Click here to learn how to enjoy the advantages of the latest in proven lubrication technology!
This section of allroutes.to sponsored by, created, written, developed and maintained by Ed Sanders.
Amsoil Independent Direct Jobber - Click here to check it out!
(Amsoil is in NO way connected with Amway)
If you arrived here stuck in someone else's frames...use this link to break free!
Webmaster E-Mail: edsanders@edsanders.com
|Home |Maps
|Panoramas |Towns
|Dining |Lodging |Campgrounds |Activities
|Calendar |Chambers
of Commerce |Moose |Real
Estate |Services |Shopping
|Sponsors |Routes
|Guestbook |Weather
|Advertising |
"HOME TO OUR MOUNTAINS," 1909.
(Commanaro: Words to Verdi's "II Trayatone.")
If you motored from Pennsylvania to the Canada border as we did, in 1909, you will recall that the car stalled
at every hill on the road, (which we then called "six hundred miles", having no very good way of calling
it anything else). Someone got out and cranked it every time. We got lost in New Jersey the first day, somewhere
north of Princeton in hills never seen again from that day to this. We never did find Newburgh, New York,--until
a day too late. We spent hours floundering around in mountainous forest in Massachusetts on the second day, (Peru
Mountain), and almost ran over a man just outside the Berkshire Inn at Great Barrington. The third and fourth days
we ploughed through dust and sand, hub-deep, crossing and recrossing the Connecticut River, and accumulating new
respect for the railroad tracks, as the hours went by.
On the journey home in September, we never did succeed in locating Poland Springs at all, and at long last we traced
Norristown in particular by Dr. McCreary's climbing up the bank and striking matches at the three rail fences,
to look for sign posts at every cross-road, for hours after dark, and in general by Maggie's recognizing the glare
in the sky from the distant furnaces of Swedeland. After that we did not take a car to Camp for many years but
let Mr. Snyder carry the burden of sending everyone for a ride "to the White Mountains", and, as John
will remember,--and probably Nancy McCreary,--to the Connecticut Lakes. We contented ourselves at Camp. I recall
that in 1913 I went to Colebrook only once in the season of almost three months.
However, the first memorable journey was enlivened by the company of grand Dr. and Mrs. McCreary and Nancy--and
the trip home in September by them and also by my great friend and ten-year cook, Maggie Kurtz. Those were the
tours on which "a horse counted five, a cow ten, and a-cat-in-a-window counted fifty".
We thus arrived at Camp in mid-July of 1909 towards supper time in a misty dusk--or a dusky mist--and were greeted
by a throng of singers. The scene is vivid. The cumbersome Assembly Hall organ (predecessor of Mrs. Snyder's piano
with green scarf) had been carried across to the boardwalk just where one would alight to go into the dining-room.
As I recall the saying at the time, it was "carried by four elderly missionaries"--but I was overwhelmed,
I did not count them. Certainly one of them was the well-known scientist, Dr. Loomis of the American Bible Society,
who had been decorated by the Japanese government for his work against the Japanese beetle. (His daughter, Miss
Clara, was there I think, a ckistinguished teacher; and a younger son Roger, who became a curator at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York. The older son, Mr. Everts Loomis,--not there,--was for a while with the Wildman Company, and
the grandson, Everts Jr., my children knew at Haverford College and as one of the guides at the Tip Top House on
Mount Washington.)
There was a marche-past of the entire Camp headed by Dr. Charles Erdman of Princeton, playing on an army bugle.
Mrs. Stone played the organ, and Mr. Stone led the singing. At this moment we first heard burst upon our ears the
classic song which is still enshrined in birchbark on the Chalet wall. I quote the original three verses:
"In summer time of 1908
The King of Diamonds met his fate. Her name it was Miss Helen Waite.
Hurrah for Mr. Coleman.
On April 14, 1909,
Our Coley said, "Will you be mine?" Miss Helen said, "I will be thine".
Hurrah for Mrs. Coleman.
Then welcome, welcome, Colemans two, Without you we have all been blue. We're glad that there are two of you.
Hurrah for both the Colemans."
The chorus, "Coley Oley Iley A", was sung to the tune of "Patsy Oiry Airy A", referred to in
a previous chapter.
Mr. Stone followed with extemporaneous cheers for everybody before we could leave the car at the diningroom entrance,
(i. e., the great North American water shed between the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound). There we sat at
the dining-room entrance--"Three cheers for both the Colemans", "Three cheers for Dr. McCreary",
"Three cheers for the Chadwick car"; and finally, as I was wearing, for the customary rain, the first
of a long line of rain garments (a "Uneeda Biscuit hat", or sou'-wester, in yellow oil silk, brought
for such occasions from Liberty's in London,--positively the third and last hat to be mentioned in this story),--he
ended at last with a cheer for "The hat, the hat, the hat". Thus styles are made in America. Who has
not "both a borrower and a lender" been,--of rain hats, rain-coats, "wain tapes", umbrellas,
rubbers, galoshes. rubber boots--and dry shoes--at Diamond Pond?
I think it was in 1909 that the children at Camp had a great fashion for odd nicknames. One especially nice little
boy was called "Prune", hence his family too; Libs Stone wrote me in midwinter--"the Prunes have
come to Chicago". If this was in 1909, then also Mr. Charles Huston' of Coatesville, "the ironmaster",
and his family were in Arden. Their small boy Stewart was promptly named "Stew-cat" in this parlance,
and less than ten years later Stew-cat was a distinguished aviator in the Great War, and decorated for "conspicuous
gallantry in action," by the nations of the world.
The old pictures in the Camp Book for that summer feature the field sports,--young Erdmans everywhere; huge Dr.
Stone chained to some little girl of three or four (probably Alice Erdman) in the "three-legged-race"-and
venerable Dr. Loomis with his snow-white hair standing motionless all afternoon as "the post."!