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This
is what the Fischer
cabin looked
like in 1967 when the
Lawrences bought it
from Lucy Ackerly. Since
then, a larger house
has ground up around
the cabin. In
fact, the green outer
front wall of the original
cabin has become the
inside living-room wall
of today's house. |
We
first started camping in the
Beaverkill in the summer of
1930. I recall vividly our
first approach to the valley
from the Beaverkill Road and
the beautiful vista which
opened up before our eyes!!
My father was introducing
us to camp life and we fell
in love with it immediately,
so he had a tent specially
built to ensure our comfort,
rain or shine.
We
occupied what was then
Campsite #6, on the river,
just over the bridge and
past the springhouse on
the right side of the
road. Our perishable food
was refrigerated in the
run-off from the spring
into the river from under
the road. The outhouses
were up a steep hill behind
the campsites (a little
scary at night).
We
spent many happy hours
fishing, swimming, walking
and enjoying campfire
gatherings with lots of
toasting and singing.
My
father’s early death put an end to all this for several years, but my mother, brother and I managed to get to Beaverkill somehow.
In
1938 my mother purchased
a car (I was to be the
driver). Richard was working
at a boys camp in Maine
and I was recuperating
from an illness, and practicing
driving. The year we arrived
in our new car, the CCC
camp was disbanded (1939)
and the cabin office building
was moved to the edge
of Andrew Ackerly’s hayfield on the bank of the river and along the cowpath to his lower pasture. We daily carried water from a spring which crossed that path. It was always so pleasant to hear the cowbells going and coming.
My
brother’s next fifteen summers were spent researching the chimney swift in preparation for his doctorate thesis but mother and I continued to enjoy the cabin every summer through 1966. I was working in New York City (we lived in Flushing, Long Island) and came up on the N.Y.O.& W. every weekend from Weehawken, New Jersey.
I have never forgotten the Beaverkill Valley and friends there, among them Charlie Fuhrer (the pharmacist) and Belle Sorkin Halperin, who ran Sorkin’s Department Store. I knew the Miners and the Vernooys as well as Andrew Ackerly, his wife Maggie, daughter Lucy and son Fred as well as Bill Morrissey on the Elm Hollow Road.
I
have fond memories of
walking with my brother
and other kids to the
Beaverkill post office
and to Frank Kinch’s for milk. By the “other kids” I refer to those from Liberty; there were about eight of them. Dick Poley and Chester Fritz carved their names on the flat “diving rock” under the bridge. The carvings were still there when I had my last swim in the river in 1965.
In the years since, whenever I drove up to Ithaca to visit my brother, I never failed to drive down to the Beaverkill picnic grounds, get out of the car, walk around a bit and reminisce about the happiest times of my life in that beautiful community.
I
dream often of looking
out the window of the
old bridge where the river
forks to the left and
right, carving my initials
inside, along with my
brother and the “other kids” and swimming against the strong current in that frigid water.
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