Wanting to return to their cabin in the woods 50 years later

By John Halverson/The Week

The snapshot accompanying this story shows a cabin, three boys, a tree and an Adirondack chair.



But to Mark, Bob and Gary Halvey, the three boys in the photo, it's a multi-dimensional rendering of the three summers they spent there.

Taken soon after their first arrival in 1957, the picture is a historical snow globe-a casual glance and you don't see much, but let Mark, Bob and Gary reminisce for awhile and the otherwise benign image snows memories.

Sure, a snapshot is often a photo no one cares about but you, but if you were there, you're able to see beyond its borders.

If you're Gary, you'll see his shoes "with half moons ... you know ... Converse All-Stars," even though they're not in the picture.

As the "Little Prince" said: "One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eye."

Now, more than 50 years after the picture was taken, Mark and Gary are in my office, talking not only about seen and unseen memories, but also about their desire to find the tangible and real -the cabin itself or at least what's taken its place.

Mark, who was 4 when the picture was taken, has a crumpled piece of paper listing their recollections. He checks them off one by one:

It starts with the three brothers and their parents walking from the Lake Geneva railroad station on a warm summer night in 1957. They had just arrived from Chicago with directions to a cabin on Lake Como owned by a neighbor, but obviously had not been told how long a walk it would be.

The boys are lugging suitcases and carrying pillows, when a two-toned Chevy convertible pulls up. The two teenagers in the convertible, who are probably in their 70s now, offer the family a ride. Mark assumes they had to use the someone-sit-on-so-and-so's lap method to fit everyone, the method we only tolerate in youth or desperation. Gary, who was 6 then, recalls the wind in his hair.

While you can picture the parents doing practical things, the first thing the boys remember upon arrival at the two-room cabin was playing its crank-up record player.

There was also a strange toaster that used the gas stove as an energy source.

They both remember how sunburned everyone was. Gary says it hurt too much to lie down so he slept sitting down with his head on a table.

They repeat a story their father told over and over again, about Bob's troubles with an overly friendly bug. Like the best family lore, it has a chapter heading: "The great chase."

Gary and Mark were enamored with Lake Geneva, saying it was the first time they'd seen angle parking.

As for the cabin's location, they recall two nearby landmarks-a well and a store called either the Center of the Universe or the Center of the World.

This summer they and family members, including their father, found the well they knew as Laughing Waters, but the cabin itself remains either out of reach or unreachable.

At 89, their father's memory is failing and their mother died five years ago, taking away what memories she had.

But when a deer stopped on their path as they were leaving the well, Mark said it turned their way and made eye contact.

"What are the chances of that showing up just at that time?" he asks.

Mark said it was almost as though he felt his mother's presence.

"We all kinda froze and it walked away. It was like some sort of sign."

A more tangible sign, the one on the cabin itself, says "Tunison," the name of the woman who owned it, but the Tunison they remember is long gone.

So all Mark, Bob and Gary have left is a photo, memories that go beyond its borders and a desire to return to their source.


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