old cabins on "the hill"

Cabins 41 through 45 seen at dusk recently. Many reading this will remember them as Girls 11-15 (Sacky for many decades). In the 21st century this village has been the home of Lakota, a girls' village in Wawayanda between Susky and Sacky by age. You can see four of the five in the row--possibly, if you look closely, you can see all five. I was one of those who used to complain about how jammed-together the cabins on "The Hill" are. I've even been known to call them tenements. But their location has grown on me over the years. The cabins themselves are pretty worn (having not really been renovated since they were built in 1965 or '66). But the campers and counselors who live in them swear by the scene: they love it. The walk from cabin 46 (formerly 16 in Tacoma, now Susky) is the longest walk to the dining hall from a place of campers' residence. So 45, which you see in the foreground, is the second-longest walk. If you have stories about these two "hill" villages, send them to me at afilreis [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

Tom Cometa writes: "Cabin 45 was our family camp cabin for 6 years. Dylan, 7 years old, has been practically raised there. True, the cabins in old Sacky are "worn" at best. From year one, Andria has asked Carmel for an upgrade. The walk to the dining hall is long. Nevertheless, the villages up there have a certain inexplicable charm. Two years ago we got our upgrade. We now have a very fancy, upscale cabin 15 in the old Lenape ring. The boys were heartbroken. Andria is digging the carpet, the space, double sinks and two bathrooms. I know she misses the old hood, though. It's peaceful up there among the trees above Lake Cole. When I showed the picture of cabin 45 to Dylan he said, 'Let's go back there, Daddy. I miss that cabin.'"

where have you gone, lean-to?

For years and years, long past the kids in the picture had grown to be adults, this postcard was sold at the "canteen" and later "the camp store." I can only for the moment identify two people in the shot: one, at far left, a camper, is the young Pat Ricciardi. And the counselor stirring the big pot was Lynn Garrison, from somewhere down south (I assume Mississippi). Lynn was probably the VC at the time of this Devil's Hole overnight. Later he was the Program Director (I'm going to guess in '67 or '68). I'll guess that this shot was taken in '66 or '65.

Indeed it was at the Devil's Hole camp site. Today's campers and staff will immediately notice that cooking was being done here from the big pot. Not something done these days. Indeed one probably can't get such a pot to take on an overnight. (Not that I'm recommending the return of these clunkers. I ate too many bad meals from the insides of them in my time.) Since Lynn's stirring the pot we can assume that it's not merely boiled water for hot dogs. I'm guess it's either a big mess of baked beans or some kind of beef stew. About the site: these days the hole area itself - the big flume - is referred to as "Devil's Hole." The hole itself is on State of New York land. So way back, presumably in the late 50s, the camp site was built about 100 years on the camp side (to the west) of the hole, on Frost Valley property, next to a beautiful and less dangerous swimming hole and little waterfall. The whole site - the flume and hole; the camp site just to the west - was called "Devil's Hole." Now the first site is called "Brothers' Hole" and only the main hole (the real attraction) is called "Devil's Hole." Not sure why or when this name change happened. There's a cable bridge at Brothers' Hole, so one can cross and use a new-ish trail to get back to Devil's Hole. In my day there was a nice lean-to built at the camp site. It's long gone, and is a fabulous spot for a new one to be built. (Any volunteers out there wanting to re-build that old lean-to. Excellent for rainy nights out.)

Can anyone identify others in the postcard?

Mr. Carey's old rec hall

There it is. Forstmann's cow barn, which we first used as our dining hall (1958, '59) and then as our beloved "rec hall" for many years. The "rec hall" was essentially our only indoor space other than the dining halls. Somehow--unbelievably--we held all-camp evening programs in there. On a rainy night, once in a while, we'd crowd in there to watch a reel-to-reel 16 mm movie. Calamity Jane (a western already old then) was one I remember. We held Kangaroo Court in there too. I got at least one pie in the face in there, as a "defendent" in the K Court, Judge King presiding. During sunny days it was quiet in the rec hall, but when it rained we all flowed in. During some summers there was a little library of old adventure novels (e.g. Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island). For a few years there was a random never-in-tune upright piano.

I came of age as an extrovert in that building.

One torrentially rainy afternoon in '66 - I was a camper in Forest - we found ourselves sopping wet, standing around in the rec hall. Maybe a hundred kids and counselors, waiting out the rain. But it just wasn't going to stop. It was maybe 3 PM and surely we'd be stuck in there until 5. What to do? One of my counselors, the legendary J. C. Pony, sat down at the piano and began to play loud, melodramatic, lugubrious mystery-movie music. Instinctively, I grabbed a book from the shelf. It was Stevenson's Kidnapped. I began to read its overheated boys' adventure prose in a loud radio-drama voice. Between J.C. and me we were creating a story time. People started to listen. Then they went quiet. Then they sat down and gathered around us. And as more people came in from the rain, they were shushed and sat down too. I don't know how long we did this, but we dramatized Kidnapped for some time. And we hadn't planned to do it, we hadn't even cued each other - it just happened. I felt the feeling of having flair for the first time in my life. I was gumbo. I could invent something to do on an otherwise dreary day.

By the early 70s the rec hall was really falling apart. We had Arts & Crafts in there. In the winter, it was the x-country ski shop. Then in '75 "Chuck White came with the world's largest shovel" (as the song goes) and "knocked it all down for the progress of camp." And Margetts Lodge was built. See the photo below.

Mr. Carey, by the way, was Dick Carey, Wawayanda's executive director when we moved from NJ to Frost Valley. So I sometimes refer to the rec hall as "Mr. Carey's Old Rec Hall."

(Jim Wilkes, on seeing the above about Dick, reminds me that Ray Grant was the Executive Director in those days. "Carey [was] the Camp Director my first summer," Jim writes, "along with Marion Schreck, and Al Parsons who met my bus in Woodstock.")

In the photo at the top of this entry: it's holdover weekend (visiting day) and the boy in the bottom right is me. The kid from Forest.

1966 and 2008, same view

Compare the scenes - from more or less the same view. My back is to the dining hall and I'm looking to the northeast at the lower level of cabins. Hussey Lodge is there (on the left of the new photo) where cabins 7 and 8 of Forest used to be. Cabin 6 (straight ahead) is gone now. The cabins in the distance (once: Totem) are still there. For more about this scene, go here.

before Hayden Lodge

Anyone who came after 1970 will be disoriented by this photo, which was taken in 1965 or '66. You are looking at (on the left) what is now Hayden Lodge--what was then "the Crafts Shop," or "Forstmann's garage." Even as the home for Arts & Crafts, it looked and felt absolutely like a garage. Two large garage doors and two bays inside. I have a vague recollection that for at least one summer in the mid-60s, it was actually used as part of check-in. I believe the nurses (wearing whites - and caps!) were stationed in their to give us a check-in-day check-up--among the big bins of loose tiles and wooden parts for birdhouses and spools of colorful lanyard.

Off to the right you see one small building and part of another. The little one is the Flyfishing Shack - in Forstmann's time, the paymaster's hut. And then the back edge of Smith Lodge, the "Infirmary," later "the Heath Center." Recent FV'ers will even have a little visual trouble with this, because since 1975 the dialysis center has been a wing of Smith Lodge coming well off the back. Today this view of the little shack would be obscured by that back wing of Smith.

Between the Crafts Shop and Infirmary (look behind the white car) you can barely see the deer fence that fenced off the apple orchard that in those days served as our Archery Range. It is now still an orchard but is also the location of our greenhouse and gardens.

The vantage-point of the photographer (me) is the front of the Rec Hall (now Margetts Lodge).

everyone knows Dot Conklin

Those who've been around the past decade or so have seen Dot Conklin around the dining hall, before meals and between meals, cleaning the bathrooms, walking in and out of the kitchen, eating her meals in the staff dining room. Before that you'd remember Dot at the laundry and driving around to various lodges in one camp vehicle or another, delivering linens, hauling out laundry.

Dot started at Frost Valley in 1967--forty years ago--although in my recent chat with her (which you can hear by playing this mp3 recording) it became clear to me that Jim Whyte hired her, and Jim was gone by '67. So I'd guess that she was first hired in early 1966.

Dot is an original Catskills denizen. She has family scattered all across the region, she knows all the old stories about one-room schoolhouses, what this Claryville house was used for in the old days, and so on.

Dot was the first recipient of a recent annual staff award, and when she received this honor everyone stood and applauded, tears in their eyes. Finally a chance to recognize a true community elder - hard working, honest, a kind & beautiful soul.

1966 scene

Check-in day, session 2, summer 1966.

Here's some perspective on this view. Behind you is the dining hall--maybe 200 yards behind where the taker of this picture (my father?) was standing. The dirt road that goes off to the right no longer exists; it's now a grassy field, sloping down in front of Hussey Lodge. The cabin to the front right is Forest, cabin 6 (next to the telephone pole). The power lines are buried now and cabin 6 itself has been moved. To the left is cabin 7; that's where Hussey Lodge is now. To the left off screen were cabins 8 and 9, and directly to the left of this view was cabin 10. Cabins 9 and 10 (I believe now called A and B) are still there--serving as year-round staff housing. So 6 through 10 was Forest, right there on the lower flat to the east of the dining hall.

In the photo, a tick to the left of dead center, you see three cabins in the distance. They are cabins 5, 4 and 3 - Totem Village. Cabin 2 is obscured by cabin 6, and cabin 1 was out of the frame off to the right. The road to the right went all the way down to cabin 1, then past and down the hill (with "Hogan's woodpile" to the right) toward Pigeon Brook and the Trailblazer's Barn (now Sequoia).

All but two of Totem's cabins are gone. And now there are three lodges still further east from Totem: Snow, Scott, and Wolff (Wolff was Neversink for years, now named in memory of Dr. Jerome Wolff). In '66 behind Totem were groves of trees and then the wooded slope down to Pigeon.

Notice that during this particular summer families were permitted to drive their cars to these lower cabins (but never further up the hill--the roads were too rocky).

The road forking off to the left is now a paved road, much wider. Here it was not much more than tire tracks. (Most vehicular traffic went down the lower road.)

See the two figures walking in front of cabin 6? The one in the white shirt...is me.

In the background is Banks Hill. At least that hasn't changed.

a little heaven in Vermont

Halbe and Jane Brown retired from Frost Valley in 2001--the time of the Wawayanda centennial and after 35 years of Halbe's directorship (1966-2001). My kids and I visited them a few years ago and found them happily at home on several acres of green pasture-turned-lawn, not far from Barre--and really not far from Montpelier. Montpelier is a stop on the Montreal-bound Amtrak train line that runs once a day from New York City; Ben, Hannah and I loved the trip from Philly directly to Vermont, through some beautiful northern New England country. Stepped off the train and there was Halbe! We re-learned the game of bridge, swam in their pool - and saw some local sights.

Recently, Peggy Rub visited them - and Carolyn Shelburne and Jody Ketcham will be visiting in September.

The photo above shows Halbe on his beloved tractor, wearing a Frost Valley shirt--and you get a sense of the scene.

Doubletop plane crash

Recent photos of the plane that crashed on Doubletop Mountain in 1966.

playing hookey from swimming lessons

When I was a camper in Lenape in '68, I met an Outpost kid named Steve Breitenfeld and we instantly hit it off. And we were together at camp for the next ten years. As it happened we were assigned together to the Olympic team from Egypt, which in those days of Nasser was called "the United Arab Republic" or "UAR." ("You'll go far / with the U A R!" we shouted hoarsely throughout; we came in dead last.) Steve's last summer was '75 as a Lenape counselor. Somehow - even though we were in different villages - we managed fairly regularly to play hookey from Waterfront period. We would meet in the long thin grove of trees separating the Big Tree Field from what was then called "the Flagpole Field" (currently Margetts Field--there were no hardcourts and the row of trees was denser than now and of course there was no road running up to the dining hall there). We had constructed a home-made checker/chess board at Arts & Crafts and we hid it somewhere in the woods. We used stones for pieces. And we'd spend a blissful activity period playing chess and talking. The other day I remembered all this and had to urge to contact Steve again. Here was part of his reply:

It was wonderful receiving your note, Al. It is great you found me in the cabin list from 1968; if I recall cabin 13. Hard to believe I started at camp in 1966 in Totem, cabin 3 with Jim Ross, and ended in 1975 counseling in Lenape. I often remember running around a bit wild with you - hiding in the woods between the Rec. Hall field and big tree field - playing chess with our camp-made chess set. I don't know if you remember that, too. There are so many memories sometimes it is hard to keep them all straight. It was a long time ago, but I have many fond memories of the 10 years at camp. My fondest memories are of the Olympics, which were then held on the last two week of the summer. It was held over four days - two full-time days - including country meeting, opening ceremonies, country trials, Olympic events and closing ceremony. It must have been so much work for the counselors, but it was pure heaven for me, as a kid. I came back year after year to live out that wonderful experience. I remember being on the UAR - United Arab Republic, my first year. In retrospect, it was quite a diverse experience - us all accepting and learning those different cultures. All is well with me and my family. My wonderful wife, Christina and I are living in Lexington, MA in an old 1780's home just 1/2 mile from the Lexington Battle Green, where we get to re-live the Revolutionary Battle of Lexington every April 19th. : ) Christina and I had lived a number of years in Tokyo, Japan in the early 90's before we started having kids & moved up here from NYC in 1995. We have three children, Sarah - 14, Laura - 12 and Paul - 10. They are avid readers, great skiers & back-packers. In fact, we just returned from a three day hike in the White Mts. of New Hampshire. Sarah is heading off to spend 12 days hiking & canoeing in the Whites & Maine with the Appalachian Mountain Club's Teen Adventure Program next week. She went on an all-girls 7-day trip last year, and was hooked.

Many reading this will also remember Cathy Breitenfeld, an FV mainstay in her own right. I recall Cathy as, among other things, a lifeguard at the waterfront.