A Change In Perspectives

Nearly every summer when I was a kid, we'd load the family station wagon up with food supplies and suitcases and make the long drive to a cabin in Lords Valley in the Poconos. I remembered it being this huge rustic place, sitting on five acres of land, all mostly wooded. You came in through the enclosed entryway and into the sitting room with its knotty pine paneling. It had a massive kitchen and two bedrooms, one with three huge beds and the other with two sets of bunk beds. Oh, and the couch was a sleeper sofa, too. That was where my brother and I usually slept, once we got used to the bar that ran right under the mattress beneath our backs.

And our family was never there alone, either. Aunt Alice and Uncle Micky, Aunt Tillie and Uncle Dick and their boys, Aunt Pat and Uncle Kenny and their kids, any or all would be there adding to the fun and general pandemonium. Indeed, one year there were so many people there that Dad had to park in the yard and my brother and I spent the night "camping out" in the wagon. I got in trouble for killing the battery by having the radio on all night, listening to AM stations out of New York, Chicago, and Canada.

We'd spend the week exploring the natural beauty of the Poconos, swimming and fishing at Shohola Lake State Park and hiking along the falls there, Trying our luck at the "pickerel pond" where we left behind a fair amount of fishing lures, and numerous shopping excursions into the towns of Hawley and Honesdale. Our favorite store (for us kids, anyway) was the "Big M" in Hawley. Kind of like a Walmart Supercenter with no rhyme or reason in the way it was laid out. But they had almost anything you could possibly want! One item that needed to be purchased every year was the combination volleyball/badminton set. They never survived the entire week. At the end of the week you could tell how much fun we kids had had by counting the number of frisbees, shuttlecocks, and Wiffle balls that were stranded on the cabin's roof!

We made our last trip to the cabin as a family in 1971 when I was a freshman in high school. That was the year that I learned my Aunt Alice could dance. We were out in a wild blueberry patch gathering for her homemade blueberry muffins when I spied something moving along the ground. Turned out to be a harmless three foot long garter snake, which I caught and showed to my little sister MaryAnn. She wanted to hold it, so I handed it to her. And when she turned around, Aunt Alice saw my sister with this snake and absolutely freaked out. For being my Grandma Browns sister, she had some pretty good moves!

I didn't return to the cabin until 1984. By then I had my own family, and it was my wife, myself, my 14 month old son Sean, and my 3 year old niece Crystal. Since we lived in Central PA now the trip was far easier than it had been from Bristol. All I had to do was take Interstate 81 North to I 84 East and off and the Lords Valley exit. Simple. But so much had changed in 15 years. I hardly recognized the area. Strip malls and boutique shops where once there had been woods. The ubiquitous quick stop mini-marts. Even the traffic on the road had changed. Once it had been locals in their Ford and Chevy pickup trucks and station wagons. Now it was Mercedes and Lexus, most with New York or New Jersey plates.

I actually drove by the cabin the first time, the surroundings had changed so much.

When we finally arrived at our destination it was exactly as I recalled. Just in miniature. Gone was the huge rustic edifice I remembered and in it's place stood this small humble cottage. Naturally this effect continued once we entered the door as well. The rooms were tiny. Almost claustrophobic. And the ceiling, which was once unreachable, was only an inch or two above my head. I had to duck my head to get through doorways, and I'm just a little over 6 feet tall. The feeling was more than a little disorienting.

I did enjoy our our long weekend there once I acclimated to the new reality. Not in the carefree way of my childhood, however. I had adult stuff to do. We were the first visitors to the cabin that year and had to deal with burst pipes from the previous winter. There was the usual winter debris to clean up and grass to mow. Aunt Tillie and Uncle Dick came up from Bristol the day before we went home, so we had a nice visit with them. I hadn't seen them in years.

We did go up to the cabin once more a couple of years later for another planned long weekend. It was my wife, my son, and I this time. But what we didn't know was that while we were en route there had been an accident. Since we had last been there another of those oh so ubiquitous quick stop mini-marts had gone up across the highway from the cabin. A woman left her four year old child in her running vehicle and went into the store for something. The child managed to put the vehicle into gear, which caused it to roll down a bank and across the highway to hit the front of the cabin, destroying the enclosed entryway and knocking the entire structure off of its foundations. When we arrived we were greeted by the sight of yellow caution tape and large condemned signs on the front doors and windows.

Many years later I was working for a medical equipment repair company as a delivery driver. I was on my way from Dunmore to Stroudsburg along I84 when I decided to take the "scenic" route. It was only a short drive off the Lords Valley exit to the cabin. Or to the vacant lot where the cabin once stood. I sat in the parking lot of the mini-mart and stared at the empty spot. And yes, I got a little misty eyed. It was a sad end to a place that held so many cherished memories.