Memories of Camp -- (Near Cape Vincent, NY)

INTRODUCTION:

The place was called “Camp,” or sometimes the “Cottage.”  It was as close as we came to a “vacation home,” and was part of the family for many years.  It was in near a place called Three Mile Bay, just a stone’s throw from New York’s Thousand Islands region in one direction, and the city of Watertown in another.

Mum informed the writer once that she recalled as a young girl driving with her uncle from the Round Lake area to get to Camp.  Mum couldn’t have been too much of a “young girl” as someone would have to stop at his “regular watering holes” along the way for a drink, which lead to Mum needing to drive the rest of the way.  There’s a bunch of black and white pictures from that time around somewhere that show various people enjoying what Camp had to offer.

Dave’s first memory of Camp was when our “summer vacation” was driving around the Thousand Islands region, circa 1977-1979.  He’ll have to check some trip pictures that Mum has in order to confirm the exact dates, but Dave does remember on the same trip seeing the St. Lawrence Seaway and taking a drive thru Lake Placid, and seeing the ski jumps being built for the 1980 Olympics.  We stopped off for a few hours before resuming our trip around the area.  Then (to Dave), it was just a white cottage off of a winding one-lane road out in the middle of nowhere, but it had a nice view of the water.  There was a good-sized tree between the cottage and the road (the tree wasn’t there the next time Dave saw the place).  We talked to some of the Baxter side relatives, and that was it.  Not much of a blip on the radar of a kid.

Well, things change, as did the ownership of the Camp.  Dave doesn’t recall the specifics of it, but a few years later (circa 1981 or 1982, I guess) ownership transferred to that of Grandpa Baxter and the four sisters.  As a way to celebrate this, everyone would descend on the Camp for a weekend.  “Everyone” means the four sisters (Mary Sybil, Dayle, Snookie, and Faith), their spouses and children … at the same time.  The last time we had something like that was a few years earlier when we took over a large beach house in Kennebunkport (Maine), and that was more than twice the size of the Camp.


WHAT YOU SAW:

Before going into details of the weekend with about thirty people crammed into the same living space, let’s talk about the layout of the Camp, and how you got there.  (Keep in mind it has been years since the writer was there, so all distances are approximates and the memories are a bit fuzzy because of older age.)  We would drive thru a bunch of small cities and towns south of the Adirondack Park (like Boonville and Lowville) before swinging northward towards Dexter then Watertown, then westward thru Three Mile Bay.  About a third of the way between Three Mile Bay and Cape Vincent, on Route 12E (which had signs that said “Seaway Trail”) we would pass some farmland (without the hint of water in sight), and turn down a very common looking road (around there we were in the town of Lyme, but I don’t think that really made a difference, just making a notation).

After turning off 12E, as we went down this common looking road, we would look out the left of the car and now see the water, and now and then you could see little hamlets of cottages on the coast.  You would pass a number of roads which were labeled “private drive” which would take you down to each of these places.  After about a mile or two, once you passed a large white barn on the left side of the road, you could actually see the Camp in the distance (provided you knew where to look).  [In later years, we would look across the field as we passed the bard, and know if someone was at the Camp if we could spot the flag on the pole by the back door.]  I think ours was the last of the private drives.  There was a tree which a bunch of boards nailed to it with the family names of people who owned cottages down the lane.  Among names like “Dunbrook” and “Olephant” was a sign that read “Baxter.”

We stopped, opened up the gate that had been erected to keep the cows in, drive thru, and then close the gate behind you.  The private drive was mostly dirt, with one or two paved sections.  To the left was wide open field.  To the right were various styles of fences (post and wire, wooden, etc.) that not only served to keep the cows out of people’s yards, but also served to separate one piece of property from another.  Each cottage on the drive had the same amount of land from the edge of the shore, so it would look odd at the part closer to the common looking road where the private drive wasn’t close to the fences, but was right next to the fence line by the time you got down towards the end of the private drive.  [The cows were removed from the field after a few years, which meant there was no longer any reason to close the main gate, or individual gates, and some people at that point actually removed their fences.]

About halfway down the drive was a small steep hill that you had to slow down to make sure you didn’t bottom out as you over this little paved portion.  It wasn’t long after Dave had read “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” that this free-for-all weekend was happening, so he could just image that we were now driving off the edge of the world.  Camp was the third or fourth from the end, of a line about twenty or so.  We would pull up, open gate, drive in, and then close gate, then unloading the car would begin.  The aforementioned tree was now just a stump that you passed to the door that would bring you inside the camp, which was the back porch.  It took Dave a little while to realize that the part of the house that faces the road is only called the “front,” when there isn’t a body of water nearby.  A body of water trumps the road, so the part of the house facing the water is considered the “front.”  [That was confusing at first.  Once someone told Dave to get their coffee mug which was on the front porch, and he spent many minutes looking around what he thought was the “front porch.”  Obviously Dave didn’t find the mug in question.]

The Camp was a mostly square, one-story building.  It was a standard white colour (although in later years it was repainted to be more of a tan, which brown around the window sills).  Upon entry to the “back porch,” it was a fully-enclosed room with cushiony chairs to make a nice sitting area.  The windows on the inside walls shows that at one point this was an actual porch that was open to the outside, not just a room.  To the left of the entry door was the only bathroom.

Directly forward from the entry door, you would go into the kitchen.  There was a bedroom to the left (which a curtained archway to separate it) and one bedroom to the right.  Seem to recall the left bedroom seemed to have been claimed as Grandpa’s room (it might’ve previously been a dining room once long ago).  For some reason that room also had a door to the bathroom.  The kitchen and the right bedroom both had windows on to the back porch.

Going forward from the kitchen, you would pass into the dining room (so it was a straight open line from the entry, or back, door).  To the left was a small heater, and when you looked around the fridge towards the right was another bedroom.  From the doorway, looking forward across the dining room was a bunch of windows which could look out to the front porch.  The door to the front porch was near the right bedroom door.

The front porch was fully-enclosed like the back porch, but only with storm windows and such, so it could be a little chilly in the morning on the front.  Sitting at the dining room table looking thru the windows (and thru the front porch windows), one would see the water and think that the camp was actually on the water, except for the small tree that was slightly off-center to obstruct the view.

Except for a few trees here and there, the lawn was pretty open.  The fences between our neighbors (Olephant, who were closer, towards the main road, and Dunbrook on the other side) had previously been removed, so it made the yard appear bigger because we didn’t always know where the property line ended.  Since we got along with them very well, it didn’t really matter to either side where the property ended.  As a side note, just past Dunbrooks, there was a yellow road sign that cautioned you to the “dangerous S-curves ahead,” which was amusing because after about thirty more feet the drive ended in the field.

Walking towards the water, the lawn would dip down slightly past the front of the Camp, and then after about thirty or forty feet, there was a five-foot drop off that brought you to the water.  We had a set of wooden steps that would bring us down to the dock and the boat.  Looking towards Olephant’s, the drop off was much less to the point we could walk the boat in and out of the water.  Looking towards Dunbrook’s, the drop off became more severe, like twenty or thirty feet.  Dunny had a deck built there with stairs that went down to his boat launch.

This was not a beach.  Beach implies sand.  This was all rock, of many different sizes.  Looking at the cliff, one could see the different layers of sediment.  There were some good sized rocks on the coast you had to pass, and then you got a bunch of smaller rocks as you entered the water.  Yes, we wore old pairs of sneakers when we swam in order to keep our feet from being cut up.  The dock went out thirty feet or so, and depending on the lake level we could still be wading at that point.  About a dozen feet behind the dock is when the seaweed began, so we wouldn’t swim out that far.

FIRST WEEKEND:

Back to the celebration weekend.  The adults had figured everything out ahead of time, either by conversation, drawing lots, or “first-come first-serve,” to who got what bedroom.  For the children, it was whatever crash-space you could find.  Unroll your sleeping bag wherever you could locate space, as the few couches went fast.  It looked like a refugee camp on the front porch with all the bodies lying around.  I think Dean had the stones to claim one of the cots on the front porch because no one was sitting there at the time, and then Dennis or Craig lifted him off of it to claim it as theirs.  Dave was inventive, and pushed two cushiony chairs together and made a kind of crib.  The chairs didn’t quite stay together during the night, so Dave slept in almost a V-shape with his butt on the floor.  I think that lasted only one night.

The rest of the weekend was filled with swimming, reading books or magazines, playing cards, and generally being a madhouse due to the large number of people there.  A good time was had by all, as far as Dave remembers.  But it was probably because of that weekend that it was decided that each sister, as a general rule, wouldn’t be at Camp during the same time that others were.  Many future instances the times would overlap as it was fun to be social (especially on a holiday weekend).

It was also decided that it would be a place for the “adults” to go, not to be a hang-out for the kids.  One of the sisters had to be there, if any of the kids were.  Dean and I were more often than not the only kids up there, as the other “kids” were teenagers or older.  Once or twice there were exceptions made to that rule, but everyone had agreed with it ahead of time.


GETTING THERE:

Memorial Day weekend was commonly when the Camp was “opened” for the summer, and Columbus Day weekend was commonly when the Camp was “closed” for the rest of the year.  It was a time for the four sisters (and spouses) to be there to work, cleaning, putting in or out the dock, water lines, boarding/unboarding the windows, et al.  I think Dave was only ever there for one opening, but doesn’t recall it much.  Between the “opening” and “closing” weekends, it could be a couple times during the summer to get up there for a long weekend away (and in some instances, an entire week).

For the most part, the drive up to Camp had not changed (had to go thru Boonville, Lowville, Dexter, Watertown, etc,) to get there.  There was a grocery store called Dick’s Big M in Chaumont (and since it was a French name, it’s pronounced like its “sha-mo”) where we would get not only the groceries we would need for the time, but to get water.  As you couldn’t drink the water from the tap, we had empty two-liter soda bottles or plastic milk jugs that we could get fresh water from various faucets in the area.  There was a newsstand across the street from Dick’s where Dean and Dave would buy dozen or so more comics to read for the week.  Leaving Chaumont on Route 12E, we’d breeze thru Three Mile Bay, and get to the turn off road (off the “Seaway Trail”).

During the other years, which ever adults arrived first would get their choice of bedrooms, and the first one usually grabbed was the one off of the dining room.  My only guess is that was due to it being out of the high-traffic area of the kitchen.  There was a couch on the back porch, and on the front porch was a couch and two bed-like cots (ok, one was more bed-like than the others).  Dean and Dave would usually sleep on the front porch during their school years, and when visiting during their college or post-college years (as rare as that occurred) they would take over one of the bedrooms.  At one point after Dave’s college years completed, part of the back porch was walled off to effectively create another bedroom.

Going to Camp every summer was something that was looked forward to every year because for the most part, time did not exist when we were there.  The only radio was something that was occasionally plugged in, and the Powers That Be had declared there would be no TV that would reside there (occasionally a small portable was brought up by someone, but that was rarer than the use of the radio).  This was the only time when the tabloids would be purchased, as we would read how inane and silly they were, jigsaw puzzles done, and a bunch of books that lived at Camp were read (in addition to what was brought up).

Two other frequently done and enjoyed activities were going to various yard sales and flea markets, and going out to eat at various places.  There were specific flea markets we would go to (like the yellow metal building half-way between Cape Vincent and Clayton), but it was fun just to drive around and look for signs that would lead us to yard sales.  As for eating, we had our specific haunts that we went from year to year, as places would change hands the menus might get better or worse.  Because a place had new ownership could mean that it was no longer good (like Footie’s over in Pillar Point) or it became something better (like the Captain’s Lounge or Sackets Harbor Brewery).  More on that in a moment.

One year after getting groceries and breezing thru Three Mile Bay, coming up to our turn off Route 12E (the “Seaway Trail”), we saw a brand new building.  Seems that some enterprising person decided to build a little corner store with gas station there, and the name of the place was Porky’s.  They stayed in business for about a dozen years or so, and was hanging on by a thread back in 2001 (which ended up being Dave’s last time to be there).  It was the equivalent to the modern day “stop and rob,” as one could get essentials like gas, the morning (Watertown) paper, and of course beer.

The author has to point out that the summer weekends spent at Camp were all during the 1980s, which means it happened twenty to thirty years ago from when this document was written.  Many of Dave’s memories of Camp are jumbled and fragmented thanks to age.  Dave only got to be at Camp a couple times in the early 1990s before college began, and was not able to get back there again until Summer 2001.  One of the biggest reasons Dave wasn’t able to get back was Mum and Dad would usually go up during a holiday weekend, which was when Dave usually had work-related things going on.  Dean and Laurie went up more frequently during the 1990s, and have far better and more recent memories of the area.  Dave had hoped to be able to get back up to Camp on a regular basis after that Summer 2001 visit, but it didn’t work out.  Dave had hoped to get up to visit one more time to say goodbye to the place, but that was not meant to be.


FAVOURITE HAUNTS:

We went to so many different places when we were there, and there is no way to describe every one of our favourite haunts without driving down the street and pointing at places (“That place was good because of this,” and such).  As mentioned earlier, many would change hands (or menus) from year to year, and what had been a good place one summer became a not-so-good place the next summer.  The easiest way to reference them was just the places in general, as Dave can’t recall when a particular place was visited.  Dave will do the best that he can, and just talk about them in alphabetical order.

Barges:  This opened up in the early 1990s, and was just on the other side of the bay north of Camp.  Someone purchased two barges and attached them to a dock to make a restaurant out of them.  Below decks was the kitchen area, while the upper decks were the dining area.  While the atmosphere was casual, it was made to appear somewhat “fine dining.”  Dave thinks the food was so-so, but was only there once.  It was the next year or the one after that some storm capsized the Barges and killed a couple people, so that was the end of that.

Cape Vincent Inn:  Route 12E would come into downtown Cape Vincent, and this place was on the right.  It had some decent spaghetti, and was a place we went to in the earlier part of the 1980s.  Dave seems to recall that it wasn’t that good in the later 1980s, but apparently became better again years later.

Captain’s Lounge:  If Dave remembers correctly this was rarely-visited small restaurant in Cape Vincent until Dale stumbled on to it in the early part of the 1990s.  Apparently once this place had new ownership; it was quite a decent place for seafood grub.

Footie’s:  If you headed back from Camp towards Three Mile Bay, you would turn southwestward which would eventually bring you to the area known as Pillar Point.  Pillar Point had a lot of cottages on private drives like we had.  This was a bar-like establishment, I think it was part of a marina too (not sure).  Every summer there was a new video game that Dean and Dave would check out, which would keep them occupied until the food was served.  Footie’s had really good pizza, and we spent a lot of summers eating there.

Kingston Brewing Company:  While Kingston will be a whole entry in itself, sometime in late 1990s Mum and Dad stumbled upon this place, and it was a nice place to go and visit when we were over there.  Dave recalls only being there once, and buying a polo shirt with its logo.

McCormick’s:  This was an Irish Pub in Clayton.  It had windows on the water, where you could see people getting on to go on Thousand Island cruises.  While not frequent, we did hit it a couple times.  Dave grabbed a newspaper-like menu and somehow ended up with a blue Frisbee with the McCormick’s logo on it.  That was nice, as the next winter the place burned down.  For years there was just a gaping hole in the store fronts where it use to be, and Dave have no idea what eventually filled it.

Sackets Harbor Brewery:  Dave doesn’t recall ever going over to Sackets Harbor until the last time he had visited.  Mum and Dad found this marina-side restaurant a few years prior, and you could sit and watch the small boats come in and out.  There was a paved walkway that went out to a dock that Dave distinctly remembers some kid riding his bike down just see how far he could jump out into the water.  Never could figure out how he would get the bike back.

Three Mile Bay Pizza Joint:  This was not what this place was called.  It was a large blue building near a marina on the left side of the road as you started to leave Three Mile Bay towards Camp.  To my knowledge, we only ate there once because Dean nearly choked on the stringy cheese there.  Dave recalls when he came back up after his long time away that building was closed.


OTHER HAUNTS:
        Other places that we seemed to end up at various times was a drugstore in Clayton (kitty corner from where McCormick’s was) where Dean and Dave would get comics; a gas station in Cape Vincent that could be reached by taking a “back way” (that was not 12E) to the city for comics, beer, and munchies; the Cape Vincent hardware store, as there was always a project that needed to be done; and some grey Anthony Perkins-like house were there were antiques, which Dave believes was called the “Plummer House” (or something like that).
        Of course there was the aforementioned yellow metal building between Cape Vincent and Clayton that had the flea market we had to visit every year.  On the drive up to (or back from) Camp where a couple eateries that were frequented like the Lloyds of Lowville Diner, and Green Acres (that Dave has no idea where that even was).

Given the chance to drive down the area once again, to go past buildings in Cape Vincent, Clayton, and other places, Dave would remember much, much more.  Dave hopes these memories will be enough to help the reader recall other places. 

In the later 1980s, Salmon Run Mall outside of Watertown was built, and that became a place to go to see a movie or do some shopping.  (It beat that horrible drive-in we found one time that forced you to listen to the movie over your car radio, thereby draining your battery or keeping your energy running through the entire movie.  We saw “Sleepaway Camp,” which had been filmed in Cossayuna, so it wasn’t worth the experience.)

Dave remembers going down a “main drag” past some maroon-coloured apartments, crossing another larger road, and then within minutes being in Watertown hear the airport.  It was at that crossing where Salmon Run Mall was built, and the “larger road” was actually Interstate 81 that had been crossed.  Salmon Run Mall was not a major place that was frequented, but it was close enough to warrant mentioning.


KINGSTON, ONTARIO:

Cape Vincent is located on the portion where the St. Lawrence River dumps into Lake Ontario (or vice-versa, if you need to be critical about it).  Across the river is Canada, and the biggest city there was Kingston.  Cape Vincent was probably about the size of Fort Edward, and Kingston was probably about Glens Falls size (by Dave’s New York approximations; Texas approximations would be Gonzalez and San Marcos respectively).  One way to get back and forth to Kingston was to drive up the river (on 12E) past Clayton and Alexandra Bay, and then go across the large toll bridge (which is the last part of Interstate 81), and come back down the other side of the river until you hit Kingston.  That was 60-90 minutes worth of driving, depending on how good the traffic and customs was.

The fun way to take the ferry.  You’d drive up to the dock in Cape Vincent and get all lined up at the appropriate time (as the ferry kept to a particular schedule).  Once this ferry came, first ten cars in line would get packed in.  It was probably about 20-30 minutes across to Wolfe Island, Canada.  Upon disembarking, the one or two old customs officials would ask you the standard six or eight questions, motion you by, and you were now in a foreign country.  (Ignoring the fact that being inside Canada feels exactly like being inside the U.S., it _is_ a foreign nation, not another state.)  It was about a ten minute drive to breeze to the other side of this rural cow pasture island to get to the main ferry that would actually get you to Kingston proper.

The Kingston ferry could hold probably about fifty cars.  Since Kingston was right on the waterfront, and most things were within a few blocks of the waterfront, very rarely did we take the car over.  We found it was easier to find a parking space near the ferry port, and go over as foot passengers.  The ride for the Kingston ferry was probably about ten minutes, once it was loaded.

Usually what would happen was we would all synchronize our watches, figure a place and time to meet back at, and go our separate directions for a couple hours.  Depending on what time we arrived, we may’ve eaten together first, or feed once we regrouped.  Banks were not open on the weekend to allow you to exchange money, but that wasn’t usually a problem.  So many Americans were over, whether as employees or as regular visitors, the locals were use to being handed American money, doing a quick figures with the calculator, and giving you the appropriate change back in Canadian money.  If we were going over often enough, we would try to save Canadian money from trip to trip to make things easier.

There was a fort in Kingston dating from circa the War of 1812 (known as the Patriot War to the non-Americans) that we visited once.  And on one of the trips that we drove across, we took the opportunity to go a little outside of Kingston to a historical re-creative place called Upper Canadian Village.


POT PORRURI:

As all other memories get jumbled together, it was easier to mention specific tidbits here and there that don’t necessarily fit into any other category.

Hurricane Hugo:  Back in Fall of 1989, Paul & Faith had journeyed to SUNY Plattsburgh so Dave could scope out the college as a potential location for continuing education.  As cousin Janet was already enrolled there, the initial plan was to take Janet to dinner (for some _real_ food) once Dave had gone over all the investigative stuff.  Well, it seems that Hurricane Hugo was not only going to make landfall somewhere around the southern part of New England, but its affects were predicted to reach far inland.  Since the sections of the Adirondack Park are pretty sparse, we did not want to be caught out in the middle of nowhere when all hell broke loose.

Janet understood that she wasn’t going to eat something other than dining hall food that night, so the McWhorter’s hauled ass in order to reach Camp before the storm hit.  The original plan had been to drive to Camp after dinner anyway, but now the time table had been moved up.  We probably could’ve gone around the north side of the Adirondack Park thru Massena, but that would’ve been a slightly longer trip.  As time was of the essence, straight thru the Park we went.  It was like 2 or 3 pm when we tore out of Plattsburgh, and the sky was very overcast.

There was a McDonald’s in Saranac Lake that was getting ready to batten down the hatches that was glad to see our business.  We grabbed food from the drive-thru, and ate as we drove.  It was a few hours before dusk, but already it was nearly dark.  The sun was no where in sight.

It took a couple hours to get to Camp, which was not out of the ordinary.  We didn’t stop to Dick’s Big M for groceries or for water, as Matheson’s were already at Camp.  We pulled in to the drive in pitch darkness, at five in the afternoon.  The car had never been unloaded so quickly.  Everything was inside within ten minutes.  Those last few seconds of the unloading you could feel the rain start to come down.  Once inside, there was about enough time to take a breath, and then the sky ripped open and torrential rain, high-force winds, and fierce lightning dominated the sky.

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