A sad caveat to my usual statement that I have three brothers is now amended: I have two living brothers.
Growing up, the sons of Dean and Dorothy Ormson were a terror to one another and their North Menomonie neighborhood. When people saw us coming, they hid the breakables.
Later in life, as our parents clamped down on us and attempted to control the high energy of four teens, they were no longer just Dean and Dorothy Ormson, but D and D, the masters of Dungeons and Dragons. They were good parents and used all the spells and tricks at their disposal to corral the four horsemen; most of the time, they got the upper hand.
I’m not sure if it was their deliberate strategy, but when my brothers were still in high school, D and D bought a small cabin on a remote lake in Northern Wisconsin. It was a place away from trouble and nervous neighbors.
The cabin had a name, “The Old Style Place,” and its logo was nailed to the shingle siding on an outfacing wall. But to us, it was always just ‘the cabin.’ “Watch out for the bear,” D and D said. It was another clever trick.
Many stories were started, told, and retold at the cabin, often lubricated by an ‘Old Style’ kind of leisure. These stories created and cemented an identity and loyalty among the Ormson boys that was unbreakable, even when strained by time and distance, death, illness, and accident.
It’s the happy times that keep us all going, and the cabin was a place where the howling crescendo and full-bodied belly laughter – louder than a train – signaled that story had been sufficiently told .… read more...