Steve’s Country Cabin Journal #9.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another page from my journal today. Oh my, I am busy sorting through my collection of insulators, I need to downsize it just a bit. So I have unpacked them all and there are now insulators sitting around everywhere. It’s much easier to sort them when they are all out, so, while I’m doing that, grab some coffee and relax while you’re reading today’s selection…

It was a beautiful summer morning, the sun was shining brightly and it was already nice and warm. Plus there was very little wind, really, quite a perfect day. So dad and I decide to head out and try some fishing at a certain lake we had never tried before. It was aptly named Narrow Lake since it was long and narrow. The first area where we put our boat in was a bit more broad than the rest of the lake however. Off we went slowly going along the shore of the first part, but we never caught a thing, not even a nibble. Now down the narrow section of the lake. Not only was it long and narrow, it was very deep. We kept on fishing but still nothing. The lake followed the railway, or really I guess it was the other way around, so we stopped a couple of times to look for insulators.

It looked more promising for insulators than for fishing and we did find a few very nice insulators, including a nice dark purple one. We, that is dad, decide we need to come back another day and check this area more thoroughly for insulators. At least there won’t be a long walk to get into the place since we can use the boat. But that story is for another time. Things were going quite smoothly really, dad wasn’t having his usual problems. Finally he decides it’s time to stop for coffee. That sounded like a good idea to me, this idea of fishing without fish is kind of fishy. And not too exciting. Dad thought about going back across the lake to the railway tracks for our coffee, but right then I spotted something very odd. We were beside this very steep hill and there was stairs going from the lake to the top of the hill. Very old stairs, certainly not safe to use now. I pointed them out to dad and he was as curious as I was to find out what they were all about. We had to go back a bit to find a spot to climb up this hill.

We brought our coffee with us to have once we got to the top. Once there we walked over to find where the stairs led to, which was easy enough. At the top of the hill it was nice and flat, kind of, and there were the remains of several large dirt foundations. Almost looked like a little townsite was once here. Obviously it wasn’t for the railway since it was on the wrong side of the lake. It could have been an old mining camp, though we couldn’t find any sign of mining activity. Possibly an old logging camp, though again it seemed like an odd spot. A good place to dig for old bottles was my thought. Dad didn’t think much of that thought. Don’t know why. “We don’t have shovels,” he said. “What do you think this is,” as I produced a regular shovel for dad and a small folding shovel for me.

Dad just looked. “Let’s have coffee first,” he suggested. “Fine with me,” I answered. Dad sat on a fallen tree. “You sit over there,” he pointed to the other end of the tree. “But that’s so far away,” I said. “Exactly,” was all dad said. “Toss my thermos,” said dad, which I did and he caught it perfectly. Amazing. Then I tossed his sandwiches. Hmm, they went a bit high. Dad had just turned back toward me and saw the sandwiches coming at him. He actually jumped to catch them, but he did it. “Bonehead!”, he said. “What’s wrong, you caught them,” I called back. “I didn’t say to toss the sandwiches yet,” he said. “I knew you would want them, so why wait?” “They’re squished now,” he said looking at them. “You shouldn’t have grabbed them so hard,” I answered.

Next week we will have the conclusion of our little story, I hope you will join us again at that time. Have a wonderful day and God bless!

©2020 Steve McLeod.