The following are excerpts of an interview with Judy Cameron on February 8, 2011. The interviewer is Amy Catania and Peggy Eisele assists. The complete transcript and digital copy is on file in the archive of Historic Saranac Lake.

AC: Ok, well we were going to talk today and get some stories from the past. Let me introduce myself, I’m Amy Catania, I’m the Director of Historic Saranac Lake. Are you familiar with HSL?
PE: No, I’m not I asked Judy if she knew.
AC: Well Historic Saranac Lake has been around about 30 years. I haven’t been with the organization that long, but it started back 30 years ago putting properties on the National Register in Saranac Lake because there were all these historic properties that weren’t being preserved and so a group of people got together and you probably know some of them, Dot Fobare and uh...
PE: I don’t but Judy would.
AC: Jeanne DeMattos was one of the members…. She just passed away.
PE: Oh yes, well, she lived here.
AC: And now we’re in the old Saranac laboratory on Church Street, Dr. Trudeau’s old laboratory and we’ve restored that and have it as a museum now. So one of the things we want to do is to talking with people who know about Saranac Lake back in the old days. Judy, I remember you shared a lot of great stuff a month ago about your childhood on Upper St. Regis Lake. Upper St. Regis Lake from St. Regis Mountain, c. 1904
JC: Yes.
AC: And I remember you said you came to Saranac Lake in the summer times.
JC: Yes
AC: Did you get to see Winter Carnival when you were younger, when you came to town?
JC: Well I was away for 20 years when my kids were growing up when I was first married. From 40 to 60.
AC: So when you were a little girl you didn’t get here in the winter time?
JC: No we were in New York City, no we weren’t, now wait a minute. When we first came to the camps we have, my mother’s sister married a doctor who was wonderful friends of my father, who was a doctor, and so that’s why we were together so much. We had three children and they had three children and we spent all our childhood playing together until I got married. My husband was from the west so we went west. In the west I couldn’t think of anything but the Adirondacks so I soon as I came back that’s when I started going to Winter Carnival every year. And the most important and memorable thing about Winter Carnival was always the Ice Palace and it was wonderful. They built wonderful ice palaces and I remember them using the prisoners to cut the ice and to build it up. 1 But several times after the ice palace was almost built we had a thaw and the stuff… like the cement, the slush that held the blocks together would melt and sometimes they had to tear down parts of the ice palace and build it up into something smaller because it was so melted. And that’s my major memory… the ice palaces over the years.
AC: The people that you knew well out on the lake, a lot of them were seasonal people, they just came in the summer, right?
JC: Yes.
AC: Do you know if they participated in some way in Winter Carnival or were they…
JC: I don’t know. I wasn’t here.
AC: Did some of those families…? Well because some of them also had homes in town didn’t they, like the Trudeaus?
JC: Yeah.
AC: Were there other families like that that were…
JC: I imagine so.
PE: Judy, did any of your family come from Manhattan specially for the uh (to Amy) When did this program start?)
AC: The carnival?, Oh it’s been going on since the turn of the century, so
PE: So did anybody ever come up like your family from Manhattan in February to see the parade or anything? You don’t remember that?
JC: I don’t know, I just don’t remember because I was away and my kids were old enough that they could do different things. Growing up in the west so a lot of them were living in the west, and still are.
AC: And where in the west were you?
JC: Jackson Hole, Wyoming
AC: Oh that’s a pretty place
JC: Oh it’s beautiful, second best to the Adirondacks.
AC: Wow.
JC: But all I can remember is working on those ice palaces when they started to melt.
AC: Yeah, it doesn’t look that will be a problem this year – the weather’s holding so everybody is happy.
PE: We heard about ice at the library the other day didn’t we? What a wonderful program that was.
JC: It was a very interesting program
AC: Oh did you get to hear Caper’s story. 2 Yeah, she did a presentation about that at the lab earlier. It is neat, neat stuff.
JC: It was very good
PE: Oh it was excellent. Who ever thought ice would be interesting?
JC: Yes, even me who is so devoted to the Adirondacks. “Well, I don’t know whether I want to go back and listen to that.” Well, I always learn something new and I certainly did. How you tell whether the ice is safe, all that sort of thing.
AC: I liked her pictures of the different kinds of ice and how there’s, of course now I’ve forgotten half of what she talked about, but the ice that forms on the rivers that has that real thick kind of slushy…
PE: And how important it was to people here for a job, not just Saranac, but all in the area of the Adirondacks, it was food on the table for a lot of people …..which I never thought about, did you Judy?
JC: And she talked also about how everyone had an ice house. All the people who came in the summer time before the days of electricity, you had an ice house with blocks of ice piled up and between layers was sawdust which kept it insulated.
PE: Well it’s funny, I grew up in high school years in Peekskill which you don’t think of because it’s further south and things like that… but they always had an ice house there so that was not new, I don’t mean everybody’s house had it but there was one in town that I think the man would come around and sell ice so that was not surprising but I was surprised at how many people depended on ice for a living weren’t you? I didn’t know that.
JC: I didn’t know. You know, you always hear about Tupper Lake, the lumbering.
PE: Lumbering, yeah, oh yeah, but not ice not like she was talking about. Her whole program, as you probably heard it, her whole program was ice, not just Saranac but the Adirondacks
AC: So when you would get to the camp in the summer, your ice house would be loaded up already?
JC: Yes because you see in those early days, well we soon had electricity and you could have a regular refrigerator, but in the beginning we depended on the ice houses.
PE: That’s right I forgot about that - you didn’t go into town every day for ice certainly.
JC: No.
PE: No, I never thought about that.
AC: Did you go into town? As a little girl, just to get into town for a day or so?
JC: Never, never went near town, we were afraid we’d catch TB.
AC: Afraid of the TB, uh huh.
JC: It wasn’t until the '30s and people started having cars and they started finding cures for TB
PE: Judy, I don’t think she knows the '30s exist!
AC: I know a little bit about them! Well, so it’s interesting because of Dr. Trudeau and his family was out there on the lake.
JC: They were on the lake and right close to their camp was a little island and that’s where he experimented with ……uh, what kind of animals was it?
AC: The rabbits
JC: The rabbits
PE: Oh I didn’t realize he was a neighbor of yours
JC: And the rabbits couldn’t run around on this little it was so little and the ones that were on this island cured from TB and the ones that were running around on shore… 3
PE: That’s interesting, I didn’t know that.
JC: And on that little island now is a metal plaque in memory of his work.
PE: Oh how great, did the people on the lake put that up?
JC: I guess so.
PE: yeah, wonderful.
AC: Were there other people on the lake that had TB, do you think? That came there for their health?
JC: Oh yes, some people who came to cure they loved it so they stayed the rest of their life. Many, several families that came just for the summertime and spent the winters somewhere else. For instance the Duncan family it was the original they are now here in their 6th generation and the Rouch (sp?) Family on Spitfire Lake they also came I think they’re maybe in their 7th generation and the Garret family, there’s a Garret in the original Garret camp. That’s one of the only few that are in the original camp.
AC: You know I had a question the other day from somebody who’s interested in the foods that people used to eat in the Adirondacks.
JC: Well that’s what I talked about last time, how the boats would come around with food and stop at each camp because we were afraid to go into town for fear we’d catch TB
AC: Uh, huh
PE: Oh I see
AC: And what kinds of things do you remember eating in camp as a little girl.
JC: Regular food.
AC: Did you have somebody there that prepared it for your family, did you have a cook?
JC: Yes we had a cook.
AC: And she, there wasn’t anything particularly different as far as using venison or…
JC: No no there were no hunters on the lake.
AC: Ok
PE: Well did you all, did somebody have chickens?
JC: Yes, some people had chickens
PE: Maybe in that boat that came around?
JC: Do you know my chicken story.
PE: No I don’t remember it.
JC: When I came back, I thought I should have chickens to get some eggs, so I got some chickens and we built a little shed which isn’t there now. And we had not very many chickens but enough.
PE: Enough for your family, yeah.
JC: Enough just for our family and so when winter was approaching and we wanted to go into town, “what am I going to do about these chickens, whose going to mind them in the winter time…”, so I spoke to the post mistress about… “oh I’ll take them for the winter I can take care of them”, and so I gave them to her but the chickens, they were in a little place a little cabin about, well about as big as this… just the place for chickens. They became like pets ….that’s why we couldn’t bear to try to keep them for the winter.
PE: That is a funny story Judy.
JC: They were our pets and when we would go out to the chicken coop, the chickens would run up to the edge of the fence and come and visit with us.
PE: You’ll never eat one of me!
JC: So next summer when we came back we said “how did you make out with the chickens?” “Oh they were so friendly we couldn’t bear to kill them!”
PE: That is a cute story.
AC: Oh, that’s good.
PE: No you never told me that.
JC: So that’s one of my memories of early times at the lake.
AC: Uh, huh. So you must have, as a little girl, you must have gotten to camp and you put all your studies aside and just played in the woods? Or was it more organized for you?
JC: No, I just had my cousins next door, we played together and spent most of the time in swimming.
AC: Swimming?
JC: My cousins, they were in a little bay on St. Regis Lake, and they had a float anchored out there, we’d play, there were barrels, you’d dive under there and come up between the barrels and on the float we had a diving board and at the Garrett camp they had a float and they had a slide we’d slide down into the water.
AC: So you were there as a girl summers all through your teenage years too?
JC: Yes. When I was in college we spent the summers there.
AC: So were there romances between the young?
JC: There were many marriages between the people on the lake. Oh yes!
AC: Did the teenagers go to dances and things like that – did they have parties?
JC: Mrs. Post [Marjorie Merriweather Post], at the Post Camp, had first run movies several times a week and we were so grateful to her because the teenagers would go to those movies instead of driving into town, so they weren’t out on the roads at night. A boat house at Camp Topridge. Photos: MWanner, 22 October, 2007
PE: Right, yeah.
AC: Wow.
JC: And I remember she loved bats… Have you been in her Great Room? Do you know the Great Room?
PE: Yes I’ve been up there
JC: Well, you know she had the movies in that room. In the roof I guess the bats lived because always when she was having a movie, the bats would come out and start flying around the room – well she loved the bats.
PE: My husband did too!
JC: And she wasn’t afraid of them, most people would cover their heads you know all the stories of bats getting in your hair.
PE: But they do eat so many mosquitoes, they’re wonderful.
JC: Yes, but Mrs. Post wasn’t a bit afraid of bats and welcomed them when they came, when they came to the movies each night.
AC: What was Mrs. Post like, besides liking bats?
JC: Well, she was friendly.
AC: Was she much older than you?
JC: Yes, quite a bit older.
AC: You saw her as an elderly woman?
JC: Yes.
AC: And she had had a family that she raised there or?
JC: She had had three marriages.
PE: Was it three? I thought it was four. But doesn’t matter.
JC: Well there were four total but at that time there were only three. The last one was...
PE: Remember that beautiful one of the houses, she built a house for each husband, one of them was, because he was a Russian ambassador wasn’t he? [Joseph E. Davies]
JC: Yes, and she built that wonderful building.
PE: It was very interesting
JC: And the man who has it now kept that building and built a tower up on it.
PE: So, he bought it from that nut that bought it - you remember that man, the hot dog king? [Roger Jakubowski]
JC: Yes.
PE: But this man has maintained it?
JC: We became good friends with the hot dog king.
PE: You did?
JC: Yes.
PE: But, no, let’s hope they maintain most of it.
JC: But the man that has it now has built lots of things you know to make it almost like a memory.
PE: Do you remember and then we get off that part of the story, did you remember when she loved square dancing, and there was…
JC: That must have been when I married and was out west.
PE: She loved it and there was a square dancing in Tupper Lake, there was a square dancing band and she would fly them down to her home in Florida and then square dance down there and they did a whole write up on it in Life magazine. This man has since died but he brought the magazine…
AC: Oh wow.
PE: He was working on my house at one time but, by her having people in, all sorts of people, they must have come over here to shop and things like that. She was a hospitable woman, I presume, just like asking all these young people for movies, that was a thoughtful thing to do
JC: Yes she was very friendly
PE: If she had four husbands then she must have been!
AC: And about how many people would show up would go to the movies? Was it a big group of people?
JC: Yes quite a lot.
AC: And would you get dressed up for the movies?
JC: No.
AC: Everything was pretty casual?
JC: Oh yes.
AC: Would the families on the lake have parties? Dinner parties for each other?
JC: Sometimes yes, everyone on the lake was very friendly – you knew everyone on the lake and whenever somebody wanted to sell their camp they would never give it to a real estate agent. They would just inquire among their relatives and friends.
PE: Like Big Wolf.
JC: Among their relatives and friends on the lake and so the community stayed very unified, they all knew each other.
PE: They protected themselves?
AC: Now I’ve heard that some of the families, I know on the lower lake, they had their camps but they also had like a tent camp so they would stay in their building but then they would go and go camping in like a platform tent camp. Did you know any of those?
JC: Well we had places, St. Regis Pond, we'd go out there by canoe and people had tent platforms, but they had favorite spots on St. Regis Pond where they’d camp and that was known as the Garretts Point and such and such, because people came to the same places each year. A paddler on St. Regis Pond, near Whipple Pond
PE: Sounds like you had a wonderful childhood.
JC: Oh yes!
AC: Did your family have a favorite place to camp
JC: My father had absolutely no interest in camping - he was a tennis player. He said could go out in the backyard and get just as many ants in his dinner!
AC: And so you didn’t get to go camping much because…
JC: Well the people next to us in the next camp, the Slades, they had a permanent camp on St. Regis Pond, they had up a tent and sleeping bags and air mattresses and he took me camping. In fact the first time I ever spent the night out he had invited a lot of the young people out and he had the girls here and his main tent was here and the boys were all back here and he, the girls all slept – we didn’t have any mattresses - so they spread newspapers and there were four or five us of in a row on the newspapers and every time we moved the newspapers rattled.
PE: But it was insulation though wasn’t it?
JC: That was my very first night camping out and I was hooked right then and did a lot of it later.
AC: You did.
JC: And so we would many times. Also he was quite an astronomer – he would take me out on the lake at night and point out the constellations – so that’s how I learned them.
PE: But then when you were married you also got involved didn’t you, camping with your husband? Did you ever camp out in the west?
JC: No.
PE: Oh, I thought you did.
JC: No, he was a ranger/naturalist at Grand Teton National Park.
AC: Oh he was?
AC: Did you meet your husband on the lake?
JC: No you see when I was in college, the colleges, various colleges had outing clubs and you'd get together and go on trips on weekends. One time we went to Grand Teton National Park on a trip and that’s where I met my husband.
AC: And he was working there as a ranger then?
JC: He was working there then as a ranger/naturalist. He was living in California. When I was first married we went directly to California where he had a teaching job
AC: Where was that in California?
JC: Southern California, I’m not sure, I can’t remember.
PE: Where was it?
JC: Southern California?
PE: You don’t remember where it was?
JC: Well we lived in Altadena for a while which was just above Pasadena.
AC: I was born in Pasadena.
PE: And I’ve been there too.
AC: Really?
AC: Well my mom was born in Pasadena, I was born in Claremont. But, I think I was born in the Pasadena hospital.
JC: Well my father was a doctor and we were all born at home.
AC: What kind of doctor was he?
JC: He was a surgeon.
AC: And he had his practice in New York City?
JC: Oh, yes he was in New York City that’s why we wintered in New York City we just came up in the summertime to get out of the city.
AC: And you would take the train up to Saranac Lake?
JC: Yes we’d go to Grand Central and get on the train, and go to bed, we always had a drawing room, we’d go to bed and wake up and get off at Lake Clear Junction where we would be met by Fred Jarvis, who has transportation from there over to the St. Regis landing.
AC: And when you came up as a girl, did you make that trip yourself on your own? When you came from school, because you were in boarding school in the city….
JC: No I was never in boarding school. No, we went to the Brearley School which was private school in New York City and we had four months summer vacation.
AC: Wow!
JC: And the day school was out that night we would get on the train to Lake Clear Jct. and that worked out beautifully.
AC: And you would make that trip with your family then, with your mom and dad and…
JC: Oh yes.
AC: How many brothers and sisters did you have?
JC: Two sisters and one brother.
PE: Judy, let me interrupt a minute, you said you went to Brealey, a private school, was it uptown? You must have had to take a school bus type of thing…
JC: Yes we had a school bus which was a 5th avenue bus and the older kids were allowed to go upstairs to the top and the younger kids sat down below with the teacher.
PE: And where was the school?
JC: Well the school when I first went there was on 61st street and Park Avenue but then they soon then they realized that was very valuable property and they bought property on the East River and moved there. Then we had a school bus that came down from different places. We lived on Park Ave., the school bus would come down Madison Avenue every morning, stand on the corner waiting for the school bus and then we would cross 79th street and up and over to the school where it still is now on the East River.
PE: Probably a beautiful spot!
JC: Very beautiful!
PE: Looking over the water.
JC: And the school is still in that spot?
PE: Well now I remember when you spelled it for me that I’ve seen it in your correspondence from them, yeah.
AC: My husband is working on his dissertation for a PhD in the history of education and, he’s researching a school called the Ethical Culture School in NY City and that goes way back. They have a lot of neat history.
PE: I don’t know where it is in Manhattan do you? But I’ve heard of it.
AC: Well you know one of the families that was important in the Ethical Culture School was the Marshall family and they were on lower Saranac Lake, Louis Marshall?
JC: Well it’s interesting… the people that lived on Lower Saranac Lake, there were very few private camps… people would come to the Paul Smith's Hotel originally and then when Paul decided… and they had their favorite camping spots – he started selling those spots to the people who liked them and they would come in and they started putting up tent frames, you know wooden floors and gradually they bought those spots from Paul Smith. Those are the people I talk about when I talk about the original families that have been there for 6 and 7 generations.
AC: Well I’ve wondered… I know there were a group of families that had early camps on lower Saranac Lale and many of them were Jewish families because they weren’t welcome in Lake Placid. So Knollwood, the Marshalls were one of the Knollwood families, were there any Jewish families that built out on upper St. Regis?
JC: There was only one and they were not allowed in the yacht club.
AC: Oh.
JC: Except for the Reid family, do you know the Reid family? Whitelaw Reid invited them…
PE: Oh my goodness, that big building in Manhattan?
JC: I don’t know.
PE: Whitelaw Reid, is that what you said, on Madison Avenue they had a big home.
JC: Well, Whitelaw Reid was much more open and he invited the Jewish family to join the yacht club.
AC: Really?
JC: And he had an Idem sailboat which he named the “hot dog” and some people were so outraged they wanted to expel him from the yacht club. Sailboats in the Idem race pass Pine Tree Point
AC: Really, oh that’s an interesting story.
PE: In Chappaqua where I lived, when I first moved there, there were not… it wasn’t in writing but the realtors did not sell… until one year a family came to town and he was not Jewish but his wife was and when she got in, why it changed after that, so things do change.
JC: Yes when I came back from the west in 1980 things were much more open.
PE: Liberal, yeah,
JC: Liberal.
PE: And they should have been. There was a Jewish family in Chappaqua and they used to laugh about it and they said, you know we have our own country club and she said we wouldn’t let any of you Gentiles in, but she had a sense of humor.
AC: Do you remember the name of the family that broke the barriers?
JC: That broke the barriers?
AC: Broke the barriers, that Whitelaw Reid invited in...
JC: It was Whitelaw Reid
PE: Were they Jewish, Whitelaw
AC: No I don’t think Whitelaw Reid was Jewish
JC: I can’t remember the name of the family
AC: Do you know if they’re still here?
JC: No they sold the camp, long ago. No the person who has the camp now is Dr. Hixson, he bought that camp, he lives there.
PE: He’s the surgeon that lives in town here.
JC: Yes.
AC: Do you think he knows that story?
JC: Well I’m sure he must.
PE: Maybe that’s who he bought it from.
JC: Probably.
AC: Wow, that’s interesting.
PE: You must know all the water, you know, lakes of that sort that had maintained, that had, like Big Wolf, that maintained that exclusive…
JC: Was Big Wolf exclusive to Jews?
PE: Oh golly, yes
JC: That’s all in the past.
PE: Well, you still don’t just walk in and buy a place, Big Wolf.
JC: Really?
PE: Didn’t you go with us when we went over, when Carrie took us over there, for lunch one day?
JC: No.
PE: You weren’t part of the invited, heh, heh. It was at our table you know where I eat and Carrie sits with me so she invited about six of us up there. But uh, that’s really Tupper Lake, not Saranac Lake.
JC: Well lately the camps on our lakes have been selling through real estate agents and people have been coming in and paying a million dollars for the camps. It’s just nonsense.
PE: Well you know they probably come up and they see the price of a Manhattan property so that they come up here and it looks cheaper. I mean it may sound awful to you but it…
JC: Well for a summer place they still have their palaces where they live in the wintertime.
AC: You know, we took a tour last year of the Tousley building in Saranac Lake, it’s downtown, it’s the Madden storage building? And the Maddens were talking, well the building hasn’t been in their family for too long, but they’ve had the moving business in town for generations and they were describing to us how that used to be such an important part of the families coming in the summers was that they would move so much stuff for them. Do you remember that with your family, did you bring up a whole, trunks and trunks of things every time?
JC: Yes, trunks with drawers that fold out. Every time we came up we’d pack those trunks and bring them up on the train. Ed, Fred Jarvis would put them in his boat and take them over to camp…
PE: He’s not still alive is he Judy?
AC: No.
PE: That was some years ago, yeah.
JC: I think both of them, two brothers, Fred and Ed. One of them used to deliver gasoline. Everyone had a big metal tank on their back dock and they would keep them full to gas your boats.
PE: You’d need it for a car if you had one.
JC: Well they had a pump at the landing but it cost more than it did in town, so…
PE: Well you got to pay a delivery fee you know.
AC: Right, you bet. So did anybody stay behind through the winter out there on the lake were any of those places winterized?
JC: Not until… the Duncans were the first family. The very end of the lake you see, the lake was like this with the highway in the front so the people that lived here had roads in and very few of them could get into their camps in the winter but the others didn’t go into their camps in the wintertime until the Duncans — we did. When I first came back from the west I bought another property because the property my family had owned had gone to my older sister. When my parents died they left the camp to my older sister their name was Fenn and it’s now known as the Fenn camp.
PE: That’s great, Fenn camp huh?
AC: You built a camp and you would stay there year round?
JC: I stayed there year round… the first few years I had it I stayed there all alone. The first six years I was there all alone through the winter.
PE: You had to go by water to get there didn’t you?
JC: I’d have to go through the woods when the lake wasn’t safe.
AC: And how did that feel, did you like it? Or was it, did you feel sometimes like maybe it wasn’t such a great idea.
JC: No, I loved it.
PE: And how many children were you taking care of then?
JC: None, I was out there, no it was after I had come back, my husband had died and I had come back to that camp and stayed there year round for the first six years, all alone, and that’s when I learned to be very careful crossing the lake and that’s why I was particularly interested in Caper’s story…..I had a rule…
PE: Yes I thought about you all the time she was talking that you must have...
JC: I had a rule that I made up I would not venture on the lake until it had been frozen hard for 3 weeks.
PE: Good girl.
JC: And I would go through the woods to get out.
PE: That’s why you’re still here.
JC: That’s why I’m still here.
AC: And would you venture on the lake in a vehicle or you would walk.
JC: No I would ski, I would ski out.
AC: You would ski out….So how would you get provisions and things?
JC: Then you see that was after when my kids were grown up and I was quite independent and I would go into town once a week and get groceries.
AC: On your skis?
JC: On my skis.
AC: Or hiking through the woods?
JC: Hiking through the woods to where the road was and I had my car parked out there and I would drive into town. The St. Regis landing is almost 10 miles out of town.
AC: So how long would it take you to hike or to ski to your car?
JC: Well, I wouldn’t go out if it was more than 10 below because it was too hard to peel all the snow off the car. I would give it a day. I would start first thing in the morning, ski out, it was about two miles, which took me a couple of hours to get to the car. Sometimes it took me an hour to clean the snow and ice off the car and then I’d go into town and then come back and after awhile I got over that.
PE: Well you probably were considerably younger then weren’t you?
JC: Oh yes.
AC: How old were you more or less?
JC: Well, that was in the '80s. Now I’m 94, so I was 30 years younger than I am now... I was in my late sixties in the early 90s.
AC: So, you had to careful about not buying too much stuff because you had to bring it back with you right?
JC: Oh yes.
AC: What kinds of things would you buy?
JC: Just regular food.
AC: But probably not packaged stuff, things that you would cook yourself?
JC: The frozen things we’d pack in maybe in the summertime we had an ice house.
PE: When you brought your groceries or whatever, did you put them on a sled behind you as you walked over or something because a few pounds of flour and sugar and things like that became heavy.
JC: No I got anything that would last I got in before the lake froze, had stuff stored there.
PE: Oh all right I see, so that took a little organization.
JC: Yes.
AC: When you lived all year round on your own on the lake, that was the house that you built new?
JC: Well you see the camp I bought on the lake, because my sister had the original camp, I bought another camp and that camp had burned. They’d lost the kitchen, dining room and main cabin, the main living cabin and the maid’s cabin had all burned in this fire because this was an interesting camp – and the buildings were connected by covered walkways so you could get from one building to another if it was raining.
PE: Did you design that? It sounds very interesting and practical.
JC: No I didn’t, it was designed by an architect. That’s the way it was when it burned, that was before I bought it. I bought it after it had burned, the only thing left was what we called the tea house, which was, you see, when people came there, Mrs. Blaine owned it in those days, and when she had lots of parties, she was famous for having picnics, she had a place down in the woods where she would give picnics and people would come by boat, this was in the summertime, and when they came in to visit the camp before it burned there was this thing called the tea house where they would come in and leave their coats, it was right close to the main dining room and the main living room.
PE: What fun you must have had.
JC: Oh yes.
AC: So is the tea house still there?
JC: The tea house is still there. It’s a favorite place for guests to stay, it has a half bathroom, by half I mean it has a toilet and basin but no way to shower or wash, to bathe.
AC: So when you got the property you had to build new buildings.
JC: After it burned you see, there was a lot of stone work and Mrs. Blaine had all the stone foundations to the building picked up and piled back in the woods, it was a huge stone building and she said she would never again come to a camp that the fire engines couldn’t get in so she had the place and she had it for sale, until I bought it, it burned in gosh in 19…
PE: Well those old fire towers that they had working in those days, they were important weren’t they?
JC: Oh yes.
PE: Even now, I…. I’m glad they preserve them.
JC: They preserve them as a historic monument, not to observe for fires anymore because now they fly over and observe for fires.
AC: So did you use those stones from the original building for your new house?
JC: We took those stones and built my new house. The walls are entirely of stone up to the roof.
AC: Oh that’s neat.
PE: That was terrific, yah.
AC: Have you been out to see her camp?
PE: No I’ve been out St. Regis. Isn’t there a restaurant, that’s not right on your property, but it’s…
JC: Well there’s a restaurant at Paul Smith's College.
PE: No not that one… I thought there was a St. Regis, I’ll have to check with somebody that I went with, I can’t remember.
JC: No when sometimes they have a dinner here they go to Paul Smith’s College restaurant.
PE: Yeah since we both lived here. They have an activities woman who checks out little restaurants big or small so if anybody wants to go then they sign up for it.
AC: That’s nice.
PE: Yeah it is, usually Judy and I usually go and maybe about 14 of us sometimes. They drive us over. We’ve come back in some wild snowstorms haven’t we?
JC: I never go on those dinner…
PE: Well, you’ve been on some. cause I, oh you went on the lunch ones you’re talking about. Well you went on the one we went to last week, oh no you weren’t there no, the Nonna Fina, well the food is so good there.
JC: On Spitfire you see there’s three lakes, Upper St. Regis, Spitfire and Lower St. Regis.
PE: See, that’s what I didn’t know.
JC: And to get from Spitfire to lower St. Regis you go through a narrow channel, through a long bog and that’s why that lake was never part of the community. Now one of the camps on that lower lake, one of the boys’ sons there, was a good sailor and of course our community is so devoted to sailing because of the Idem sailboats and uh…
PE: Did he develop that sort of or?
JC: He developed, he was such a good sailor he used to come and sail in our races that he was soon invited into the yacht club, so that camp was invited into the yacht club.
PE: He was a business man.
JC: Well I don’t know what he…
PE: Sounds like he knew what to do.
JC: Yeah, but you see we had Sunday afternoon races and that’s when he would come to race and he was so good that people got to know him and like him and that’s when he and his family were invited into the yacht club.
AC: And what were those races like, can you describe those a little bit, what it was like to watch?
JC: Oh yes, well we had races two days a week, Tuesday and Saturday afternoons they had races they had three classes of boats. It was Idem sailboats. Originally people that lived on the lake back when Paul Smith was, they loved to sail and everybody had a different boat, so Paul Smith decided the thing to do was have a class of boats built that were all identical so the races would be more fair so that’s what he did. He didn’t sell much….On the lower lake almost nothing just one place where there were three camps so later on it was just Spitfire and the upper lake community and the lower lake was different they didn’t belong to that community and some people had cabins at Paul Smith too but uh …I’ve forgotten where I was in the middle of my story.
AC: I was just asking for what it was like for you, what you remember about the races.
JC: Oh, the races.
PE: When she showed the pictures the other night about the ice, were some of those boats, they were some of those boats you hung onto the side, what do you call that kind of the sailboat?
JC: Well, I was just telling you they decided to have the class of boats built that were identical so the races would be more fair and so that’s what they did, that’s when they had the Idems built. It was built in Maine I think, and they were mahogany boats and there was not much wind on our lake. You know it’s fairly still in this area, so they had a gaff rig which meant an upper boom as well as a lower boom so they could have a huge sail and they sailed those boats. When I came back to the community in the '80s they were only three of those, they had 12 of those boats built originally. When I came back in the 80s there were only three of them to sail and what they sailed a lot was "O boats". Do you know what O boats are?
PE: No.
JC: They’re a much smaller boat with a mainsail and jib and they were very steady boats. They’re good boats for the children to sail. And then they had…
PE: Did you have a boat like that?
JC: We didn’t have an Idem, we had an O boat. My cousins and I sailed, my sister sailed the O boat. I always crewed. I crewed when I came back, I crewed on an Idem or an O boat. Do any of you know any of the Trevor family?
AC: I remember you mentioning them.
JC: They were very great sailors and I crewed with the two brothers, John and Bronson Trevor. They were both excellent sailors and I crewed in all the races. I crewed for one of them one year and then another of them another year so I learned a good bit about sailing.
AC: It all sounds very serious. It sounds like the people that competed did it…
JC: Very serious.
AC: Very seriously, there wasn’t a lot of joking around or.
JC: Oh no.
PE: Do they still do it?
JC: Oh yes. But, then when they cut, I guess it was, well it was before 20, it was in 1990s they started thinking they should have the Idems sailed you see the Idems had gotten so old they were built in the 1890s and so they were so old most of them were sort of falling apart so when we came back and when my son became a boat builder he did a great deal with boat building and he…
PE: He did guideboats didn’t he?
JC: Well, yes he did guideboats but he also worked on any other wooden boats and he repaired the Idems so that now in the summertime they have the Idem class sail and there are very often nine boats out in every race which is quite something.
PE: That’s great.
AC: And where do people watch the races from?
JC: Well, they go out in the motor boat, creep around along the shore watching them.
MR: The best way is if you’re also in the boat.
JC: Yes oh yes, always, because the sailing course goes over here around a buoy and down between the islands and then down here and around a buoy which is out of sight and then it comes up the lake and goes around the Pulpit Rock buoy. Now this Pulpit Rock in the early days before they were any motor boats on the lake, I guess before they even had church there would a preacher on Pulpit Rock and people would come in their guideboats or canoes and have church there.
AC: Wow, that’s really neat. Did you do that?
JC: No, I was in the west then.
AC: OK, so the race takes quite a while from start to finish?
JC: Oh yes it starts at 3 o’clock and most boats finish by 5:30. It unifies the community.
PE: I would think so.
AC: And on one Idem boat how many people would be on that boat?
JC: Well you have one on the tiller and one on the main. The person on the main sits on the rear deck and manages the main and there’s a jib. Every time you come about you have to adjust the stays, tighten, loose this stay, and tighten this stay, so you have to have at least four and when they first started resailing them, the boats were so old and leaky that they often had someone there with a pump so it wouldn’t sink.
AC: And were they all men that sailed the Idems, way back when or did women…?
JC: Mostly.
AC: But some women participated too?
JC: There was one family that had hired a professional sailor to come and sail in the races. You weren’t allowed to have a professional sailor on the tiller, I mean on the main. Which was it? One of the sails you couldn’t, the main sail you had to have a local person on the tiller, local people were sailing on the tiller, but they could be on the main sail. I was on the stays in those early days and every time we’d come about I’d loosen one stay and tighten another.
PE: But you knew what you were doing.
JC: And the races were serious.
PE: Yeah, that’s what she was saying, yeah.
JC: I sailed on the winning boat that one year, that first year I came back.
AC: When you came back, in the 80s, had you sailed on the boats in the races before?
JC: No I was too little. Maybe I sailed with the Trevors, with John and Bronson Trevor.
AC: That must have been pretty exciting to come back and be on the winning boat.
JC: Well the Trevors always won, too, and I sailed with them. It would be all through August, Tuesday and Saturday there’d be a race and then you’d pile up points and at the end of the season whoever had the most points would be the winner.
AC: Did they get anything, a prize or a…?
JC: Oh yes there were silver cups and those silver cups are still around.
MR: Oh... Do they have a museum or something for the objects?
JC: No, people had them at camp and keep them all year. Then at the end of the sailing season they had what they would call the Labor Day Tea and they had people come and that’s when they’d give out the prizes. But also, when I was 13 years old, a new family that had been on the lake, are you familiar with the lake, do you know those cobblestone buildings? There were two cobblestone buildings, one on Spitfire and one on the Upper Lake and the people, they had both been left unused for quite awhile and the people on the Spitfire Lake came back and they had a daughter, 13 years old and she and I got together and founded the Junior Yacht Club, which is very active now, so the juniors have their own races every Friday now. The boathouse at Camp Katia
PE: Oh, that’s great.
JC: You have to be 6 years old to sail and when you are sixteen you graduate into the upper, the regular yacht club.
AC: Oh, that’s neat.
JC: In those days everyone knew everyone, socialized together.
AC: So you taught the younger kids to sail, yourself?
JC: Yeah, I remember one time I took my 4th son out. Oh on Sunday we had just one sail, no jib, anyway I took my son out and raced. They had special separate races, I took one son out, showed him how to watch the sail and when to put it out so he went… Sometimes on Sunday afternoon in these little boats, the small boats that one person would sail and they had those Sunday afternoon races and he went out and sailed, the Trevor trophy and he won it after I told him to sail.
AC: And those trophies then get passed from whoever the current winner is?
JC: Yes, and you get your name engraved on the base and the next yacht club or Labor Day tea bring your trophy back and they bring them all back and each year they have them engraved, sometimes you can go to stands where this place you can have the name engraved.
AC: That’s neat
PE: Do you ever write some of these things down Judy?
JC: No…
AC: Well, that’s what we’re going to do.
PE: She has so much to tell.
AC: Yeah, it’s wonderful stories. Well you guys are probably getting tired and almost ready for lunch soon.
JC: It’s almost lunchtime.

Comments

Footnotes

1. New York State operated a minimum security prison on the site of the former Gabriels Sanatorium, whose prisoners could volunteer for various community work projects, including the building of the Ice Palace.
2. Caperton Tissot did a presentation at the Saranac Lake Free Library on her book Adirondack Ice.
3. Actually, the rabbits that died were kept in conditions meant to simulate crowded city conditions.

Add tags