love and challah - irmamagazines.com€¦ · rocking chair, my brother and me sitting on the...

76 ADIRONDACK LIFE July + August 2017 July + August 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 77

AS MY FEET TOUCHED the steps of the old cottage, the magic of my childhood returned. Now painted blue, there were remnants of the former dark sea green visible under the rails of the porch and around the roof. Memories came easily: my bubbe in the kitchen preparing a meal, my zayde swaying back and forth in his canvas rocking chair, my brother and me sitting on the screened-in porch waiting impatiently for the milk truck and secretly planning how to cajole Bubbe into buying us cartons of orangeade.

Each summer until I was 11 years old, my brother and I were released from our parents’ rules of order back home in Gloversville and allowed to spend two freewheeling weeks with

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my grandparents at their cot-tage in Sacandaga Park.

My summer refuge was a small town on the Sacanda-ga Reservoir with only two or

three main roads. Legends from the 1940s and ’50s such as Charleton Heston and Joan Fon-taine came down from the silver screen and appeared at the Sacandaga Summer Theater. They stayed in the Adirondack Inn, a beautiful Victorian hotel.

Gracie Boland, the youngest of a rambunctious family of nine, was a major catalyst of my summer escapades. Only a year older than I, Gracie fasci-nated and frightened me all at once. But I willingly followed her as she led me on walks through dirt paths or behind other cottages where we peered clandestinely through the windows. Occasional-ly someone on the inside would see us and we would take off, shrieking with laughter all the way.

Days at the cottage always seemed too short. In the mornings, I awoke wrapped in a thick quilt on one of the many iron-frame beds. After I pulled on my shorts, T-shirt and sneakers, I ran eagerly down the narrow steps to the dining room. Zayde sat at the table sipping hot tea and reading the Yiddish newspaper. Bubbe whisked out of the kitchen, bringing all sorts of scents and textures for breakfast: herring, challah, bagels, cottage cheese, fresh fruit and prunes.

LOVE AND CHALLAHSummers with my grandparents at Sacandaga Park BY JANE FINKLE

Clockwise from bottom right:

The Adirondack Inn hosted movie

stars who per-formed at the

Sacandaga Sum-mer Theater. The

author’s grandpar-ents had a cottage

near the lake.

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July + August 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 77

Then my brother and I were ready to explore. One of our more exciting jaunts was a five-minute walk to pick up the mail at the Station, which housed the post office and several shops. This long brown-and-white building was a wonderland, with each doorway an invitation to possible intrigue. One led to pinball machines I watched people play for hours, another to a jukebox playing top-10 hits. Sometimes vacationing teen-agers were dancing and I allowed my imagination to envision the glorious life that would someday be mine.

Shortly before noon, Bubbe was back in the kitchen preparing anoth-er feast: chicken soup, salmon salad, rye and pumpernickel bread, sour cream and herring, fresh fruit and noodle kugel. Sometimes I entered the kitchen in the middle of her cook-ing frenzy and she would proudly offer a sneak preview of the meal.

Bubbe was an immigrant from Warsaw who, like many Jews, sought an escape from harsh living condi-tions and the brutal pogroms during the Russian regime. She told me how my zayde arrived in the United States first to find a job and a place for them to live. A few months later, Bubbe, pregnant with twins, was on a boat sailing to join him. My father told me that Bubbe lost two sisters in World War II but she kept those stories to herself. Instead she spoke about her baby sister Sadie, who she helped to bring to the U.S. and who was mar-ried at 15.

After lunch my mother drove up from our home to take us to the beach each day. My mother, with her strict rules of conduct and con-stant worrying, was transformed at the lake. She looked like royalty with her beautiful green eyes and olive skin that turned golden brown in the sun. We sat on the beach with Annie and Nat Schwerner, an older couple from the metropolitan New York area and summer residents of Sacandaga. They were exotic com-pared to my parents’ other friends: Nat had a thick, bushy black beard and Annie was tall and artistic-look-A

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78 ADIRONDACK LIFE July + August 2017

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ing with her hair pulled back in a bun, earrings that dangled like rain-drops and a woven rainbow-colored shawl draped over her shoulders. The Schwerners became particularly ani-mated as they talked about politics. They were ardent supporters of civil rights and the words “prejudice” and “oppression” came up frequently in their conversation. Because of them, at an early age I became aware of the deep meanings behind these words.

Later, in the heat of the afternoon sun, I often joined my brother and his friends Peter Ebstein and Bobbie Reich and assisted them in building an elaborate system of sand castles and aqueducts.

In the afternoon my grandpar-ents played cards with their friends. They all spoke Yiddish and I created a game of guessing what they were saying by interpreting their dramatic gestures and colorful tone of voice.

Before dinner, Gracie and I would take our long walks. Gracie went to Catholic school in Troy, and in hushed tones she spoke to me about nuns, rosary beads and the frightening repercussions of committing a sin.

Bubbe’s final culinary feat for the day was a dinner of soup, brisket, boiled chicken, potatoes, vegetables, challah, fruit and ice cream. After, my brother and I sat on the porch with Zayde or watched Father Knows Best in the den. Before we felt even close to yawning, Bubbe was pushing us up the steps to bed and covering our small bodies with thick quilts, expressing her worries about whether we would be warm enough. With one kiss on the keppie, our day was over.

SHORTLY AFTER MY 11th birth-day, a letter arrived from Bubbe, who was living in Florida for the winter. She hadn’t been well and her letter revealed something unexpected: “I am afraid I won’t live long enough to cook another meal for you.” I denied her premonition, believing the aro-mas from her kitchen and her firm and gentle way would heal her. She died three months later.

My quiet and now grief-stricken

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80 ADIRONDACK LIFE July + August 2017 July + August 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 81


zayde could not bear to stay alone in the cottage, so my father and his brothers quickly sold it, and my idyllic summers at Sacandaga evaporated into memory. We still went to Sacan-daga Park to swim and see our friends, but gradually we went instead to less familiar vacation spots.

As I matured into a young woman, change also came to Sacandaga and its summer inhabitants. Both the summer theater and Adirondack Inn burned down. The Station was closed and eventually an artist bought the building and turned it into a studio. The Station now houses small cot-tages. Annie and Nat’s son, Mickey Schwerner, was one of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississip-pi in the ’60s. Bobbie Reich the sand castle expert became Robert Reich, a prominent and well-respected author and economist, and a Secretary of Labor. Gracie remains a mystery.

AS I CONTINUED TO walk up the steps of the cottage, I saw a portly woman in front eating potato chips on what had been the screened-in porch. I introduced myself and told her about my history in the cottage. She smiled politely and proceeded to describe her plans to renovate and modernize it. I asked her about the iron-frame beds that we’d left behind, hoping she might invite me inside. She laughed, clutching her potato chip bag, “I have never seen so many beds like that in my life. I hope I’ll be able to sell some of those old frames.” I knew at that moment it was time for me to leave, and I also knew this would be the last time my feet touched these steps.

As I get further from the cottage and my summers with Bubbe and Zayde, I continue to struggle with life and its polarities, from the sadness of losing parents to accepting the pas-sage of time. However, I am often warmed by closing my eyes and feel-ing the presence of Sacandaga Park: the lively conversations, the thick quilts, the icy lake water, the beach, orangeade and the comforting feel-ing of adoring grandparents.

July + August 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 81

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September + October 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 6766 ADIRONDACK LIFE September + October 2017

A HAND-SCRAWLED SIGN for “Shapiro’s Junk Shoppe,” curated by “Marcel Le Junkologist.” A certificate from the 1954 All-American Soap Box Derby with a card of congratulations, addressed simply to “Glenn White, Town.” A space heater from the New Brunswick Hotel. The sash of a long-gone “Miss Tupper High,” its lettering carefully cut from red electrical tape.

You can find those treasures and more at the Tupper Lake Heritage Museum, a storage depot for the town’s collective memory. This place is the brainchild of the late Art Richer, who prodded the community into creating a common space for all TU

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REMAINS OF THE DAYSSaving our history onescrap at a time BY NIKI KOUROFSKY

the unsung snippets of their everyday lives. Richer laid out his dream for a mini-museum in

a 2003 letter to the Tupper Lake Free Press editor: “This is ... small potatoes compared to the Muse-um of Natural History or the ‘Next Stop’ Tupper Lake undertaking. [But] if we all, as hometown res-idents, stop and think of years past and how nice it would be to establish some of that memorabilia in a permanent setting, it doesn’t seem like such small potatoes.” His wish was realized when the heritage museum opened the following year, as a stand-alone display at the “Old Barry Homestead” of what the Free Press cataloged as “rustic imple-ments ... hotel and tourist particulars, furniture and sporting elements.”

These days the collection—which has grown considerably, thanks to steady donations from area attics and storage sheds—is currently housed in the old fire station on Pine Street. (Since the building is up for sale, the museum’s future remains unclear.) Granted, its alphabet-soup atmosphere can be a bit overwhelming. There’s no timeline, no steady progression of decades and themes to

The Tupper Lake Heritage Museum is a storage depot for the town’s collective memory.

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September + October 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 67

leisurely explore. Instead of a curat-ed experience thoughtfully designed for a generation with the attention span of a pack of excitable puppies, it’s an all-in stockpile of artifacts that requires a little time and effort.

Hoffmeister, in Hamilton County, has its own small-fry museum, as do Olmstedville, Johnsburg and Caro-ga Lake. There are about as many of these tiny repositories as there are tiny towns in the North Country, hushed spaces kept open by an army of retirees. And is it worth it, all that sifting through of donations, dusting and arranging of yearbooks and uni-forms and appliances?

A recent write-up from nextavenue—a public media blog for aging Americans—would say no. The arti-cle, “Sorry, Nobody Wants Your Par-ents’ Stuff,” counsels Boomers and Gen Xers that the best way to dis-pose of their forebears’ possessions is to do just that—dispose of them. It’s a different world, we’re told, and if we think our children will be interested in our old stuff, we should “prepare for disappointment.”

Every life has a backdrop, a jum-bled set of one (hopefully) long, often very dull movie. That film might never be a box-office draw, but I’d argue that the importance of its nickel-and-dime props transcends the original plot—and that the cost of wholesale dumping after the final credits is high.

The Tupper Lake Free Press paid a visit to Richer’s heritage museum in its inaugural season, recording one woman’s reaction to an old icebox: “Remember that! We used to have a card that said ‘ice’ and we’d put it in our window to let Mr. Forkey know we needed some. He delivered in the Junction for so many years!” The takeaway? Now you know how families in a little Adirondack town acquired ice in the misty years before it magically poured out of refrigera-tor doors. You’re welcome.

You might be saying to yourself, sure, I like artifacts as much as the next guy, but safeguarding our his-tory is the task of orderly, accredited museums. The thing is, professional

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curators don’t—and shouldn’t—save everything. They carefully choose items to preserve and interpret based on their institution’s mission and the individual strands of history they are charged with following. Where does that leave the other strands? It’s these crowd-sourced assemblages of everything and the kitchen sink that can catch up the remnants.

I HAVE A FRIEND who bought into the scrapbooking fad back in the early 2000s, when evenings of cutting and pasting began to replace Tupperware burping sessions on sub-urban social calendars. In her rounds of workshops, she’d been instructed to preserve only the best of the best photographs—or, rather, the best of the best that matched the color scheme and vibe of the page she was currently creating. The results were a precursor to Instagram, perfectly fil-tered snapshots of her life.

But my defense of historical hoarding extends to snapshots. I save every picture, no matter how unat-tractive or blurry or off topic. When I look back at stacks of forgotten scenes, I often see something I never knew to look for. There’s that photo I took with my very first camera—my uncle is missing half of his head (just above the 1970s mustache), but the laundry scattered on the grass around him is evidence that folks in Lyon Mountain relied on the sun and not Clorox to brighten their whites. The perfectly hideous picture of my parents socializing decades ago—our yellow daisy wallpaper reflected in my mother’s coaster-size glass-es—proves that flannel has always been an acceptable fashion choice in the Adirondacks. And then there’s that dimly lit picture of teenage me crouched in a stairwell, red eyes glar-ing, with a receiver glued to my ear and the phone cord stretching out of the frame. The takeaway? Now my grandchildren will know that teens once lived like chained animals in the misty years before communication became a movable feast. You’re wel-come, kids.

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Leave the driving to Country Travel DISCOVERIES in twoseven-day adventures highlighting the best of the Adirondacks, including sweeping vistas, lake cruises, birding and fl y-fi shing outings, and a Great Camp tour.

Highlights Include: • Visit Pine Knot, fi rst of the Adirondack Great Camps• Breathtaking coastal drive along Lake Champlain• Relive the “Miracle on Ice” at the Lake Placid Olympic Center• Cruise Lake George on the steamboat Minne-ha-ha• Meet the editors and regional experts at Adirondack Life• Visit Crown Point• Meet Steve Bowers, rustic craftsman• Guided walk with birding expert Joan Collins• Tour and cheese-tasting at Asgaard Farm, Au Sable ForksThis super-inclusive trip costs only $1,697 per person (Double rate) or $2,105 (Single rate). For a full itinerary go to countrytraveldiscoveries.com/ADL or (855) 744-TRIP (8747). Mention code ADL17A.

JUNE 25–JULY 1 and SEPTEMBER 23 –29, 2017

CELEBRATING THE 125th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ADIRONDACK PARK


84 ADIRONDACK LIFE AT HOME IN THE ADIRONDACKS 2017

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BARKEATE R by Fran Yardley

1. Guide house at Bartlett Carry, where the author and her husband first stayed. 2. Porch-view of Middle Saranac Lake and Ampersand Moun-tain. 3. Jay and Fran Yardley, 1968. 4. Merritt Lodge at the Bartlett Carry Club, circa 1960. 5. Virgil Bartlett, who started the Bartlett’s Sportsmen’s Home (6), in 1854.

BOOM. I BOLT OUT OF SLEEP INTO THICK DARK. What was that? I burrow into the warmth of two wool blankets and a comforter. What was that sound? Did a tree fall on our cabin? What else could it be? Maybe the corner of our tiny bedroom has broken off in the cold and is lying in a splintered heap in three feet of Feb-ruary snow. After a childhood in Buffalo, New York, I should be used to snow. But here it’s been snowing for three days. On the first day, snow settled like a fluffy down coverlet on our roof. On the second day, snow coiled on tree branches like fat lazy snakes.

By the third day, I felt completely cut off from the outer world.And now, the sound of this boom has shaken me awake. Whatever it was,

my husband, lying next to me, is still fast asleep. He doesn’t seem concerned, so maybe I don’t need to be either. I cannot be a wimp. I have to figure this out myself. Meanwhile, I fully expect to feel snowflakes land any minute and melt on my face.

INTO THE WILDERNESSNavigating my new life at Bartlett Carry

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AT HOME IN THE ADIRONDACKS 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 85

I should get up, turn on the light, see what has happened. I begin to emerge from the covers and pause. Damn, we don’t have electricity. Even after four months in this wilderness, I forget sometimes. Curling into a tight ball, I conserve the little warmth inside me. No hope of more sleep. Thinking, thinking. Why did I follow Jay Yardley here in the first place? I do love this man. I was intrigued by the idea of the adventure when I said, “Yes, I will marry you … Yes, I will follow you any-where.” He was passionate, certain this was the right thing to do. And now our cabin is collapsing in the middle of the night and we probably won’t be able to get out for days and days. Why is he still sleeping and here I am, eyes wide in the crystal black?

The cold and the dark send me to places deep inside that ask questions I don’t allow in the daylight. Really? That part of me asks. Am I up for this? Even in daylight the situation is overwhelm-ing. I can’t stop thinking of the tour Jay took me on after we got here. I had to make him repeat how much land we have. One thousand acres. Bordering two lakes. I can’t wrap my mind around what that means. One thousand acres of wilderness, trees, lakes and rivers. I’m sure I’d get lost out there and never find my way home. There are some-thing like 37 cabins and boathouses, including an abandoned historic 1800s summer resort and a rustic summer camp—all in Jay’s family for four gener-ations. And a crumbling dam. And now we are responsible for it all.

The dark magnifies everything. How in god’s name are we going to deal with 37 buildings? Most are real houses, not cabins, some with five or six bedrooms. They have names like Maple and Birch and Fir. Jay has a vision, he is so sure of himself, but I cannot conceive of how we will possi-bly do all of this. I’m willing to follow his lead, but I have to admit, in the middle of the tour, it took everything I had to not just stop and say, I can’t do this, I don’t know how to do this.

At least I have learned how to wash the glass chimneys for our kerosene lamps without smudging them so we P

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Visit nature.org/adirondacksEmail [email protected] @AdirondackTNC

Please help us protect vital Adirondack lands and waters, strengthen ties between communities and nature, and inspire broader support for conservation.

Nature makes life better.


86 ADIRONDACK LIFE AT HOME IN THE ADIRONDACKS 2017

can have light. And I was determined to figure out how to crank the gas gen-erator to pump lake water up to a thou-sand-gallon tank on the hill above us. Without that water gravity-feeding to our cabin through pipes buried below the frost line, we can’t brush our teeth or flush the toilet. But no one warned me the roof would crack in the middle of the night. No one warned me how lonely it could be.

Our closest neighbors live a mile away and we don’t know them well. I have no one to talk to but Jay and he is off working most of the day. We are 11 miles from any town. Who would want to live that far from anything? Just yesterday, on the walk down our half-mile driveway, for a moment I thought I saw my sister standing in the woods. I’d give anything to see her. Or anyone. I’m not used to hav-ing no one around. When Jay comes home for lunch after working on one building or another, I greet him at the door, lunch ready on the table. I don’t want to miss a second of time with him, even if we eat in silence. Jay is usually preoccupied with a bulldozer that broke down or a chainsaw that needs sharpening.

As I lie here, I think if I could keep the names of the cabins straight, repeat their names over and over, maybe I could go back to sleep. Maple, Birch, Fir, what are the others? Maple, Birch … ? Finally, the warmth under my blankets soothes my racing mind. The scary questions, the doubts and the bare-bones truth recede for at least a while, and eventually I go back to sleep.

A few hours later, daylight shines through our intact window, not stream-ing in from a gaping hole in the ceil-ing. Out the window, the clear blue sky looks brittle, as if I could break off a thin piece and crunch it exploding in a blue phosphorescence in my mouth. No snow covers our bed.

“What was that sound in the night?” I ask Jay.

“Ah! That’s the ice on the lake crack-ing. It does that when it’s really cold.”

Okay, question answered. But the monologue of the night hangs in the

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AT HOME IN THE ADIRONDACKS 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 87

cavern of my mind. Do I really want to be here? I’m 24 years old, married only a year and a half, living far from friends and family, homesick for the past puppy pile of my four siblings and the neighborhood kids who grav-itated to our apple orchard for kick-the-can. I never had to deal with long, silent days; dark, cold nights; getting lost on one thousand acres; or, for that matter, booming ice. I wonder if I can do this.

I remember vividly how it all began. It was 50 years ago, the fall of 1965, my senior year at the University of Colora-do. The moment I walked into Creative Writing 304, I noticed the tall guy with jet-black hair in a Norwegian ski sweat-er. At six feet tall myself, I still had to look several inches up at him. I could stand straight and tall next to this man without reliving the awkwardness of seventh-grade dancing school, where I towered over every boy. The direct, intent, honest look from under his dark brows transfixed me. As if he could see exactly what I was all about. I wanted to know what he was thinking, what those eyes had seen, where he’d been.

Our first assignment was to write about something that meant a great deal to us. In class, Mr. Warner said, “Jay, let’s hear yours.”

Jay opened his folder. I have kept this folder, so I can still read his unique, half-cursive, half-print scrawl.

“The mist had risen to the height of the mountains beyond the lake. Josh walked down the long winding dirt road. His nostrils closed slightly

I WAS INTRIGUED BY THE IDEA OF THE ADVEN-TURE WHEN I SAID, “YES, I WILL FOLLOW YOU ANY-WHERE.” AND NOW OUR CABIN IS COLLAPSING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND WE PROBA-BLY WON’T BE ABLE TO GET OUT FOR DAYS.

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www.rockypointproperties.com(315) 357-3751 AT HOME IN THE ADIRONDACKS 2017 ADIRONDACK LIFE 89

as he allowed the smell of the balsam fir to gather in his head. It was that Adirondack smell.”

When I heard this, I sat up straight-er, leaned forward. I knew that smell of balsam. His character, Josh, was returning home after three years in the service.

“The family had always lived there through hunting, fishing and sugaring seasons. Some had walked down that road and kept on going just as Josh had once done. Some came back to be bur-ied with the rest near the river.”

Place. The setup for this story had such a strong sense of place. I wanted to go there.

That same day in class, I read a story based on my place—my grandmother’s island, 200 miles north of the border in Ontario, Canada—the first place I felt connected to, where my bare feet knew every root, where each early morn-ing my warm skin knew the shock of cool lake water, where my days were filled with parents, sisters and brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles and would-be boyfriends. The “old guard” faction—mainly my cousin Jerry and me, outfitted in blue jeans and moc-casins—wanted to retain old ways and traditions, honor the natural setting, no phone or TV. We didn’t even want electricity. Our enemy was my “con-niving aunt” with tight dresses, high-heeled, fluffy-toed, sling-back shoes, frizzy Clairol-black, done-up hair, who wanted cocktail parties and the newest appliances.

After class, Jay asked me out to din-ner. Over a T-bone steak and baked potatoes at Fred’s Steak House, we talked about tradition and the essen-tial timelessness of land. I told him about my childhood summers on Eagle Island. He told me of his summers in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York and his long family history there, of his fascination with a place up a river, a place called the Bartlett Carry Club.

“The Bartlett Carry Club?” I asked. “Interesting name. Why is it called that?”

“It’s an old summer resort going back

to the 1800s, not used any more, fall-ing into ruins. It’s called Bartlett Carry because it’s a canoe carry between Middle and Upper Saranac Lakes. My great-grandfather was the first in our family to go, in the 1800s. I spent a lot of summers there. Someday I’m going back. I want to take over the family property, restore all those abandoned houses, revive the Bartlett Carry Club. I know there are people who want to be in the woods by a lake, but comfort-able, in a place where they can touch down, relax. This is the perfect place. I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never seen anywhere as beautiful.” He ran long fingers through his black hair. “I have a movie I could show you.”

A turning point in my life, although I didn’t know it then. As I think about it now, many years later, that moment comes right back.

I sat on a straight-back chair wait-ing for the show to begin. The clicking whir of the 8mm projector broke the silence. Jay had invited me to his small mountain cabin outside Boulder, Colo-rado, to see this movie. The only light shot from the projector onto the dusty kitchen wall.

Then, instead of specks on the wall, a grainy black-and-white movie emerged. I leaned forward. Jay said, “Okay, this is the beginning of the road going in to our family ‘camp,’ our summer home, on Middle Saranac Lake. The old name is Round Lake. I like that better.” I sat stock-still, engrossed in the slow-mo-tion travel up a narrow dirt road, past white pines and maples, fern-covered rocks and moss on either side.

I knew trees, ferns and rocks like these on Eagle Island. Woods to run free in, canoes to tip over, 22 at the dining-room table, everyone talking at once. In the peace of Jay’s cabin, I dove into the images flickering on the wall. The eye of the camera escorted me around one sun-dappled bend after another. I wanted to watch forever. Excerpted from Fran Yardley’s forth-coming book, Finding True North, from Excelsior Editions, an imprint of the State University of New York Press.

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