A Note From Ricky

January 20, 2024

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Well, life at the lake has become more interesting since Gus and his pretty missus moved here.  They been coming for years, of course, in the summer months, but took the plunge a couple of years ago to leave the city and live here on Lonesome Lake full-time. 

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They're what I call "early retirees," old enough to know better, and young enough to keep trying.  They bought an old log cabin years back, built about 1950.  It had a propane cook stove, a steel wood stove, a dry sink, a couple of Coleman lanterns and a great view. 

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In the beginning, Gus carried water from the lake by the bucket, and all was good.  They had plans for upgrading and modernizing, but it was mostly talk, and Gus felt that carrying water was good exercise. 

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Gus is a nice fellow.  Give the shirt off his back, so to speak, but just between us, he's barely able to change a spark plug in a lawnmower.  Now, life "off the grid" as they like to call it, requires every man, woman and child to be handy, to know which side of the saw does the cutting, turn clockwise to tighten, and remember that the propane bottle is a left hand thread.  So, you can imagine my jaw sort of dropped when I heard they were planning to spend the winter in their three-season, uninsulated log cabin. 

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Gus began fixing things, best he could in September 2022, and they moved in a few days before Christmas, just in time for a big snow fall and a two day blizzard.  When I dropped by the following week, they were dressed in parkas, indoors. 

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Somehow, they survived. 

 

I better go now.  Time to put another stick in the stove.

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Ricky