Moe's Cabin

It was during our annual trek to the Gunflint Trail that we stumbled upon the little red cabin on Poplar Lake. We were camping next to our cousins on Flour Lake as we had for the past 4 or 5 summers. Anyway, my dad decided to take the family for a "Sunday drive" north up the trail when we spotted the For Sale sign just before Rockwood Lodge. The year was 1964, and I was a 14 year old in love - with the northwoods.

The place was small - about 500 square feet - but cozily paneled in knotty pine, and a mere 30 feet from the lake. There was also an outbuilding - garage with attached laundry, which was dubbed "Molly's Washhouse", complete with a old-time wringer washer. Molly was Molly Katzenmeier. Ben, her husband, had passed away earlier that year, and Molly was reluctantly letting go of their precious cabin that Ben had built by hand from on-site lumber with his portable sawmill. I would later find to my amusement and, often, chagrin, that all the studs were cut to full dimension - actual 2X4's - which made some later remodeling quite challenging. But the place wasn't going to fall down anytime soon. Ben didn't skimp on nails, either.

At one time Ben had owned the lake frontage to the east, where Ken Kloek's cabin now sits. The story is that Ken was coveting some of that frontage and Ben finally agreed to sell it - if Ken and Meg would help insulate him his cabin, which was in process of going up. So the Kloeks hustled over and hung the newspaper insulation in the stud walls so they could get Ben finished pronto. The year was 1948 - we know this, because the newspapers in the wall all had that date. It made for some interesting reading during later remodeling projects!

The cabin had two tiny bedrooms, small kitchen, small 3 piece bath, and a combo living room/dining room with a view of the lake. Heating was (and still is) furnished by a classic old Round Oak pot-bellied stove. Everything was in miniature, but to me it seemed perfect. My dad thought so, too, and within a few weeks of telephone and mail negotiations, the cabin was ours. In 1969 we added a woodshed and a boathouse, and in later years, converterd the washhouse to a guest bedroom with a half bath, and enlarged the cabin bath while adding a shower. Then, in 1997, we (Mark and Martha), purchased the property from Mark's brother and sister, and made the big push to enlarge and update the cabin. But it almost didn't happen.

My mother had had Bob Johnston put in 3 pillar footings in front of the cabin in aniticipation of him building a screen porch. The permit was approved (this was back in the 1980's)even though the cabin would be another 12 feet closer to the lake. But for one reason or other, the porch never got built. Then in 1997, we applied for a variance to expand the cabin out to the pillars, but the board turned us down...or so we thought. Two weeks after Bob Johnston called to tell us the bad news,(he attended the board meeting) we received a mail notification that our permit had been APPROVED. Hmmmm. Well, long story short, we kept mum and showed up next spring at the courthouse with a contractor and building materials - and the approval letter - and what could they do? Well nothing except require us to put in a septic, which we gladly did.

So we added another 250 square feet across the front of the cabin, changed a few doors and windows, remodeled the kitchen, shored up the listing boathouse and converted the woodshed to an elegant catch-all, which my wife lovingly dubbed the "shithouse."

But what you really build with a northwoods cabin is a base for great memories: fishing the walleye hole with my dad, going to the bear-circus at the dump, my mom's famous donut parties, and scarfing down homemade blueberry pie. It just doesn't get much better than that.