We'd like to encourage you to stick around after cabin country each week and slow down a bit. Pick up some of the small town wisdom of today and yesteryear. With good old loyd. When the Grandpa's day up on the Gall River, long before cozy cabins and year-round lake homes were built, small hunting shacks were the only structures allowed in the lots at the time.
But before work began on building the shack, there were more immediate construction needs. A solid dock in the water for fishing and an outhouse for other necessities of life. Ramps just called it the Crapper. In spite of its name, it was more of a storage shed, which contained an amazing amount of old stuff Ramps had accumulated during his life as an outdoorsful.
And by the time I came around for my first visit as a boy, it seemed as though I'd stepped into a dim and dirty 100-year-old miniature haunted house. It had one small window covered with cobwebs on the north side, which barely let any light through even on the sunny estates. There were old lawnmores and coal and fuel lanterns, fiberglass fishing rods, metal tackle boxes. There were empty shoot-up boxes of mouse poison on the floor and a yellow-brown strip of sticky tape hanging from the ceiling covered with dead flies.
And of course, there was a toilet seat in the front corner near the door. Though I knew the hole underneath was dug to only three or four feet, might as well have been 40 feet down, deep as a mine shaft. And of course it wasn't the drop as much as what you would be landing in if you happened to fall in. My father laughed and shook his head at my overactive imagination, but I never became comfortable using the Crapper.
It was filled with fascinating old stuff, but it was dark and dirty and smelly, lots of bucks. And it probably contributed to many stomach aches I had up there, since I did lay the inevitable as long as I possibly could. As the mosquitoes fly, on a warm and humid, brainer night, unnervous child walks with his flashlight to the Crapper, and a far-loon cries. The door squeaks open and a mouse runs away.
The boy wishes he'd gone much earlier today to the Crapper. Papa, don't you understand? The boy may need a helping hand. Find his own way to the throne and be a man someday.
You want to keep him company, but a young man needs his privacy. And so we simply turn our heads and look the other way, with his tunny turn. And a nervous little boy wants to cover his nose as he lowers his pants and warm wind blows in the Crapper. And his nostrils burn.
As he sits there quiet, he begins to shake. Here's a scary noise and sees dark shapes in the Crapper. Then he jumps in consternation, sees he's not alone. In the light of his flashlight being a big spider crawls out from under the sea.
And a far-loon cries. Though a frightened boy and made his heart skip, the spider sped things up and shone the trip in the Crapper. And the skittles fly. A warm and humid, brainard night.
A nervous child runs with his flashlight from the Crapper. And a far-loon cry. That's a loy. Good old loy.