Address: 15 Bert LaFountain Road
Old Address:
Other names:
Year built: c. 1890
Other information: Bert LaFountain's house.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, July 26, 2003
You know what…
By Howard Riley
[...]
Driving cab is how I got to meet Bert LaFountain. When the bars would close in town at 1 a.m. some of the patrons would call a cab to go out to the most famous speakeasy in these parts, Bert LaFountain's in Gabriels.
However, at that hour you could only buy beer, you could not go in and sit in the living room as at other times. The couple of times that I went at that hour, Bert was tipped back in a chair just inside, the kitchen door. You knocked, told him what you wanted and he put the bottle's of beer loose in a brown, paper bag. There was no such thing as a six-pack back then.
I also met Bert when I went there one Saturday with Dean Lynch in the summer of 1949. We were in the Veteran's Club Drum and Bugle Corps, and had played at a fireman's parade in Massena. There was quite a crowd there and Hank Stern stopped to see Bert to ask him if he wanted to hire a bouncer or some such story . He wanted Bert to meet Stubby Martin, Stubby was a bobsledder from Massena, married to Peg Baker from Saranac Lake. Hank called Bert in from the kitchen and Stubby, who was 6' 7" and weighed 300 pounds just about filled up that living room, with the low ceiling Stubby was an impressive man in any circumstance but Bert was just speechless, as he stood there staring up at him, much to Hank's delight
[…]
For the rest of this column, see Driving a cab in 1948.