Casa de Lockwood

This weekend, I learned a bit more about the generation before me. Specifically, about my mother, and her experience of the Adirondacks. Before a few months ago, I had no idea she had even stepped foot in the park, let alone spent a considerable amount of time here. As it happened, her first husband, Herb, spent his summers in Lake Placid with his family. The Lockwoods owned a camp on Ruisseaumont Road, and as I understand it, this camp was more likely to have had several stone fireplaces and birch bark wallpaper than not. I discovered this when my mother asked if I planned to go to a Mexican restaurant called Casa del Sol in Saranac Lake. I had never heard of it, but was more preoccupied with the fact that this was the first I was hearing of her visiting the Adirondacks, let alone being a regular at a local eatery.

Upon discovering that this restaurant was still open after more than 30 years (it had closed in 2012, but reopened about a year later), my uncle, mother and I decided that it would be our best dinner option. As I looked at the mosaics hanging on the peach-colored adobe walls, I wondered what this place looked like through my mother’s eyes. Was it recognizable? At totally different space? It probably was due to her 20-year old daughter sitting across from her. I should’ve asked. I also wondered how long the older gentleman who seated us had been working there. He had a full head of white hair and wore a classic, red Adirondack flannel. Is it possible that he knew the same version of this place as my mother?

She and I visited Herb, his sister, and his parents in the North Elba Cemetery on Saturday. The gravestones I was looking at represented a part of my mother’s life I would never know, one that often makes me think about my existence as a function of how things worked out. It also brings the historical and generational feel of the Adirondacks into focus on a personal level for me. Family tradition, property, and how they intertwine are well-documented aspects of this place. One of my favorite sections from Deming’s work was about Joe Baldwin’s familial bond; he describes Joe’s attempt to maintain everything as it had been for generations before him. “The wooden chairs set nicely in a row had been [his parents], and most of the other furniture was that which they had used. The old clock that ticked upon the shelf had been theirs, and it was their family Bible which lay on the stand” (101). Until now, this connection to place through family had been missing, but unbeknownst to me, it had been there all along.

Herbert Martin Lockwood

His music and wit live on