Vacant, lost and found

When I was a child, my cousin Katie and I would hide on the kitchen steps and suck grape juice from our pink curlers. We'd sit with our shiny metal mugs filled with tart purple juice, stick our curlers into it, swirl it around and suck the juice from the curler.

It sounds disgusting now, but to a 4-year-old hiding out from Mom it was probably good, dirty kid fun.

And there was so much fun to be found at Grandpa's cabin.

Outside Katie and I would chase army ants with our Tonka trucks. In needle filled dirt, we'd sit in our overalls and push trenches through the red dirt. The ants scattered. In the distance, we could hear the forbidden creek wind its way down the moutain and away from my grandpa's cabin.

These were our summers in Butte Meadows. Sixteen people crammed into a four-bed room cabin. Pancakes, trips to the M&M store, army ants and pink curlers.

And then one day it was all gone.

My grandpa's heart couldn't take it any more.

On the day he'd decided to dig the new well by hand, he'd all but sold it in his head-- the cabin my great grandfather had built on Fetcher's Flat, the cabin my great uncle had taken down board by board when Sierra Pacific told the family the cabin had to go, and that same cabin my he'd added onto with his own hands.

He knew the only person who'd swing a shovel with him wasn't even his son, only a son-in-law that saw him as a father. He knew his own kids would be too busy reading books or going for walks, but he did it any way.

And one day in a fit of rage, he threw his shovel down and sold the cabin for pennies to a young guy in his 20s.

I cried as we drove away, wishing my father had lived closer so grandpa would have had some help.

For 29 years I watched as another man lived in that cabin with his partner. I waited for them to change it. Paint it purple, tear down the bunk houses-- anything-- just make it "not ours." But they never did. They never even gave it a new roof-- only let the termites dine on it and the rats dance on my great-grandmother's iron bed under the stairs.

This weekend I drove to my mother's cabin just down the road from "the old cabin."There was a sale pending sign in front. He hadn't even called us though we had a place just miles away.Was he bitter because the history everyone knew wasn't his "history?" For 29 years he'd known of three grown adults, five little girls and two boys who wanted it back, and yet he didn't call.

I went to visit him. I wasn't going to, but my daughter wanted to walk through "our ancestor's cabin." Tears in my eyes, I called up to him. He was on the roof.

I was sort of surprised that he let me tour the old cabin. I ws more surprised he'd kept it preserved like a museum. Nothing had changed-- not even the furniture.

"I hope this sale goes through because I don't want to have moved all my furniture out for nothing," he said.

The way he emphasized "My" felt like a be twisting it's stinger in my arm, and I think I visbily flinched-- grandma's chair, the funny side table, the swirly double bed headboard upstairs.

"I've lived here for 29 years," he said. "My parents visited, my grandparents visited-- why do you want this cabin?"

"My grandfather built it," I said.

And this is when I realized, my cabin was real estate. It wasn't a shrine. I wanted it-- my heart ached I wanted it so badly, but as I looked at the termite damage and felt the spongey floors, I realized it would cost me my house. Would I trade my children's home for pink curlers on the kitchen steps?

No. I couldn't do it by myself, but my cousins and I could go in on the cabin together-- or maybe my mother could help me.

The guy said he might be able to push it out of escrow because the buyers were having trouble getting a loan.

I called my family and told them the good news. No one was interested.

And so, what could I do?

I walked through one last time and looked at that cabin as though I was four years old-- the narrow steps, the pine cabinets, the view of the creek, grandma's chair. It would all be gone next week, and I'd never be able to walk through this "shrine" again because the man was taking it with him-- all the contents-- and the new owners were a young family who would no doubt change it and make it their own.

I was glad. If it were changed, somehow it wouldn't be lost to me.