How One Cabin can be Bigger on the Inside

Every single time I drive by the park the cabin is there. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but driving through town on Highway 9, there is a park that has four train cars as its main attraction. However, in the center, completely overshadowed by the train, is this small log cabin that is occasionally open to the public. It is an authentic cabin that settlers lived in. A family of six lived here, and they lived most of their lives in that cabin. Here’s how big the cabin is: 

Now, think about six people in there. I was also part of a family of six, and my mom and dad worked exteremely hard to make sure each of us boys would have our separate bedroom. Looking back, this was some foresight that I think rivaled Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein in the genius department. I can safely say that if they hadn’t there would have been a serious risk of us killing each other just to get some privacy. As it was, we still got in each others’ way, but there was something about being able to retreat to your own private space when you needed some time away from other people. Not this cabin, though. In this cabin, I could see the children happily going out to do their chores, if only because it meant being able to get more than five feet away from everyone else.

The cabin is supposed to be open to the public occasionally, but I want to point out that prior to this fall I had never seen it open. This is the Loch Ness Monster of Cresco tourist locations. Yes, it’s supposed to be open. People sometimes talk about a friend of a friend who saw the inside of it, and occasionally you get someone who says they actually saw this cabin open with their own eyes, but drive by it at any time, and it will always be closed.

Then came Harvest Fest 2011. For whatever reason, the town of Cresco decided the cabin should be open to the public, although I don’t know why they decided to open it up at that point. There had been other celebrations in and around that park, and yet the cabin was still closed and locked.

It’s difficult to say why I wanted to peek inside. Part of it is that I can’t accept that the cabin can hold more than three people at one time. Another part is that winter is inevitably coming, and I remember the previous two winters like I would remember a rabid wolf attack. How could settlers cope with such extreme weather?

So, I went inside. And the inside, to be honest, looks bigger than the outside. I’m not entirely sure how that works. Granted, it’s still incredibly small when there’s more than one person, and the cabin was manned by one very nice woman who was extremely welcoming. She tried, with some degree of success, to keep out of the way as I walked around and examined the various tools and old-fashioned kitchen tools that were up on the wall. Here’s where I usually go into a bit of description, but I have to be honest, it was like going into any one of a number of chain restaurants nowdays that have random stuff tacked to the wall. Granted, there was one interested thing—a hanging cradle that mothers could set their children on while they did housework. Of course, given the size of the cabin, that was probably only for two minutes at best. The contraption looks like a giant scale, actually, and I had visions of babies being set on the scale until it touched the ground, at which point they were sent out to help on the farm.  It was a rousing tour, but almost too soon it was time to walk upstairs.

There’s a special kind of technique that goes into putting stairs in a cabin that is not quite 20 feet by 20 feet. That technique is known as “make ‘em steep.” This staircase honestly went up ten feet in four feet of space. The only reason it wasn’t a ladder was because it curved.  Right above the door is a sign that states “Watch Your Step, Not Repsonsible For Accidents.” This sign is not only a stroke of genius that probably prevented the cabin from long ago getting turned into kindling due to a lawsuit, but it’s practically a taunt. Watch your step? Of COURSE you’re going to watch your step on this staircase, if only because not doing so will result in a neck bent at angles only seen in advanced geometry courses.

It was the upstairs that convinced me that the settlers who went out west were clinically insane. Between the beds with the thin mattresses and covers, the lack of insulation and the bedwarmer that was a metal container you filled with coals and stuck it under the mattress, praying to God it wouldn’t catch fire. Then again, seeing as how the temperature outside would be similar to the temperature inside, you might want something to catch fire now and again. Then there was a very nice glazed pot, which may or may not have been the bathroom during the night.

A somewhat long time ago, my mom and dad lived in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. They came up to the rural part of northern Michigan and settled in a small town where my brothers and I grew up. My dad came up there because he loved the wilderness as much as I love comic books, which is perhaps the most emasculating thing I’ve ever said about myself. I grew up in more or less the wilderness, the real wilderness, and we cut wood each and year. My brother Andy and I would huddle in front of the big wood heater in the winter mornings, trying to stay warm, and we did yard work with the best of them. I used to envy kids in the city that could go to movies whenever they wanted, and whose yard was only an acre or so to rake or mow. I also envied that they got more than three television channels.

Then I look and see this cabin, which held my entire family, and I have to wonder about what drove these people to settle out in Iowa, away from everything and almost everyone. I really understand the desire to explore, but I absolutely do not get how someone can walk out into the middle of Godforsaken nowhere, look around at the flatness and think, “Yeah, I think I’ll live here.” Partially, I think these people must have been a lot tougher than we are today in the 21^st century. Partially, I think that they didn’t miss what they didn’t have. Mostly, though…seriously, there is NOTHING around. What on earth would make someone want to settle here? Did they have severe acrophobia or what?

When I graduated high school, I went to a college that was in the city. I stayed in the city for as long as I could, too. I can’t prove this, but I strongly suspect that when the kids came of age, the first thing they did was run for Boston.