Almost 50 years ago, I moved from a busy city neighborhood where I lived next to a bustling elementary school out unto what seemed like a wilderness. It was a choice my husband and I made and as I look back now, I have no regrets. But, there were many times during the nine years we lived in the boondocks that I questioned the wisdom of our decision. We had a nice home in the city that we’d just spent thousands of dollars renovating. I was just a few minutes away from the school where I taught sixth grade and my husband just had a short distance to his primary job. So why on Earth did we decide to move out into the middle of nowhere you may wonder? In January of 1975, we had our first child together. As the early days of motherhood moved towards Spring, I came to realize that I did not want to return to teaching school in the Fall. But, how could we afford to live and support my husband’s other four children? The answer came around Mother’s Day when we learned that the couple managing the Duck Island Hunting Club were moving out and the owners were looking for another couple willing to take on the job. My husband contacted the primary owner and we interviewed with him and another owner. My husband, Ken, had worked at the club and he knew the whole operation. We had an inside track. We accepted the job because it would allow me to be home with our baby and it also happened to be my husband’s dream job.
The first time I visited the place where we were to live, I was overwhelmed, to say the least. The entry road, if you could call it a road, was behind a gate and led along the River for about 3 miles to the clubhouse and other buildings. The caretaker’s house was last building on the left, set up on a berm. This house had been built before there was electricity or indoor plumbing so as they added those amenities, they were very visible for the eye to see. The wires ran up the walls, there were electric heaters on the walls of each room and the plumbing pipes and drains ran across the kitchen ceiling with the water heater sitting along the wall in the kitchen! And the road itself was treacherous. It was muddy and full of ruts. Only four-wheel drive vehicles could traverse it. The water was from a deep aquifer but it was full of iron. It left a rusty stain on all the porcelain fixtures and turned the coffee BLACK!
We convinced the owners to invest in a water treatment system and even split the cost. They agreed to have the road built up and graveled so it was more accessible. We had the living room and dining room carpeted and the whole inside painted. My dad put a fence around the pot-bellied stove in the living room so the baby would have some protection. We sold our home and moved into the duck club in July. A few days after our move, a tornado hit a nearby town and took out a half dozen telephone poles that supplies electricity to our area. Because everything at the duck club ran on electricity, we ended up back at the home we’d sold for a few days until our power was restored. Not an auspicious start.
But, by fall, we’d worked out the arrangements for my step-son to attend the local high school and for the school bus to pick him up near the gate that led to the caretaker’s house. My 18 yrs old cousin came to stay with us to help me with cooking and cleaning during the duck hunting season. And so it began. I have so many stories that I can tell about the next nine years until we moved out and put up our home in a little village nearby. Perhaps I will add to this in the future. But, for now, I will end by saying that you never know what you are capable of doing until you give it a go.
