The Dream, The Challenge, The People
by Bob Kranich
(Excerpt 27)
“The Lodge Called Folkestone”. You may wonder why the first half of the book is about my many adventures throughout the USA. Well, this first part explains just why my interests changed from hot rodding cars to backpacking. How the idea of a lodge came about, and just how the lodge came to be in North Carolina and next to the Smoky Mountain National Park, Deep Campground to be exact.
We’re leaving the Smoky Mountains, Deep Creek Valley, and heading on a new adventure, to Rochester, New York for some contract work.
The Loss of a Good Friend
We loaded up the Ranchero and headed north. When we got to Rochester, Irene was surprised just how much different the northern cities are from the cities in Texas. They are much older, with lots of two and three-story homes just stacked together. The third story is usually the attic, with dormers protruding out from the roofs. Overall, it is kind of dark and dreary. One interesting factor is that each neighborhood has its own bowling alley, small corner food store, beer joint (which we didn’t need or frequent), and a great little sub and pizza shop.
We drove to the address I was given for the work location. It was early Sunday. Naturally, no cars were in the parking lot. I was told that I was going to work for Kodak. This location was definitely not Kodak! It was in a city neighborhood, but was a two-story commercial building. It looked kind of like a brick warehouse. The good news was it had windows on both floors.
We needed a place to stay. We drove around the corner from the parking lot and down the street. Then just a half a block away, to our surprise, thank the Good Lord, a sign on a large two-story house said, Flat for Rent. We pulled in. An Italian lady in her late thirties or early forties appeared at the door. There were three children scattered out behind, in front, and next to her.
“May I help you?” she asked.
Irene said, “We saw your sign, and we are starting a job just down the street on Monday. May we see your flat for rent? Our job will last through May.”
“We usually rent for a year, but that will do,” she replied.
She took us up to the second floor, and the children, approximately six, eight, and nine years of age were scrambling along behind. It consisted of a large kitchen, a large combination living and bedroom, and a bathroom. It wasn’t furnished but the large kitchen had all the utensils.
“What is the cost?” Irene asked.
The lady named her price. I don’t remember what it was, but Irene said, “We’ll take it.”
We wrote her a check, and she gave us the keys. It was just that fast. There was a house across the street that sold used furniture in a store on the bottom floor. It was Irene that discovered this while I was at work the first day. She bought a small table, two chairs, and a bed frame from them. The next couple of days we slept on air mattresses and sleeping bags.
Monday morning I walked over to the work parking lot. I had parked there in the evening because there was no room on the street. I went in, and met my supervisor. He showed me to a drafting table, and I got all of my tools out. Contractor draftsmen usually carry a briefcase with all their tools and lunch in it. I was no exception. The supervisor gave me some work to do. Usually, they give a new guy something easy to do to check him out, and then gradually increase the work load. That is just what they did.
The supervisor told me that he couldn’t tell me just what they were building, and I should not ask questions of the other draftsmen. Of course, that is a losing battle for a company. We’re not that dumb. I found out a couple of things. One was that this facility was strictly set up as a contract satellite facility, doing work for Kodak exclusively. Occasionally, Kodak engineers would bring work and instructions over to their respective designer, or to the supervisor. There were about twenty draftsmen consisting of designers, layout, and detailers on this second floor. My task was a combination layout and designer.
Now, for the project. If you found out what everyone, or you, for that matter were doing, you could easily figure out just what we were building. We were building a machine for Kodak, similar to a Xerox copier. In fact, there were a couple of designers there that had worked for Xerox. It was very interesting work, consisting of mechanisms and mechanical design.
We settled in, and finally bought a mattress. It started getting cold. The weather for Rochester comes right off the Great Lakes. It can be bitter, and we weren't used to it. It was mid-December. After coming in from shopping one Saturday evening, I found a parking spot, and parked on the street right around the corner from our apartment. The next day when we were going out again, I started up the Ranchero. The transmission made a lot of noise, and the vehicle wouldn’t move. I tried it in all three gears, and it still didn’t move, just grind.
“I guess it is done in,” I said to Irene.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“The good news is, I don’t have very far to go to work,” I answered, “and we can buy our food right in the neighborhood at the corner grocery.”
Just then a big city bus rolled by. She exclaimed, “We can ride the bus wherever we need to go.”
“Then it looks like we are going to be ok,” I responded.
The weather report became grim for us southern folks. Snow was on the forecast! The report was snow, starting tomorrow evening and continuing on. The weather man knew his stuff, and late that afternoon, it started. It snowed all night. It really came down! And it snowed all the next day, and then stopped. The people in Rochester are really prepared. They don’t let a lot of snow stop them. The snow plows and snow blowers came out. Actually, they were working all the time it was snowing. The people also have snow blowers that they clear the sidewalks with.
It had snowed a lot, at least eighteen inches! We walked around to check on the Ranchero, and at first I couldn’t find it. Then I saw it, under a pile of snow that had been pushed next to it, and up and on it. It was buried. In Rochester, New York, when it snows, it stays all winter! It doesn’t just snow and then melt. The temperature was really cold, and it would stay there until spring! The Ranchero would be buried all winter!
We continued on working and doing whatever we needed or wanted to do. The bus became our mode of transportation. It was interesting. The bad part was missing a bus, or a bus not coming by when you are standing on a snowy, cold street corner. One time we stood there for two hours stomping our feet. We couldn’t go in a store to warm up because then whenever it finally came, it may just go right by.
Spring came, and when May arrived, we knew that we had to solve our transportation problem. We were due in Chicago the first part of June. The first thing we did was run an ad to sell our Ranchero. It was answered the first day. It seems a young fellow wanted to restore it, and he was very happy to purchase it from us. He towed it off. You know what everyone says, and I’m the same, “I wish I had that vehicle today.”
Next, we looked through the vehicles for sale section in the paper. Irene said, “Look at this, a 1965 Ford Econoline van. I wonder what it looks like?”
I said, kind of interested, “Let’s call, check the price, and we can go on over.”
We called, the price was right, and we told him to hold it because we had to catch a bus to come on over. Then he did a surprising thing. He said that he wasn’t too far away, and he would bring it by. He said that it ran good, and we wouldn’t be disappointed. He needed to sell it to get some extra money.
We gave him the address, and in about a half of an hour, the fellow came by. He had a friend follow him. I guess that he was sure that were going to buy it. The van ran good, and it was clean. It was a six cylinder, three-speed on the column. We gave him cash. I think it was about four hundred dollars.
We were now the proud owners of a 1965 Ford Econoline van. Ford made a very good strong six cylinder for those vans. It was very economical and got good mileage. It seemed to run forever before I had to fill it back up.
From the Author:
This is a new book. It is about the Lodge I built in the Smoky Mountains, near Bryson City, and Deep Creek campground, North Carolina. Having been from Florida, I know that a lot of Floridians love to visit the Smoky Mountains National Park. Therefore hopefully you will enjoy my story of the building of “A Lodge Called Folkestone”.
