The cabin

No discussion of my previous homes is complete without some discussion of The Cabin. 

My Dad and Mom purchased some property out on a lonely stretch of Highway P near Owensville.  You know it's rural when the highways are called rural route or highways with letter names!  Even though it was right off the two lane "highway", the property seemed to be deep in the woods.  Initially, there were no structures on the property, and we went there to experience the true definition of camping.  No electricity, no running water, sleeping in tents, cooking over an open fire,  using the outhouse.. The outhouse was down a trail far enough away from the camp site to prevent the aroma from impeding our ability to breathe.  It was initially painted pink so it was dubbed "The pink pagoda".  When the weather removed that color, it was painted yellow and renamed ""the golden throne".  No matter what we called it, it was not a pleasant place to be.  Apart from the fact that it offered some measure of privacy and a way to keep from getting poison ivy in uncomfortable places, it was everything you hate about gas station restrooms only twenty times worse.  No matter how much lime you sprinkled on the contents, you could not eradicate that special sewage smell.  When I was very small, there was a little chamber pot that I could use if I had to go at night, but when I outgrew it, I had to trek down the trail with a flashlight and my sister, if I could convince her she had to go, too! Otherwise, I would risk wetting the bed before I would face the potential critter encounter.

The pink pagoda was only one aspect of having no plumbing. The lack of bathing facilities was also an issue.  Washtubs served as general clean up facilities and for more significant bathing we would journey to the creek.  Their are a zillion little creeks and brooks running through central Missouri.  Creeks are tributaries of the rivers running through Missouri, and I am pretty sure the creeks we frequented were fed by the Gasconade River and the Missouri.  Creeks generally have rocky bottoms, so we always had creek shoes. Flip flops don't really work, because creeks have currents and, depending on how rainy It has been, flip flops could be pulled right off your feet.  So creek shoes were usually last years Keds or knock-off white ladies from K-Mart. 

Besides being our giant bathtub, the creek was a kid's paradise! Favorite past times included catching tadpoles and crawdads.  It was really fun to find a mostly morphed frog with a tale or a tadpole with tiny rudimentary legs. What wasn't so fun was getting the occasional disgusting leech! You learned very quickly to avoid the brushy areas near the shore where they, and the native water snakes hung out.
It was also fun (and is still fun) to look for flat rocks to skip across the water and the American Indian arrow heads made from the flint and quartz rocks along the creek bottom. 

We did not spend too many summers sleeping in tents.  My Dad found four trees in a rough square and used them as the corners for the original cabin. As you can imagine, this was not up to any kind of architectural code, but it beat sleeping out in the open.  We had just enough room for bunk beds for Beth and me and a double bed for my parents.  Although I am flabbergasted by the thought, I'm pretty sure, my brother was part of the camping experience as an infant.  And I am pretty sure this entailed diapers.  Cloth diapers.  With no running water.  My mom needs to be a candidate for sainthood.  Initially, my brother slept in a trough or something, and eventually he slept in the "rafters". The cabin was truly a hooterville, and from the one small bedroom, it eventually got a screened in "kitchen" tacked on to one side, and a small living room with a stone fire place built in some how, on the back .  It actually was kind of cool in a rustic very hick way.  We had an antique icebox and we would get a huge block of ice for it.  It actually kept things refrigerated for a day or so.

Next time, I will tell you more about our days at the old cabin.