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48

On that same day, Mother wrote Father in which she says, "[[underlined]]Do[[/underlined]] write every day, honey. If you don't, I shall come right home." This letter also indicates that the Lees of Washington, D.C. are there: Mr. and Mrs. Ralph W. Lee and their sons, Ralph, Jr. and Frederick, all of whom we were to get to know very well. Incidentally, the proprietor of Rustic Lodge was Charles H. Wardner whom we liked enough to follow him to his new establishment, Lake Clear Inn, the next two years. Rustic Lodge was an attractive place, medium size, good food, good people, a lovely location in a wooded area on Upper Saranac, a rather ritzy lake surrounded by beautiful summer homes. I remember that we stayed in a large cottage a hundred feet or so from the main lodge, that is, we had rooms in this cottage along with others. One incident I shall never forget was going to the hotel desk early in our stay, noting a device sitting on the cigar counter, nothing further that the device had a small hole in it, and sticking my finger into the hole -- and what amazement followed by consternation, to have the device tremble slightly, feel pain at the end of my finger, and discover it was a cigar cutter which had just clipped a net little circle of the end of my right index finger. It was still hanging by a thread and I held it on while I ran back to our quarters where it was promptly bandaged and the clipped-off tip grew on again -- but to this day I have a little bump on that finger to remind me to keep my fingers out of strange holes. There was a big boathouse and dock and alongside the latter, there was a wading inlet for the kids. The elders swam off the dock in deep water. One frequent visitor to the Lodge was a Mr. Daniels, a famous swimmer of that time, who had a luxurious lodge down the lake aways and would come up to Rustic Lodge in a magnificent mahogony-hulled launch which he'd tie up to the big dock. He'd swim sometimes off our dock and he had a perfectly magnificent physique -- I think maybe he'd been on an American Olympic team or something of the sort. I recall that Saranac Village was at the other end of the lake and we'd go there occasionally to shop, going down by boat. We'd come from Syracuse by train over the New York Central's Adirondack Division, which ran from Utica to Montreal and was a busy operation in the vacation season because the roads were a long way from being suitable for people to drive up into the area. We'd walk through the woods along various trails among which were one or two which went up nearby mountains although we did no mountain climbing. My father liked to fish and he made several fishing expeditions to the Raquette River nearby, along with a guide named Lon, and caught a good many fish, some of which Lon would clean and cook over a campfire by the riverside for lunch; I remember going along on a couple of these trips and it was fun -- but I never cared to fish then or thereafter except with a guide who'd do all the work, bait the hook, take the fish off the hook, and so on. Perhaps I was just beginning to be a little bit girl conscious at this period; at any rate, I recall