Midwest – from the Old Style Place. Cabin Writing

Everything at The Old Style Place
remains upright, anchored in stubbornness. Its steadfast preachment to tenacity
has denied gravity its victory. This stubbornness was earned by hammer and saw,
shovel and plane, elements of willful ambition. Having endured tornado-force
winds, the yearly push and pull of cold and hot, nearby forest-fires and
electrical wiring that’s older than the oldest goat, somehow it’s still
standing.

It’s also resisted
“updates.” There is no indoor plumbing or bathroom. To leave it all
behind, I walk outside to a small outdoor toilet where I encroach upon the
world of bugs.

Spider webs hang over the
doorframe. On a narrow window sill facing north, dead flies pile up forming a
grizzly pyramid to mortality.

First built in 1945 as a simple
framed hunting cabin, it remains a testament to quality. The two by four framing
boards really are 2 x 4, not the cheap sticks sold now that have been shaved
over time until what we call 2 x 4 is really more like 1 5/8 x 3 5/8.

Here, work finds me and tattoos
its truth upon my bones, and I unmask the lessons to absorb what I need to
learn. I sit at the metal table in the cabin’s main room and I’m reminded of
the hours my brothers and I sat here. We argued and competed. I cheated by
moving game pieces or hiding cards.

For hours,  we challenged one another in Stratego, Clue,
Battleship, Five Straight, Password or Jeopardy. These were not apps, but
cards, boards,  plastic and wood pieces
that we moved by hand. Our games always ended when someone stomped away mad.

When all six family members sat at
this table we needed lots of water, which meant someone had to work the pump
that gave it up only when someone first primed it.

The contract was as clear as the
product: water for work. We always brought a gallon of tap water for priming,
and one person poured water into the top of the pump while another worked the
long metal handle up and down. Then, after a minute of pumping, it yielded and
spewed forth the clean gravel-washed water from 50′ below.

Years later, when standing in front of students, I remembered that red
devil. I learned right-away they were like
that squeaky old pump; they required priming.

I experimented with ways to prime
their minds: encouragements, extra-credit offers, lies, bribes, jokes, promises
of individual work time, affirmations, praises or a story involving police. Nothing worked, yet I kept trying.

My creed was formed at The Old
Style Place, (find something that works) and I built my curriculum with its
marrow. If I want something, I first have to prime the pump. That lesson
has been the true north version of my life’s reality, the unmasked joy of a stubborn lesson from a piddly cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin.