The Cabin

I was 14 in 1959 when my grandfather heard about a fishing cabin available on a backwater of the Mississippi river, called Brickhouse Slough. My grandfather, father and mother enjoyed fishing. Grandpa thought he and dad could go together and buy the cabin, neither could afford it alone. It was just a small place built on stilts on army corps of engineering property. It had no real estate value as it was little more than a shack and the land was owned by the army. You could only buy a lease on the property. Those things, plus the fact that the Mississippi flooded those places nearly every single year meant the only value was that it was a place for having a lot of fun.

One of the things I always thought was really entertaining was the families next door had these giant floodlights with long benches under them and on Saturday nights the men would play horseshoes by the shore and the wives would be there to cheer the teams on. Us kids got to watch the proceedings. They were all drinking beer, as they had done all day while they were fishing, but surprisingly they could still pitch those horseshoes very well. It was just a lot of fun for us kids being in what amounted to an outdoor tavern with a lot of grownups having their fun. We kids were free to roam wherever we cared, but there was something great about seeing the adults being free and loose as we were.

Good memories seem to last a lifetime.