Foreword: Once upon a time... I lived in a log cabin on a mountaintop overlooking a peaceful valley. Abe Lincoln never had it so good. That time has passed, but the memories persist. A lucky few of you readers will remember the cabin I reveal below. Many others had experiences at a house vacation home in the mountains or at the shore, and have similar memories of house get-togethers.
This essay is intended to revive and edge those memories as well as to reveal what it was like to live in a genuine log cabin. Readers who are too young to have these experiences can find in these lines some background to the house folklore they may have heard over the years. So, read on. I hope you enjoy it and if you have recollections and experiences of your own, then by all means post an e-comment. It will add your offering to this essay.
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Origins
It was the time of World War Ii and I think the war was a factor in my parents' decision to buy the cabin. My immediate house consisted of parents Adlai and Elizabeth Magee and seven children (two sons were lost). I was the youngest. Our home was in Chevy Chase, Md. Dad owned a radio store in colse to Bethesda. In the early 1940s our house had made numerous weekend visits to Braddock Heights, Md., a society of boarding houses and a locally popular amusement park. Wwii meant restrictions on travel and that improved company at the limited resort. Although Braddock was in decline compared to earlier decades, patronage was good adequate to keep local businesses going. The park had several rides and slides, a fine merry-go-round, a roller skating rink and a limited train to ride. A colse to swimming pool completed the amusements available. A trolley brought day visitors from colse to Frederick, five miles east. A small store doubled as a post office. Jim Crow was alive and kicking in those days. I clearly remember a sign at the entrance to the park that included the admonition, "This park is for use by white gentiles and their servants only." I recall staying at several dissimilar boarding houses, one of which was the Coblentz Mountain House. The motion to us was that the altitude was a blessing for me (I was prone to bronchitis) and for my Father (also troubled by respiratory problems). Alas, Braddock Heights moderately deteriorated over the succeeding years. (Braddock Heights was named after Gen. Braddock, a form in the French and Indian War. He led a force of soldiers west along route 40, an early national highway, marching over Braddock mountain, as it came to be known.)
The Cabin
It was about 1942 when my parents decided to buy a vacation home near Braddock mountain. I was seven. The spot they excellent was pretty remote. If you travel north along the crest of Braddock mountain you will be driving on Ridge road. A limited over a mile up the road they bought a small, two-room, tin-roofed log cabin on three acres. The lot had a west view of Middletown valley. The Potomac river gap near Harper's Ferry, W.Va. Could be seen from a angle of the lot. There was only a scattering of houses along the road in those days. The pavement ended a hundred yards before the cabin, turning into a dirt road. Farther along the dirt road on the west side were the Clipp farm and then a small dairy farm, where, in later years, I was sent from time-to-time to buy fresh milk. I suppose my parents (particularly my Father) saw the possible that the cabin and it's location had. To a seven-year-old it was the start of a great adventure. Dad rather grandly named the place "Catoctin Oaks," for the four gorgeous oak trees on the lot, and the Catoctin mountain chain which included Braddock. This was in the Blue Ridge mountains. I can't shed any light on who built the cabin and when. I believe my parents bought it from the Malones, who lived just south on Ridge road and who owned many acres in the area.
The cabin itself was as bare and rustic as you can imagine. No electricity, no indoor plumbing (not even an out-house), only an outside well with a hand pump for (non-drinking) water. Heat was ready from a handsome stone fireplace. The interior had a large, open area with a sleep loft above the north side. And an ample contribute of snake skins. There was an attached shed on the valley side, used for cooking. The description of the inside of the cabin may sound customary to those of you who have watched the Tv show, "Little House on the Prairie." If you recall the interior of the Tv house, the layout was very much the same as the cabin: a large room on one side, a central fireplace, and sleeping areas behind the fireplace (parents below, girls above on a loft). (My wife Thelma suggested I title this essay, "Little House on the Mountain." I took a pass on that idea.)
The lack of facilities meant two things: First, the cabin could only be used for day trips. (The woods provided an open-air out-house.) Second, Dad soon began what became an almost endless series of modifications and improvements to the cabin. But the main feature of the place was the construction. Yes, it was a real, honest-to-goodness log cabin, its walls made of pine logs with mortar-filled cracks. The attached photograph shows the cabin about 1950; this is a photograph of an oil painting by my sister Elizabeth. Today the painting hangs above the fireplace in my home in Gettysburg. As soon as practicable, a well was drilled, an electric line was run in, and the "valley room," kitchen, basement and bathroom were added. All this took time, of course. Meanwhile, we would "rough it" on visits.
Here's an piquant anecdote: building the Valley Room required a good bit of excavation. It so happened that Camp Detrick in Frederick housed German prisoners-of-war; the prisoners were hired out to local citizens. (I think the prisoners were captured U-boat crews.) So for a time we had a crew of young, blond workers plus an armed guard. I observed that the prisoners took extra observation of my teen-aged sisters whenever the girls would show up. (Of course, there were no incidents.) This memory of the prisoners tells me that the cabin's major modifications were completed by the end of Wwii.
Eventually, the cabin became favorable for extended visits.
Cabin life
When the seasons permitted, we (my parents and I) would make the one- hour drive to spend a weekend at the cabin. In summer, stays would enlarge to weeks, with Dad coming up for the weekend. Our house weren't the only ones to use the cabin. Aunt Corona and Uncle Frank often borrowed it for parties with their friends, mostly from St. Ann's parish in Nw Washington. In fact, I'm sure mountain living gave Aunt Corona and Aunt Mary the idea to buy a lot next door and build a relinquishment home on Ridge road (now Tom and Jane Magee's home).
From the late '40s on, my parents hosted house get-togethers regularly. The cabin soon became the focus for an extended family. Hardly a Sunday went by without house or visitors stopping by and being served cocktails and dinner by my kind parents. Marilyn and Jack Barrett with their house were regular visitors Uncle Paul Magee would roar down the driveway in his Plymouth and before long he and his brother would be trading good-natured barbs. His sons, Paul, Jr., Jim and Bernard came by, families in tow. The Renehan cousins visited from Baltimore every summer; these were two ladies who always greeted me with big hugs and kisses, much to my embarrassment. I referred to them as the Kissing Cousins. "Otherwise" Burdett, the cabin's building contractor, would occasionally show up with his family. (He earned his nickname from his frequent use of "otherwise".) The Daly house and the Klaks from Bethesda were occasional visitors, as were other friends and relatives, many from Montgomery county.
Many of these visits were unannounced but mum always seemed to be able to stretch the food ready and make everyone happy. The best times were those summer days when we would have an outdoor feast -- barbecued spare ribs (I was the designated cook at the Bbq pit), a bushel of steamed crabs, or fried chicken dinners were the favorites. After a softball game in the "front yard" we would have a round of cocktails while sitting on the stone patio, then line up at the buffet table for potato salad, sliced tomatoes, baked beans, buttered hot dog rolls, etc. Every house visit was made a extra occasion by my parents, but there were two times each year that everyone looked forward to. Suzanne and Frank Maddox and their children returned from their home for a visit that always became a house get-together. And every August, Uncle Will and Aunt Celeste Hennessy and their four daughters would visit from Wilmington, Del., for a few days bringing a car full of treats and delicacies. Cool or rainy weather meant the feast was moved indoors. There were many days that we watched the sun setting over South mountain while sitting in the valley room.
All of these visits continued for years. Dad sold the Tv/radio store in Bethesda c1951 and we moved to the cabin to live year-round soon after. The grandchildren of my parents must all have their own memories of visits to the cabin. Their amount grew over the years to, by my count, twenty-two in all. Despite the large number, Granny and Paw-Paw were able to make each one of them feel special. One single treat for visiting grandchildren was for Granny to send them up the hill to pick ripe blueberries which she would make into blueberry pancakes. That's an example of what my mum was like.
Dad was a extra man. Two of his strongest characteristics were his integrity and his sense of humor. I'll give an example of each trait. I used to tag along with Dad on his local company trips. One time, during Wwii, Dad made a delivery of several cartons of radio tubes under a government compact he had bid on. I learned that he won the bid because his price was at-cost. I asked him why he didn't contain some money for profit and he said simply, that this was his offering to the war effort. One clever prank that he pulled on a visiting friend complicated some target convention behind the cabin. I watched him as he loaded a.22 nine-shot revolver with two dissimilar cartridges -- one, a usual.22 slug, and the other a "rat shot," a limited shotgun shell, filled with tiny pellets. He loaded the gun with the cartridges in alternate chambers and we went out to join the waiting sucker - I mean "guest" - to fire off a few rounds. To perfect the charade, Dad fixed a small piece of metal hanging on a string as our target. Let me point out that at ten paces it would be well difficult to hit a two inch wide target with a revolver. But with rat shot it would be almost impossible to miss. So they took turns firing, the guest just missing every shot, and Dad causing the hanging target to swing every time. I'm sure that friend of Dad's went away with the impression that Dad was the best shot this side of Buffalo Bill. There is one thing I haven't forgiven my Father for. When he was living in St. Louis many years before, an old chef gave Dad a formula for Bbq sauce but he made him promise not to give it to anyone else. Well, Dad took that formula to the grave rather than break his word. That's too bad because I sure could use it to improve my Bbqs.
I have my own memories of cabin life. I particularly enjoyed exploring the woods below the cabin. A telescope gave me a way of exploring the sky, and also to tell time by the clock in the white-spired Lutheran church in Middletown, three miles distant. I slept by a window facing west. On a clear night, I could well see stars set over South mountain. I knew that was a extra caress even then. And, yes, the sound of raindrops falling on a tin roof does lull you to sleep.
Closing
The improvements my parents made ultimately covered up the logs, inside and out. When Dad and mum died in 1977, we sold the cabin to a new owner who remodeled it into a two-story house, no longer recognizable as a cabin. But the cabin, despite all its memories and charm, was only a buildings of pine logs. If life at the cabin was extra it wasn't due to a rustic home on a Maryland mountain top, but to what was inside, at the heart of the cabin, Adlai and Elizabeth Magee.
Log Cabin Living
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