Dad had cut a lot of good logs with the chain saw. There was beautiful virgin timber, growing on hillsides too steep to harvest. Ideally they would have seasoned all winter, but having the house ready before snow was our goal. We also built first, our outdoor toilet, and last, our sleeping porch. It was going to be a real home.
"I’ve never tried to build a fireplace out of rock, but if I can get to the library I’m sure that I can find the directions. There are plenty of rocks in the creek. Do you fellows think that you can help carry up the cement?" he asked.
I felt my legs getting weak at the thought, how many bags would it take?
After weeks of struggle, that chimney turned out to be a masterpiece and a great family victory. It really "drew," as Dad quoted from his directions.
Mom had been a good sport about camping all summer. She tried not to think of all the nice things that we used to have. She said that she turned a page in her mind and tried to never look back. But one time I found her crying out behind the outhouse.
"Oh, Mom, what's the matter? Are you sick?"
"No, no. Thank you, honey. It's not that."
"But, what is the trouble, Mom? Can you tell me?"
"Well, I’m afraid I might hurt your feelings. It's just that . . . I can't find any good preacher on the radio and . . . we have so much peace and quiet . . . and togetherness. I guess I miss my lady friends."
"That's OK, Mom. Cry on until you feel better. I won't tell anybody, besides, maybe we all feel that way," I confided. "But not Dad. He is in his glory up here!"
She smiled as she wiped her eyes on her sleeves. "I know you are right about that, JG." We shook hands.
At first we boys thought that we couldn't live this kind of life either. It was a new experience for us to clean up after our own meals and to work with Dad. We were rotten from being so spoiled.
Dad was determined to straighten us out. He told a lot of stories while we worked, and he asked hard math problems for us to figure out in our heads.
In his school days he had read the whole Book of Knowledge; he must have memorized every page of that old set, and now he planned to teach it to us! I could see, with Dad as our principal, there weren’t going to be many vacations.
Our household routines took some imagination. Mom sloshed Rooster and Sol up and down in a garbage can full of warm water, using the same water later for mopping the house. She made us bigger boys go around the hill and use the ice cold waterfall we had been so happy to discover.
We had two metal trash cans at the corners of the roof to catch rain water for dishes and bathing. We hauled buckets every day from the spring for drinking and cooking. Sometimes we raced each other; spilling most of our load.
Mom sent us down to the river to do the laundry. We threw the wet clothes on bushes and then played around while they dried. There was no more ironing at our house.
We slept on the foam rubber mattresses; they had been easy to bring up. Dad bought plenty of good rope. He knew we would want a satisfying swing, hanging from a high branch. I spent a lot of my thinking time spinning around on that swing. Also we used tough rope for the pulleys, when we lifted up the logs on homemade tripods.
Our original boy-sized cabin became a good barn, woodshed, and tool house. It had a stall and milking stand to use for the goat after she delivered and her milk came in.
There was plenty of brush to cut and yard to clear, keeping everybody busy. Mom was eager to grow something and she needed lots more sunlight.
Dad used a brown paper bag to draw the plans for the house. When we all decided that we wanted a sleeping loft over the fireplace for our winter bedroom, he added a few more rounds of logs to his plan.
The tin roof was one of his best ideas; it put us to sleep up in our loft when we had a gentle rain. But one night it rained so hard that we all sat up in fright. We could hear large hailstones beating down on us; the noise was awesome. Rooster stuck his head out the window and jerked it in with a yell.
"That stuff could kill a guy!" he screamed.
Scopi put out his hand and gingerly brought in a sample. When we turned on the flashlight, we could hardly believe our eyes. Each hailstone was bigger than an egg.
"Will we freeze to death?" wailed Sol.
We hurt his feelings when we laughed.
"Do you remember how hot we all were this afternoon?" asked Dad gently. "Heat is one of the things that makes this weather. You'll see tomorrow. We will be sweating again like today."
But I could hear Sol mutter under his breath, "If we live till tomorrow."
And he had a point, because the next morning we found lots of dents in our tin roof On the radio we heard about all kinds of disasters; economies were crashing in different nations, major earthquakes were happening every few days, and new viruses were rampant.
We wondered how many new diseases there were going to be. Even back in the ‘90s, we used to hear of drought and starvation in lots of places. It would be a wonder if anybody was left on earth. Maybe some people would be sorry that they teased us about our big family. Maybe the World Health Department would get rid of their new law.
We spent all summer and fall working on the cabin until it was actually done. In good weather we boys spread out on the plank porch, taking turns looking at the sky with the telescope, listening to Mom and Dad as they talked softly in the dark.
One morning I got up early and saw that their bed was empty. Rooster was watching me with his bright eyes.
"Where are Mom and Dad?" I whispered. "It's still almost dark."
"They'll come back soon. Sometimes they go outside and sleep on those moss beds," said Rooster with a yawn.
"How do you know they do? Why do they do that?" I whined.
"They just like to see the stars. They do that lots of times. They don‘t have to ask your permission," he said. That was true, but it made me mad to find out from my little brother that they weren't always there with us.