Grandma and Grandpa Russell were lucky because they could stay up at the cabin all summer long. As soon as the weather warmed up enough to get over the dirt road, they packed their truck and headed off to the mountains. They came home from time to time if needed, but they wouldn’t come home for winter until it grew cold late in the fall.
Sometimes they would take Keith up to the cabin with them. He was old enough to stay on his own. One trip the creek was too high to drive across, so they left their car at the crossing and hiked up the creek to the log crossing. All three of them walked across the log so they could get on the cabin side of the creek. Grandma Russell took her shoes off to cross. She was wearing nylons, and Keith worried that they might make her feet so slippery she would slip off the log into the creek.
Keith enjoyed helping grandpa in his garden by digging worms to go fishing. At night, he would play scrabble with grandma on the picnic table under the north window of the cabin. They didn’t have electricity, so they used a kerosene lantern to give them light. Grandma and Grandpa were competitive when they played scrabble, and they would argue over how to spell words.
“That’s not how you spell polarity,” Grandma would say.
“It is too,” Grandpa would reply.
“It is not,” Grandma would challenge. “It’s not even a real word. Go get the dictionary and show me.”
“No. You go get the dictionary.” And on and on they contested each other’s words.
Grandma and Grandpa loved tomatoes, but Keith didn’t like eating them. They thought he would like them better if they sprinkled sugar over them, but they were disappointed when they saw the face he still made. He never touched grandma’s chow-chow either, but her stewed rhubarb was pretty good. They always had Welches grape juice to drink, and when a can was empty grandma would clean it out and put it by the bed to use at night when they needed to go to the bathroom. (Since they didn’t have flashlights, it was a pain to have to light a lantern to go to the outhouse.) Grandma’s favorite treat was graham crackers with peanut butter and honey. All of us liked those, especially if we dunked them in milk.
Grandpa Russell had a hard time sleeping, and always got up very early in the morning. When he got up he turned on the radio, and it seemed to Keith that whenever he woke up in the night he could hear the hum of that radio.
On Saturday nights grandma would make Keith take a bath to get ready for Sunday. Since they had no bathtub, she would put a big wash tub in front of the fireplace, then heat water on the stove, and pour it into the tub. That way Keith would be nice and clean to go to Church the next day.
Our cousin, Stanford, spent some time at the cabin with Keith and Grandma and Grandpa. One day he and Keith walked down to the Indian ruins. It rained while they were there, and they hid under a tree to keep from getting wet. Keith was only about six years old. After the rain ended he really needed to go to the bathroom, and he slipped on the wet ground and cut his behind on one of the pointy rocks that made up the Indian Ruins. It was a bad cut, but he didn’t want to tell grandma because he knew she would make him show it to her, and he was embarrassed. She didn’t find out about the cut until Saturday, when she did the laundry. (Grandma had an old wringer washing machine up at the cabin that really worked.) When she saw all his bloody underwear she was really concerned, and cross when she discovered how bad the cut was. In the end, it healed, but Keith still has the scar.
Stanford shot a squirrel one day, and grandma fried it up for supper. Keith was surprised how good it tasted. Grandpa built a rabbit hutch and kept rabbits to eat, as well. Originally they were Keith’s pets, and mom was sure glad when grandpa took them up to the cabin.
One day Keith went fishing with grandpa up the canyon. Grandpa’s hat fell in the creek, and so did Keith. The problem was, Keith didn’t know how to swim yet. Grandpa stood on the bank and coaxed him along by telling him to put one arm out in front of the other and kick. It worked, and Keith made it to the shore, but not until grandpa told him to swim over and get his hat before it floated down the creek.
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