MAY 21, 2023 – Way back in time, “dock-in” day was an annual ritual in the lake and cabin country of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Every family with a rustic, lacustrian getaway had its unique formula, but invariably the affair involved the dock itself—bracketed pipes and wooden dock sections heavier than sin; a steel boat lift, also heavier than sin, sporting years of rust, and if you were lucky, a set of big, steel wheels; a boatload of tools, including wrenches, tape measures, sledge hammers, regular hammers and industrial-gauge screwdrivers; volunteer and conscripted labor—the distinction was not always clear—drawn from a pool of friends, neighbors and extended family; and, of course, lots of non-craft beer in payment of the labor. If your cabin was just off the water (i.e. it’d been built before setback requirements became law), you might have a (heavier than sin) roll-in/roll-out dock, in which case, the labor would split into two teams, each taking a side of the contraption, and on the count of three, roll it into the lake.
In my early years, our family’s “dock-in” ritual involved Grandpa Nilsson, who was in his late 60s and lord of the manor; my dad, in his late 30s, who was the muscle in residence and heir apparent; Carl Hanson, a local, shirt-tail relative, who was older than Grandpa and drove a Chevrolet pickup that I thought was about the same age as Carl; and . . . me, the tag-along observer-in-chief.
While at the cabin, Dad and Grandpa were beer drinkers—Hamms in a can—late each afternoon after closing down work on their latest (arduous) project. Carl, however, apparently preferred whiskey: Each year after the dock and lift were installed, the three men would gather in the kitchen for a round of Old Crow. Grandpa pulled out three shot glasses and the Old Crow bottle tucked away next to my grandmother’s flour cabinet. I watched him pour, then hear him say, Skål! –-echoed by Dad and Carl. I’m pretty sure that same bottle lasted as long as Carl was part of the “dock-in” team. The Old Crow never saw the light of day except for the annual, single-shot toast to Carl for another dock-and-lift installation well done.
I was fascinated by Carl. He told interesting stories and with an accent like my grandmother’s (Carl’s wife and my grandmother were cousins and had lived close to each other back in Sweden). An immigrant from the province of Värmland, Sweden*, Carl had bought acreage on a lake near ours, then built single-handedly a big frame house for his family and a set of log, resort cabins, each with a masterfully crafted stone fireplace and chimney. He had lots of experience installing docks, too. Though Dad and Grandpa had plenty of tools on hand, Carl always brought his own equipment. From the cargo bed of his pickup, he’d lift hip-waders and a big metal toolbox and carry them down the hill to the dock area. When Dad and Grandpa offered to help, Carl would say, “Tanks, but I can manage.”
We were highlanders, which meant that just a few strides out from the front of the cabin (which Carl had built for my grandparents in 1940), you stood atop a bank so steep that to a kid it seemed like a cliff, which is why Grandpa built a stone retaining wall with a railing to prevent us kids from tumbling headlong to the rocky shoreline 40 feet below. By unanimous consent, Grandpa, Dad and Carl had sited the dock access on lower terrain down the shore a ways. But still, a steep, 12-foot pitch had to be negotiated between the relatively level ground above the lake and the stones and small boulders below.
Carl was always the designated pipe driver. After pulling on his waders, the +70-year-old, rugged Swede would climb down into the water, and Dad and Grandpa would feed him the sledge hammer, the heavy-duty pipes with cast-iron brackets, and the wooden dock sections—heavy enough, it seemed, to me, to support a car. Then Carl would start slamming steel. It reminded me of “John Henry” on Harry Belafonte’s Mark Twain album that my sisters and I played a gazillion times back home. Conversely, whenever I listened to “John Henry,” it reminded me of Carl driving dock pipes. (Cont.)
*When cousins of my generation visited from Sweden in the mid-70s, they met Carl and tried to converse in Swedish. They soon gave up and switched to English, explaining that Carl’s Swedish was “so old” as to be too hard for modern Swedish ears to follow.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
