A Deer Shack's Origin

 

 

An old Liberty trailer house began a new life as a family deer camp.

    In 1993, after moving our house in from Humboldt, up towards St. Vincent in Kittson County, I sold my trailer home to a family member who wanted it as a family deer camp. It was only four miles away, so we were able to visit it and relive its past glories over the next probably 20 years. By that time, it didn't smell too bad. 

   During its previous days as a semi-vacant tin-covered box, it had served as my artist 'loft' three feet off the ground where, often an easel or two with an unfinished canvas stood in its north light and the odor of oil paint and wet canvas and brushes over-shadowed any unacceptable fragrances. 

   It had been a 24/7 writer's nook where I had written thousands of pages of wild random thought, often in alcohol-induced euphoria--and darkness--and where, in the mid-1980s, thanks to my wife, Jackie Helms, my poetry began to blossom.

   It had also later served as a warm nursery complete with new paint & stenciling on its old panel walls, plus new carpeting in the bedrooms and livingroom, a new couch, and new swivel rocking chair, but retained the old kitchen table and chairs as old friends from my former life. 

   In 1991, although the back door blew in and a tree fell on it denting its aluminum roof, it survived 90 mph straight line winds, I figured, because of the queen-sized waterbed in the back bedroom. Daughter Bonny slept through the storm.

   It had even become home to a TV and its accompanying TV tower that arrived from Frank's TV, in Roseau, on the heels of a blizzard that left ten-inches of snow on our winding snowdrifted farm lane. "What?" I said to the service guy, surprised as hell to see anyone drive in here after a storm like that, "We didn't order this!"

   "It's from, uh ..."'Grampa and Grandma, so Bonny can watch Sesame Street,'" the driver said, reading a note on his clipboard. (Obviously before the Smartphone)

   As a deer camp, it lost its entry but eventually gained a deck out front. Inside, it got an Ashley Woodstove installed in one corner of the livingroom with a woodbox off to one side. Deer heads and antlers adorned its walls, some those adorned in turn by florescent-orange caps and gloves. On its east wall, I installed a collection of old hunting seasons photographs within a large silk-screen frame, that they added to as the years went on. Each year the old Liberty held loads of hunters, family and friends alike, crowded in for eats, drinks, and lively conversation.

It ended its days as a happy, storied place.

 

Somewhere in all our stuff there’s a narrated VHF tape of me cutting the bathroom floor out of it using a chainsaw, replete with the ambiance of blue-tinged exhaust smoke, two-cycle engine noise, and flying wood chips, as the yellowish vanity lights over the sink cast a pallor on the scene as though an end to its storybook era of familial and public service.

   The trailer was indeed an old one. A Liberty model, it had seen its better days. Only 12’ wide and 48 feet long, including the tongue, it was all I needed as a roof over my head, albeit a poor one. I was desperate to live on my farm that I had purchased before getting married. It was the reason I wanted to move to Minnesota. I had been honest about my desire to live there  in the woods, from the start, but eight years into our marriage I learned the desire wasn’t mutual, so we went our separate ways. I moved out, bought the cheapest housing I could afford, and learned to make do as needed.

   Of all of the mobile home’s 540 total square feet, no floor space was more valuable, nor had seen 24/7 usage than that bathroom floor. Throughout its existence, people had relied on it being there for them. Whether as a kneeling platform or footrest, it had faithfully served its human residents with dignity and strength until some previous owner had literally undermined its structural integrity by not correcting a longtime leak in the wax seal below the toilet. 

   It didn’t dawn on me to call a plumber, because in those days, things like that didn’t seem beyond my abilities even though I had absolutely no previous experience in them. Afterall, I had graduated from the Universal Milking School in Albert Lea and was thus elevated to a technician standard, at least in my mind. Trouble shooting problems, changing out check valves, electrical solenoids-- and milk pumps--(the first time, without turning off the correct breaker and not getting electrocuted by some miracle of chance), I thought I could fudge my way through almost anything having to do with home repair or construction. All I needed was the right tools-- and divine intervention.

   And after moving my ‘new’ old home onto the farm in 1982, I had to level it and connect it with new line to the existing septic tank where the old house once sat. It wasn’t a robotic engineering, just home plumbing. It was just figuring out what connected to what with what and how it all worked. Easy peasy.

   And too, another advantage I had was, long before the big box hardware stores opened in Roseau, Lee’s Store in Wannaska had their own helpful hardware guy in the personage of the late Earl Brateng, an individual with Grimstad Township roots. Earl, a Korean War combat veteran, was a no-nonsense kind of guy who helped me on innumerable occasions with my household project questions whether they had to do with electrical wiring, plumbing, or stove pipe configurations.

   I always had confidence that merchandise I purchased from Lee’s Store was correct for what I described to Earl either verbally or from crude hand-drawn illustration. He was the straight-faced go-to guy, who would smile on occasion when prompted, but I’ll bet my ignorance left him laughing more than once.

   However, Bonnie, proprietor Knute Lee’s daughter-in-law, was easily Earl’s alternate in the hardware applications department, but at that time she spent part of her time serving as the postmaster in Wannaska and wasn’t always immediately available. Either way, customers were served by the best hardware minds this side of Skime and Benwood.

    Making connections from a tank and fuel oil furnace, and learning its adjustment and operation was an education too. Fortunately, I worked at Farmer’s Union/Cenex at the time (as had half the population of Roseau). They had a furnace service department manned by an older guy named Howard, who doubled as pickup sprayer driver at the Cenex West Plant. I could ask him questions and he’d always know what I needed. I had to call him one fateful day ...

   Well, to explain it, just know it seemed like a really good idea at the time. The trailer smelled like old worn-out carpet and years of boot-borne filth, so I went on a cleaning rampage one day and ripped all the carpeting up, carrying and dragging it outside onto a huge pile of debris to burn, that included its old drapes and all its old furniture, less two kitchen chairs and the kitchen table. 

   I had to have some place to sit. And what if company came to visit? A kitchen table is always handy for resting elbows and coffee cups on, and maybe even a can of beer or two, so, it would aid in conversation I thought, and was worth saving.

   When the furnace ran, a foul smell came up through the ductwork. I thought  something had possibly died in there or somebody had spilled something in it and never cleaned it out, who knows when. No amount of disinfectant spray or solution helped the situation. So after studying the ductwork layout, and determining it to be simply a straight line from the living room to the kitchen to the first bedroom to the bathroom to the back bedroom, I decided on a method to clean it out that seemed simple enough, at least in theory.

   Finding a brick that would fit through the floor vents once I removed them and in the rectangular ductwork, I wrapped it in a heavy bathroom towel, tied a length of strong clothesline rope  around it and attached a long, small dowel rod on its end for stiffness. Dipping it in a bucket of some grainy high-powered cleaning solution I had concocted, I fished the rope into the duct and pushed it to the next kitchen floor vent where I hooked the dowel rod, and pulled the rope until I felt the weight of the brick. Then I pulled it through the vent toward me, wishing I had thought to put two ropes on it so I could employ a back and forth scrubbing motion.

   Removing the now dirty towel-wrapped brick, I dipped it into a bucket of clean water to rinse it, and then back into the cleaning solution so happy that my idea was working. There I was, building confidence in myself. I thought it was such a tremendously great idea, that I wished that some friend or coworker or even a neighbor would stop by to witness the phenomenon, the details of which I would gladly elaborate, but, alas, I worked on alone, feeling almost selfish in my glee knowing I had solved this problem. Damn, I was good or what?

   Repeating, I snaked-it-down-the-duct from the kitchen toward the first bedroom. I hooked the rod from the first bedroom floor vent and pulled the rope until I felt the resistance of the brick and began pulling the brick through the duct toward me. Now even happier than I was before. I was ecstatic. Joyful even. Wild with success. I laughed hilariously to no one there. I was amazing if only to myself. God, I was good. Yeah, baby!

   I did the rinse, dip, rope, and dowel bit from the first bedroom toward the bathroom where I snagged the dowel rod, now totally euphoric in my role as a budding home maintenance man. Pulling the rope until I felt the brick, I pulled the very soiled, towel-wrapped cleaning brick toward me, through the duct, knowing I had but one more section of ductwork yet to clean from the bathroom to the master bedroom--and had even decided to repeat the cleaning process in the opposite direction with a clean towel and fresh cleaning solution.

   Pulling the rope steadily, I felt the towel resist the otherwise smooth pull. Thinking I may have found the source of the smell, maybe the wedged desiccated body of a dead rat, other mammal, or amphibian, I gave the rope a good strong pull--only to hear the brick fall with a ‘thunk!’ into a hidden lower duct  and prove impossible to retrieve.

   ARGH!!! ARGH!!! ARGH!!! ARGH!!! ARGH!!!

   (Or words to that effect)

   I slapped my forehead repeatedly and gripped my temples tight enough to blur my vision. I covered both my eyes with the palms of my hands, my fingers straight out straining for a lightning strike of rationality in that time of sudden idiocy. What was I thinking?? Oh, for stupid! Now look what I’ve gone and done!! Thank God there was no one there to witness this! I was sick to my stomach. I was just sick sick sick in the head.

   There was no joy in Mudville .....

   Well, there was only one thing to do and that was to call Howard. I was humiliated as I waited for him to answer the phone. I thought I knew what he was going to say after he got done laughing and crying that his gut hurt laughing so hard, but I held onto the remote hope that he had some magic answer to my dilemma, something I didn’t want to hear him saytwo days later,

   “You removed your furnace?? Didn’t you know there was a clean-out port right there, totally accessible from under your trailer, just held in by thumb-screws?? You should’ve called me first! Are you stupid or what?”

   Obviously, I was.

   But Howard was kind. He wasn’t the kind of guy to outwardly make fun of anybody who made an honest mistake--not that he was above smiling broadly and enjoying the fact that it wasn’t his mistake. 

   There was no magic bullet for my problem. Sadly, no hidden access port. So I ended up  shutting off the breaker and disconnecting the wiring, and fuel lines. I had to unbolt the furnace from its cabinet (wouldn’t want it falling out going down the highway, would we? It is a mobile home, afterall.), then remove the furnace from its narrow closet-like space to get at the brick in the duct below it, and that meant wiggling it, little by little, into the just-as-narrow aisle that ran from the kitchen to the back bedroom. (Thankfully the back door enabled me to get around to the other side as needed.)

   Despite my humiliation, I recognized the fact that I learned a lot about something I had been totally ignorant about no differently than anything else I had blundered through before. I learned how to bleed the furnace after I had reassembled it, and later, how to adjust the gap between the electrodes where the spark fired across, so the fuel would burn more efficiently. 

   These things are coming back into realization as I write this, revisiting old memories I haven’t thought about for years.

   On the other hand, those ducts did need cleaning.