Lake Living Doesn't Come Cheap

Charles M. Guthrie

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

September 10, 1960

    PROPERTY, someone has said, is a burden.  I've begun to appreciate the impact of this truth since acquiring a lake cabin in a deal I kept telling myself was folly but which I lacked the will to resist.

   The burden includes both labor and money.  The labor I can take in stride, given sufficient help, but the financial burden is fraught with distressing surprises.

The Guthrie burden continued

   Taxes, insurance, utilities and general upkeep, of course, are inevitable and anyone with his wits about him makes the required allowances.  What I hadn't reckoned with was furnishings.  I assumed that the cabin would provide a haven for surpluses we had at home, that we could clear the basement and attic of castoff crockery and sagging chairs which, through the years, accumulate in spite of you.

Kathy (my wife) bulling into it

   MY WIFE crushed this economy summarily, refusing, as she put it, to equate cabin living with slumming.  "If you think we're going to haul a lot of junk up there you're wrong," she declared.  "The cups will match the saucers, we won't eat off pie tins, look at 1959 calendars or otherwise live like sheepherders."

   In line with her concept of gracious country living, we will have more storage space and working surface in the kitchen.  We have a metal cabinet at home which, since our Kentucky days 30 years ago, has been a basement repository for shoe polish and preserves.  I thought that this, along with a loose-legged table to which I am sentimentally attached, would fill our new need and give the cabin a casual, lived-in look.

   But instead we're going to have a pine breakfast bar which also will divide the kitchen and living room.  This, and a built-in cabinet between the stove and sink, may sink me financially but will give the place some class.

   My brother-in-law and his wife inspected the layout the other day and the former furthered my awareness of things that had to be done that cost money.  "Those two dead oaks will have to come down before they blow over on you," he said.  "And you've got a lot of dead stuff in your other trees that should be cut out.  It won't cost over $400."

Bill and Roger: today's Weber and McMurchie

   I'LL SAY it won't.  The fellow doesn't realize my power of persuasion and my ability to project helplessness.  Bill Weber, an old friend who has a place a couple of cabins west of mine, has helped already and promised further assistance, bless him, and I'm cozying up to Lyle McMurchie, my next-door neighbor. Both these boys have strong backs and tender hearts and know how to install docks.

   And if any pointers are needed concerning the dead oaks, a gal named Helen another lake neighbor, can supply them, Weber tells me.  She might even saw them down herself, he says, while I lounge in a lawn chair.

Kevin, Jean and Tom G.

   AS LONG as such a spirit exists we need not despair for our country's future.  Here is brotherhood in action, a heart-warming power that moves mountains--and trees, too, I trust.

   It is such neighborliness that I need and am counting on.  And those who help will not go unrewarded.  My wife promises to serve coffee and sandwiches.


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