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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
January 8, 2006
Previously unpublished Family History
© 2006 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Honeymoon Lodge, 2005
© 2005 by Bud Grossmann
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BUT, BILLY, DID YOU LIKE THE PICTURE?
From: visitor-comment@budgrossmann.com
To: b— @juno.com
Date: 3 Jan 2006 17:06:14 -0000
Subject: From Main Comment Page
Commentor's e-mail:
Re: POD, Jan 3, 2006
Comment: Dear Bud,
What is "the rest of the story" on today's POD? When it opened on my PC, the title was "Honeymoon Lodge"...true?
On another note, on Sunday night we learned that Colleen and Mike are going to have another baby! Due on Aug 31st, 2006. Linda & I are thinking about buying a condo near them, and being able to see more of our grandkids (We'd probably keep our house here in Ohio, as it is almost paid for).
Happy New Year, my friend!
Bill
From: Bud Grossmann <b— @juno.com>
To: "w— juno.com" <w— @juno.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 16:53:04 -1000
Subject: But did you like the picture?
Congratulations on your expanding grandfatherhood.
Picture this. Go north out of Rio on Lowville Road toward the farm, as you have jogged many times, and I think just past the underpass, just past Miller Road, Lowville starts to be called Schliesmann (spelled incorrectly on some of the signs). The Schliesmanns owned our farm, or lived on it, in the nineteen-teens, when Earl Grossmann stayed there while attending Rio High School. Sheer coincidence that he would later purchase the same farm.
At the Rio Community Library, couple years ago, on an atlas page dated 1890, I found the name of a Mrs. Wheeler as owner of that parcel. I'd never heard of her. Other names on that map, though, were familiar. The farmhouse, which originally was across the creek, already by 1890 was sketched into its present location. "E.S." for Earl Schliesmann is chiseled into one of the tamarack cross-beams of the barn. I asked my grandfather Earl about it when we were putting baled sweet clover in the loft. The two Earls were in school together, he said. Don't know as I've ever looked for the "E.S." since, but I think it's above where Terry parks his boat in winter. Never noticed any other autographs, nor any dates. But at the other end of the barn a couple of horse collars and a whippletree tell some kind of story. They hang from a crossbeam, leather cracked on the collars and straw leaking out, and maybe they've been there coming up now on sixty years since when Gramp and Gram let the John Deere take over for the Belgian horses that were part of the stock and chattels that came with the place in 1946.
About two miles out of town, the road turns sharply to the right, you can picture this, and that's where the Honeymoon Lodge stands, solid, small, faded, and uninhabited. Last I looked and stopped by, just last July, when I took that picture, guanacos grazed in the yard. Eliz and I didn't know better and called them llamas, and they made no objection, just chewed their respective cuds and blinked their long-lashed eyes. I thought I might have heard one of them ask, "¿Cómo say llama usted?" (I suppose, Bill, you think I'm Dalai-ing?) Please don't get me started on guanaco puns. You don't guanaco there.
Look closely, and you'll see the words Honeymoon Lodge on the right front side of the shack. This building is on property once owned by Robert and Hedwig Bernander, parents of Marc (our age), Paul (in Terry's class), and Luke (with your Linda at Rio High). Heddie, a piano teacher, was from Milwaukee and had as a child performed in recitals with the young Walter Valentino Liberace (or anyway that's what I recall someone told me).
Grandpa Grossmann used to note that the Bernanders were "Cat'lickers, but mighty nice people, yes, damn fine people!" and he had a funny nickname for Mrs. Bernander (might have been Bob's mom and not Bob's wife, come to think of it), which, whenever he said it, Gramma would growl, "Now stop it Earl or you'll say it sometime where she can hear you!" Might've been Bob's mom that was the piano teacher and had taught Liberace. I took a photo, which I can't find right now, of the Bernanders' gravestone, in the Catholic Cemetery, a year ago October, the first time I ever went in there, and I'm pretty sure both names were on the stone, but I'm not sure all the dates were filled in, so maybe Bob is still living. There's a White Pages listing for a Bob Bernander (not a Robert) on Lyons Street, presumably at that Assisted Living place where the high school used to stand. I could pick up the phone and maybe find out, but I wouldn't want this story to go on for longer than strictly necessary. I went to the cemetery to see where my schoolmate Jimmy Porter was laid to rest. His stone and the one next to it led to some interesting speculations on my part, amplified and partially confirmed soon after, by a conversation with my dear Aunt Dorie.
Jimmy was the one who told me, "Did you hear President Kennedy was shot?" and I said, "Umm, okay, Jim, now what's the punch line?"
Bernanders, seems to me, might have been on our party line, I'm not sure. I don't recall anybody's ring but ours, two longs and a short, but maybe Uncle Phil could list a few. Granny, checking to see if the line was free, would sometimes pick up the phone and find the — girls speaking scandalously, and she'd muffle the mouthpiece and stay on a while. The Bernander family would not have warranted a warrantless eavesdropping. Bob owned and regularly drove in the 1960's and maybe beyond a 1929 Chevrolet coupe. Looked good, ran good, but I myself never loved anything of that era but the Fords.
As I recall, when I was in high school the shack was occupied by a fellow named Reggie ... hmmm, Reggie Something, I don't remember the last name, but Linda no doubt will remember him. And seems he had a wife. Kids, I don't think so. Oh, yeah, I got it now, it was Reggie Taylor. Matter of fact, I think that's Taylor Road where Schliesmann turns east and doesn't become Schliesmann again till the next corner where it continues north. Reggie might have been hired help to the Bernanders, but I think he owned that land, maybe twenty acres, maybe forty, seems I might have heard that he did, hilly and rocky, which later was acquired by Bob Bernander. He kept goats, Reggie, I mean, and something odd I can't recall, maybe a funny-looking breed of milk cow. Makes sense there'd be guanacos there now, though I don't know whose they are. Fellow somewhere nearby, on the Bernander place possibly, runs a dogsled, hazard on the public street I've heard someone say, summer and winter, wheels on it when the snow is gone, with a team of huskies. Which, Bill, reminds me of one of your favorite jokes.
You can picture the Bernander place now, can't you, directly across the road from Taylor's? When Bob and Heddie first put up that house, with some kind of columns in front like Gone With the Wind, it was cause for comment in the neighborhood. Like nothing anyone'd seen around there before. They had a lot of acreage then and eventually several farms more including the place with the big white barn just beyond, and south and west of, where Schliesmann turns back north. Marc and Kathy (Linda will know Kathy's name, or I could look it up in a yearbook) lived there a while and had cattle. I took little David once at milking time.
Reggie Taylor died long ago. The words Honeymoon Lodge appeared on the clapboard some years later. What I recall is that one of Bob and Heddie's sons, Luke I think it was, moved in with his young bride. And hence the name. Don't know if it's true, and I can't guarantee the accuracy of any of the rest of these foggy reminiscences, but I do hope, sir, you will be more cautious, next time you consider asking me for The Rest of a Story.
BG
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