A Tale For The Birds

A view of the camp on the Nine Mile

We've taken to wandering around the hills of Potter County in these days of social distancing, this time stopping for a ramble around Denton Hill State Park on a late Sunday afternoon. Someone had left a path of footprints in the snow along the Nine Mile beginning at the foot of Avalanche and following the trail provided a different perspective of our old family camp, known as Golly's Folly until it was sold in the 1960s.

The "Golly" of the Folly was my grandfather, the newspaperman whose weekly newspaper column in The Potter Enterprise was read by thousands (as he liked to boast) in the 1950s and 1960s. He often wrote about his little camp in the Black Forest.

When I was a child, Merve Chamberlin's camp and the Folly shared a chunk of leased state forest land. It was often told that "Merve is very critical of children" and we knew to steer clear of that side of the lawn when the shutters were thrown open next door. The line of demarcation was a large stone structure, a bird bath I was told, but in my memory it was always obscured by a thicket of prickers.

The bird bath was something of a magical mystery to this child, though I never asked anyone about it. I liked to imagine it was a relic of some long-ago tribe of Indians. Or maybe the creatures used it as a woodland shrine. It's a landmark I look for each time I stroll down Memory Lane on the Nine Mile.

Now I know the story, thanks to unearthing this Golly column from the summer of 1949. It was July and the Enterprise always closed down the week of July 4 to allow the staff to have a vacation. Granddaddy often spent that time at the camp.

One guest last week suggested a bird bath. This guest was so insistent that a survey of the town was made to purchase one to present to the shack. Local dealers' stocks were depleted. None was to be had.

By the time this information reached us, we had become bird-bath conscious. With the assistance of our good neighbor, Merve Chamberlin, we rolled a half-ton rock in position on the lawn.

With heavy stone hammer and chisel the work of hollowing the top of the old hard-head rock was started.

Bang, bang, bang!

We counted the strokes of the hammer. One hundred whacks and the rock was hardly marked.

The constant dripping of water wears a hole in the rock, we have been told. So we whacked and banged along – 100, 200, 300, 1000, 1800 strokes. There we lost count and something happened we had not anticipated.

In trying to make the reservoir as large as possible, we had chiseled too near the edge of the boulder and off went the rim already nicely started.

That was tough but we decided that as soon as cement can be transported to the shack, we will continue the work and build a bird bath.

In preparation for this Friend Merve located a gravel bar along the stream and together we sifted sand from the gravel – clean, sharp sand. It was not kid play to transport the sand after it was sifted.

A bridge of a sort was thrown across the stream, very low at present. Pails and boxes were filled and loaded into a wheelbarrow, but there was a marshy stretch to be filled for the one-wheel vehicle and after this, a trail had to be gouged out of the bank to the roadway.

It was hard work but by nightfall a ton or more of sand had been stockpiled near the two camps where either of us may use it as needs may present themselves.

That night, dead tired from the strenuous activity, there was a genuine satisfaction in the accomplishment of a task that had seemed hopeless at the outset.

Friend Merve declared that he saw birds flying about with bath towels late Saturday afternoon and chattering as though disappointed because their bath was not ready for use. Golly would not question his statement but his writer saw nothing of the kind.

photo from late winter 2016

 

March 2021