The first time I saw Lake George, named after the English king of the time, I was five years old. It was 1950. The Bacon family went on vacation every single year, but it was always to Lake George. We would drive up, hauling the trailer and watching the station wagon engine temperature. Whenever Dad would stop the car, he would raise the hood to cool the engine. There was no Adirondack Northway then. It was all back roads. We went through North Adams, Williamstown and Pownal, Vermont and into New York State.
We would always stop at a kind of hot dog stand/bar on the left that had really HOT relish. Hoosac Falls? Dad liked the hot stuff. You see, that’s what I like about family stories. They wouldn't put that on a headstone, but it is cool to know. Dad’s eyes were blue, and so were my cousin Craig's. Auntie Blanche, his Mom, loved raspberries. If I didn't write that now, then no one would ever know. You can't make up stuff like this.
Looking back, I am glad that Lake George was all we did for vacations. We went there from when I was five until I was eighteen. The very first time we went, we stayed at Lake Luzerne where Dad’s best friend from childhood had a camp. Matt Kustra was a United States Navy veteran like Dad. Matt was with Dad when he met Mom for the very first time, at a roller skating rink. He served aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet, and if you know anything about World War II, you know that these sailors saw all the action that one could possibly see.
Matt Kustra in later days.
I wish that I could speak to Matt and Dad about their adventures in the South Pacific, and thank them, but they are long gone now. The greatest generation, I agree. My friend Charles likes the word "served" -- served your country, they sure did. Have you? Did you serve? Do you attend town meetings or pick up trash or coach a little league team? Really? Good for you!
All this started in 1950, and almost no one is left to say whether this is true or not, but I will tell it as I remember it for the family history. The police say eyewitnesses are often wrong, but here goes. This could be boring for you, so you can cut out now and text some one and I really won't care. My girl cousins Paula, Greta, Ruth and Leda, will vouch for what their cousin Bobby says.
We only stayed at Matt's for two years, and then moved on to knotty pine type cabins at the northern end of the 36-mile-long lake at Bolton Landing, and then next to Lake George Village at Diamond Point. But the real vacations began when we first started tent camping at Battle Ground Campground, just south of Lake George village. It is still there. We had tents. Two of them. The one my brother Mike and I slept in was sewed together by Mom and Dad in our backyard at 90 Howland Avenue in Adams, Massachusetts. Scenes are stuck in my brain with my Mom, Nora, sewing on some special sewing machine outside, in between our tiny house and the three-car cinder block garage.
My Grandfather Frank Bacon poured all these blocks in the cellar of 92 Howland Avenue. Mom said that is probably where he got the cancer, in the dampness of that stone walled cellar. It's funny what you remember, isn't it? Before Dad got a chance to pour the floor to the garage, it rained and filled the foundation. He was thrilled. Now all he had to do was mark the height of the water and he would have a perfectly flat garage floor. Dad wasn't afraid to tackle anything or anybody -- from a North Adams, Drury High School half back, to the repair of a fifth wheel on one of Rene Comea's tractor trailers, or to putting a slate roof on the two story BIG house where Grampa and Gramma Bacon lived, ten feet away from our tiny doll house that Mom kept.
I remember my brother’s and my tent as being fairly unbreathable, but solid and rainproof. The tent had no windows. The beds had wool blankets, probably from some Army/Navy store. They were white with a big blue stripe. Are there still real Army/Navy stores? One day it did rain, and we went shopping to Glens Falls. Mom bought me a book written by Audie Murphy, the Medal of Honor winner from WWII. It was called To Hell and Back. I read it in our tent in one night. It was the very first book I ever read.
Nora Bacon at the Million Dollar Beach, Lake George.
In between the two tents was the trailer that Dad built – parked, the wheels chocked -- that held everything that we would need for the two or three weeks that we were at Lake George. It doubled as a food storage area. We never ate out -- Mom was a great cook. We had metal bed frames that folded up (but the mattresses were very comfortable) with real pillows. Dad and Mom called the trailer the "Chuck Wagon," because it was connected to the two tents with a tarpaulin (a piece of waterproof canvas used for protecting exposed objects) that kept all three tents dry and cozy, with a picnic table and fireplace in the middle --and it held all the food. So it did not really matter whether it rained or not. It rarely did rain as I remember.
Dad showed us all the knots to tie the tents and the tarpaulin down -- he had learned them in the Navy SeaBees -- and of course we had to dig all the trenches for the rainwater to run off and away from the compound. And to collect firewood. Vendors would come through, selling ice and vegetables. There was no electricity.
If you drive through the Battle Ground Campground this summer you will see what I mean. Everything looks smaller now, but if you allow me, I will show you every single tent site that we stayed at. But why bother -- you won't come. People from Boston have never even heard of Lake George. They want to just go to the Cape and eat chowdah. We don't want you and your Red Sox Nation hats there any way. Mostly the tourists here are from New York or New Jersey or Can-ah-dah. Aye!
Battle Ground Campground has that name because of all the history that has happened right here. Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. Montcalm, Forts William Henry and Ticonderoga, The Green Mountain Boys, Rogers’ Rangers, Bloody Brook, Forts Edward and Ann. Nearby Saratoga, the battlefield not the horse racing stadium or the springs or the spa. I guess this is why I am a history fanatic -- but at least I am not a shopaholic or a serial killer. Okay, so I am a little bit of a shopaholic, but I got it from Mom and her sisters of the Hoosac Valley, who made it a team sport. Maggie Risley, from Pittsfield and a true Navy friend for 44 years, is one but she's still a good person. You make it sound like it is a bad thing.
This statue of a Mohawk and Colonist was inside the campground.
It drives Sandy crazy when I say that the Bacon Family was there before Fort William Henry, but we were. Sort of. Well, let me explain. The French and especially the Indians burned down the original fort, just like in the movie Last of the Mohicans, but it was rebuilt during the years that we vacationed there. Get it?
The Breens ran the Battle Ground Park, along with their two daughters, who we kind of pined over, but Mr. Breen kept them working and away from the wild Massachusetts boys. For laughs we would go to the outhouses and move the mixer pipe back and forth and holler out, "Help me, I'm drowning!" Okay, so maybe you had to be there, but it was very funny at the time. No, there were no toilets in the tent. Jeez. City people. Come to think of it, there weren't any showers . . . hmmm. There was no electricity, so we had to use white gas lanterns that you had to pump up before you lit.
When we were really young, my brother and I dug a four foot hole at the entrance to our campsite, and covered over with branches and pine needles to catch raccoons -- but we caught two pretty Canadian girls instead. Mom, Dad, Why did you let us do that? Our parents held, as Grandfather Frank said, very loose reins on us. Grampa also used to say, "If we didn't knock it off he would put tin ears on us." He had the very same composure that our friend Allan Sylvester has. You know what I mean -- you would have liked him right away.
The fifties brought the music of the Everly Brothers, Frankie Avalon, Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, Fabian Forte, Buddy Holly and Fats Domino.
Let's twist again
Like we did last summer
Let's twist again
Like we did last year
("Let's Twist Again" was actually a bigger hit than its predecessor from a year earlier, "The Twist.")
Someone would find a guitar and we would all sit around the campfires and sing and toast marshmallows and do drugs. Only kidding -- the only drugs were rye whiskey and beer, and I do not remember anyone, even Dad , overdoing it.
We never used the car, except for Grand Union grocery shopping. We would walk to the village to swim, or to wander at night, or go for ice cream, play shuffle board, or miniature golf. Yah, the Grand Union still stands -- and with most of the same staff. Only kidding. It seemed like a long way to walk to town then, but it really isn't. At first we would swim at the Million Dollar Beach at the south end of the lake, but soon we became regulars at the town pier near the Jolly Roger with all the other regulars to Lake George. Handsome John was the lifeguard at the town pier. He was muscular and always wore sunglasses. His nose was always coverd in white zinc oxide, to protect it from the sun. He always gave us a great Welcome Back. I still have a two-inch gash in my right foot that I got from landing on broken glass, jumping off the pier there. Mom taped it together and told me it was fine. Today I would have needed seven stitches and therapy. I tell young people that I got the wound at the battle of Gettysburg.
Lake George is a fairly cool-temperature lake, being thirty six miles long and four hundred feet deep. Paddlewheel boats that you see on the mighty Mississippi still carry passengers from one end to the other, but now they are diesel and not coal- or wood-burning. There are many boats on the lake, mostly power boats. There are many islands that you can camp on. Tom and Jeanette Egan and family have done it for years. Tom was born and raised in Providence -- it is in Rhode Island - and visited here as much as I ever did when he was young. This is only one of the things we have in common that holds our friendship together.
A paddlewheel boat on Lake George
Folks from the Italian section of our hometown would come up, mostly at exactly the same time. The Volpes, Demastris, Ballardinis and Bianchis. I don't actually remember them being there, but I have photos to prove that my grandparents, Frank and Hattie Bacon, were there, as well as my grandfather’s brother, Uncle George, his wife Georgina, and all my girl cousins -- plus their mothers, my father’s sisters, Cyrella and Dorothy.
Hattie and Frank Bacon.
Left to right: Dorothy Gotzens, Greta Gotzens, Paula Gotzens, Nora Bacon, Turk Gotzens, Bob Bacon, Hattie Bacon, Francis Bacon
My Uncle George Washington Bacon and Aunt Georgina at Campsite 31. Uncle George retired in 1955 and traveled extensively all over the US, Mexico and South America in his trailer (shown in photo at right).
My cousins, the Gotzens girls, Greta, Ruth, Paula, and Leda.
My childhood friend Bucky Volpe is already gone, but his mom, Gertrude, is still living in Adams. Monsuelo Ballardini’s wife, my Mom's best friend, Betty passed away in 2008. Now my cousins and I are the only ones left to tell the story. I swear this is all true. I would never lie to you mi amor.
Bucky Volpe
Thank you, Mom and Dad. Sometimes I go down to Lake George Village by myself when I am at Brant Lake and think of you both and of those wonderful, carefree times. The park near the town pier still looks the same. They still have free concerts there. Recently Sandy and I saw Gino Delafose from Louisiana play Zydeco music there. The Million Dollar Beach is worth ten million now. Fort William Henry still shoots off her cannon now and then. Yah, they still have the fireworks. There is a really good Polish restaurant on General Montcalm Avenue. Can you believe it? I actually feel closer to you there than when I am in Adams, near our house on Howland Avenue or at the Bellevue cemetery. I know you would be tickled to know that Sandy and I still visit -- and it all started with our family vacations so long ago. Yup, the girls come too. Abel hasn't been yet. Oh, I forgot, he is your great grandson. He is Kezia and Chris's son. He looks just like Kezia but somehow he has Dad's blue eyes.
There was an old TV show that said at the end, "Thanks for the memories" and that is how I feel.
Love,
Bobby
