Portage Lake Cabins ... #2 ...

This will be the conclusion of what has turned out to be a five-part series of posts, not necessarily consecutive or with the same titles.

If you'd like to get the complete picture, I recommend that you begin with this one. From there, I go directly to "Setting up housekeeping". I was doing well until I started looking at maps of the area. Then my mind just went every which way, and the post ended up having nothing whatsoever to do with housekeeping! Those are the first two, OK?

A couple of unrelated posts got published in between the first two and the next one in the series, called "Setting up housekeeping -- really!" Now, if you had already read the first two, you might have thought after reading the first paragraph that you'd read this post before, but you would have been mistaken. This post actually does talk about setting up housekeeping and describes the 'cabins', etc.

The first three are chronological. If you think you might have accidentally skipped over the third one, you might want to give it another glance.


The fourth one was published yesterday. It's called "Portage Lake Cabins ... #1" and talks about Mabel and Harry Doyle, our very 'colorful' landlords. Today I'm going to talk about two of our neighbors, Mel and Gloria Visser, and a few of their friends.


Mel and Gloria were really friendly, and always seemed to be smiling and laughing at something or another. My husband just loved to 'make up' stories to tell Gloria. She believed almost anything he said. Her eyes would get all round and wide and she'd say, "Oh, really?"

He didn't start out fabricating events. It just sort of evolved. But then, you know, he found himself unable to resist. The stories would get more and more outlandish until even Gloria knew they couldn't possibly be true. He had a lot of fun while it lasted, tho.


Mel was in a fraternity, and some of his buddies would frequently come out and visit. They had some wild parties!

This one night, not too long after we'd moved in, we heard lots of grunting, gasping, shouting, and swearing going on directly behind our cabin. We thought, "What the devil!", and looked out. There were Mel and a few of his friends furiously trying to lift a VW 'bug' off the tracks before the train came through (scheduled in the next few minutes).

Hubby went out to help, and I went next door to ask Gloria what the devil was going on! Well, it seems as tho the driver (who, as per usual -- along with his buddies -- had been drinking) thought that Harry must have shoveled down to the front of the cabins and took the newly-shoveled 'road', marveling that Harry had been able to get that much snow cleared after the blizzard and very heavy snowfalls we'd been experiencing.

Of course, Harry had done no such thing! Upshot of this story is that they were able to get the car off the tracks and to relative safety just before the train came barreling through at 80mph.


Spring. No snow, cars all parked in front of the cabins, and another party. Hubby and I did not usually attend these parties. Well, I should correct that by saying that we often attended and usually stayed for a while, but we didn't make 'all nighters' out of it.

We were sound asleep. All had been quiet for some time. Then we heard pounding on Mel and Gloria's cabin door. Pounding, pounding, pounding!! We could hear this plaintive voice calling, "Mel, my car's in the lake!"

It was probably the same person who had driven his car onto the railroad tracks. We didn't get up to go out and help. Instead, we giggled softly and went back to sleep.



There'll be another post later on down the road on life in the Keweenaw Peninsula. I've made a bunch of notes. It'll probably be titled something like, "Baby, it's COLD outside!"