Almanack Contributor Robert Engel

Robert Engel is historian at Great Camp Sagamore in Raquette Lake.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Coming home to play

by Robert Engel

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“Oh, how cute!”

That was our first impression on seeing the little piano in Linda Kaiser’s basement in Syracuse.

Then we tried to carry it up a flight of stairs.

Linda had called Great Camp Sagamore’s executive director, Emily Martz, to donate the piano that she and her husband Harvey bought at an auction on Sagamore’s Main Lodge lawn in October 1975.

The piano has only 61 keys – the standard is 88. Margaret Emerson probably bought it for her children to play at Sagamore. Her grandson, Alfred Vanderbilt III, remembers playing a piano with “a strange number of keys” when he would visit camp as a young child.

Linda’s generosity reminds us of the extraordinary confluence of institutions, individuals, and events that surrounded that fall weekend in 1975.

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Sunday, May 24, 2020

How to be the life of the (socially distant) party

by Robert Engel

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Spending time at home lately? Maybe it’s an opportunity to pick up a musical instrument.

Good parties need great music, ‘twas always thus. If you can play, you’re the life of the party. Okay, maybe this was truer before the invention of DJs, but it’s still true.

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt grew up in the 1880s–1890s hearing superb orchestras play at lavish parties hosted by his parents and others in their social set. Years later, the parties Alfred threw at Sagamore, his Adirondack camp, would not have orchestras, but guests would play the piano.

And it appears that the host himself had skills. The photo is a little blurry, but just look at Alfred’s smile while he strums his mandolin, sitting on his Main Lodge porch in the summer of 1913. Let’s imagine the scene at the Playhouse that night: “Alfred, where’s your mandolin.” “No, no…well, ok!”

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Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Social distancing from black flies: Durant’s floating houseboat

by Robert Engel

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Who likes black flies? No? Some folks like them, and some like hummingbird liver and pickle relish sandwiches!

Black flies hatch in May and last well into July. They move in packs and bite for blood. I’m pretty sure that’s all they do! You can swat, but that just amuses them. You can move to New Jersey or Antarctica. Or you can do what William West Durant did at Camp Pine Knot.

W.W. Durant built Great Camp Sagamore, but Camp Pine Knot on Raquette Lake was his first. He moved to Raquette as a young man in 1876, where he met his first and his 5-trillionth black fly, both on the same day.

To escape these creepy critters, he built something so cool that we still talk about it.

The strength of the black fly is in the numbers. Alone, they’re clumsy fliers and they can’t cross lakes. So, to escape the flies, Durant built a houseboat and christened it the Barque of Pine Knot.

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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Good Ole Route 28: A trip that used to be a journey

by Robert Engel

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We take roads for granted. I sure did as a kid riding from Syracuse up to my Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Blue Mountain Lake. We drove on Friday nights with my parents and eight brothers and sisters, all stuffed into a station wagon (they were like minivans in 1960s and 70s). My grandfather told us stories about when he was a kid and Route 28 did not exist!

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