One April evening many years ago, I was sitting alone at a corner table at the Lakewood Café & Hotel in the northwestern Wisconsin town of Winter (current population: 331). At the time I was an English teacher at Chicago Vocational High School and had been using my spring break to start building a cabin on Blue Gill Lake, 12 miles north of town.
Hungry after cutting trees from a lakeside property, I ordered the Thursday night special of beef and gravy, mashed potatoes and red garden beets to be washed down with a chilled bottle of Leinenkugel Red Ale, but when I reached for my fork, I couldn’t lift my arms.
panic.
I tried to remember if the pain was in my right or left arm (usually it’s my left), but I was only 37. Maybe my arm was just numb.
So I awkwardly used my left arm to pick up my fork and eat, fearing something serious was going on.
By the end of the meal, perhaps because I had eaten, or perhaps because I had rested my elbows on the table, with a concentrated effort I was able to lift my numb arms and return to my rented room upstairs.
My arms remained stiff, and I kept opening and closing my hands to try to loosen them. But I found out I was basically OK the next day when a truck driver from Winter Lumber told me I had Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS), a common medical condition that can cause limbs to become paralyzed and immobile. The condition is common among loggers and construction workers who use chainsaws and jackhammers to make a living.
I was deeply relieved, and yet, strangely, proud of my pain. Though I was a teacher and office worker by trade, here I was playing the part of carpenter and lumberjack, wielding a chainsaw and felling and chopping down six red pine trees for the foundations of my family’s cabin.
Where else but in America could a man with no experience or money buy a plot of land in the Northern woods, near water, and design and build his own home?
I thought about that the next day, after my arm had mostly recovered, as I began digging 24, four-foot-deep holes to embed the 6-by-6 treated timber posts that would form the foundation of the shed.
It was the hardest work I ever did, as anyone who has ever dug post holes in a field full of tree roots knows. But I was young and I was persistent, and my wife, Marianne, and I took advantage of the rights and opportunities our government system gave us to borrow money, buy land, and build the American dream for ourselves.
Nearly 250 years ago, our ancestors fought and lost many of their lives to build a nation with a unique Constitution that guaranteed each citizen the freedom to pursue happiness in his or her own way.
Growing up on 54th and Winchester in Chicago, my dream was to have a place in the countryside, surrounded by forest and water paradise, where my children could develop a passion for the outdoors.
In other parts of the world, that may be just a pipe dream, but in the United States, I was able to get a construction loan from the bank and stake my claim.
With little experience in the building industry, I borrowed how-to books from the library and drew plans for building an 800-square-foot cottage with two bedrooms and a loft on wooden stilts. Lacking a surveyor’s transit, I used a magnetic compass, string, and birthday party balloons (seen in the trees) to survey and plan the 20-foot by 40-foot building site.
Because there are fewer building codes in the country, I nailed together a wooden house with 18 homemade windows and doors, two bathrooms, and 100-amp electrical. Jump River Electric hung temporary wires in the trees from which I worked.
Aside from Marianne and our three young children, who walked through the woods from our rented house each day at noon to bring me lunch, and the time when we had to hire licensed professionals to service our well and septic system in accordance with county regulations, I struggled alone.
Six weeks passed, during which I packed my tools in a tent and my work clothes in plastic bags soaked in DEET to repellent, and completed the exterior shell of our Little House on the Prairie. We moved in the following summer, while I finished the interior.
Author David McGrath’s children, (left), Janet, Mike and Jackie, play on a raft made from Coca-Cola syrup barrels near the family cabin in northwestern Wisconsin in 1988. (Family photo)
We spent every summer there, and our kids learned to fish and swim, interpret loon calls and wave to neighbors on our way into town. We cooled off under secret waterfalls and used ropes and pulleys to lift trash cans up trees to protect them from black bears. Later, we started raising a black Labrador puppy who grew into a dog named Biff whose barking and scent kept bears and other predators away.
Thirty-eight years and two owners later, the house still stands, with a new roof and detached garage.
It was more than just a fishing village, it was an investment in our country, a savings that changed our lives and for which we are still grateful.
And the best way to give back is to do all we can – including exercising our right to vote wisely – to repair the planet and protect democracy, equality, and freedom, and perpetuate the American Dream for future generations.
David McGrath is Professor Emeritus of English at the College of DuPage and author of the recently published book of Chicagoland stories, “Far Enough Away.” E-mail him at profmcgrath2004@yahoo.com.
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