles in London After Hacking Death
AK-47-wielding thug may be the most bumbling crook ever
Trout's cycle a boost for Angels
Kim Kardashian Flaunts Pregnant Bikini Body in Greece
NBA star pledges $1M to help tornado recovery
Shakira's Shocking Talent
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
GRAPHIC: Blood-Soaked Machete Killer Caught on Tape
Elin Nordegren Furious With Lindsey Vonn For Parading Kids in Public
Camera Captures Climber As He Loses Grip And Falls
Helen Mirren Meets with Dying Boy in Queen Elizabeth's Place
Crowd Chants '¡Si, Se Puede!' After Passage of Immigration Bill
DWTS Crowns a Winner
Police Ram House to End Hostage Standoff
Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
Anthony Weiner: I'm running for New York City mayor
Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
VIRAL: Baby makes epic soccer goal
The Hangover Baby All Grown Up
