POTTER COUNTY -- PART TWO

POTTER COUNTY AND THE KANTNER GANG

My parents, along with other families in our church, formed a loose knit group called the “Kantner Gang.” The Kantner Gang did many things together; picnics and trips to Potter County were the favorites, at least they were the favorites among us kids. Five or six couples and their children would go to Potter County for a long weekend and, sometimes, even a week. The wives got together to plan the meals; the men got together to decide when we would leave, and in what order the caravan would form. The kids got together to talk about all the fun we would have swimming and just goofing off. Of course the boys would always, in the back of their minds, plan on how they would see the biggest buck or the first turkey before any of the men would. (It never happened.)

Potter County itself was great fun, but the trip there had its interesting moments, too. The first part of the excitement for us kids was that we would often get to ride with our friends in their cars. It was two hundred miles from Kantner to Potter County and, of course, there were no interstate highways so the trip lasted more than four hours. The roads varied from wide two lanes with room to pass to country back roads that were the proverbial 1 ½ lanes wide. Of course the narrow roads were in hilly country, so the roads would go up and down and around many turns, so sitting still in the seat became, at times, an adventure.

Many towns lay across the route to Potter. The first town of great interest was Tyrone. Tyrone was home to a paper mill, and if you have been through a paper mill town in the 1950s, you will remember the smell. I have smelled other odors I enjoyed more.

We usually stopped at a small gas station at an intersection about half way to Potter so everyone could fill up and get a chance to walk around. We always stopped at the same gas station, and I think it was because of the unique method they had of cleaning bugs off a windshield. They used corn cobs soaked in water. The corn cobs did a great job with the bugs, but you still had to dry the windshield. The second town of great interest was Renovo. Part way through Renovo the road crossed a river. This crossing was normal enough, except that the sides of the bridge were high enough that you couldn’t see over them. Okay, a little strange, but the interesting part of the bridge was the sixty degree turn in the middle. With high sides, a narrow road, and a turn in the middle of the bridge, crossing the river in Renovo was always at least interesting. Why did it seem that the bridge got especially narrow at the curve?

By the time we left Renovo, we were only about twenty miles from the cabin, but these were the twenty miles of 1 ½ lane twisty, rollercoaster roads. While we kids were eager to get to camp, it was fun riding those last twenty miles on those roads, and since there were no seat belts, we could exaggerate any movement that tended to move us on the car seat.

My father’s cabin was not big enough to house all the members of the Kantner Gang, but no worry, other members of the gang belonged to the “Kantner Camp,” another cabin just a couple hundred feet from my dad’s cabin. The sleeping arrangements in that cabin were similar to the ones in my dad’s cabin, mattresses on the floor under the eaves of the roof. This made for a fun adventure one night. The men from our cabin decided that it would be fun to take a tree branch that had fallen on the ground and rub it over the roof of the other cabin in the middle of the night. The comments in the sleeping area of the Kantner cabin ranged from

“Oh, it must be a bear!” to

“It’s just Smokey and those guys; throw the slop jar on them.”

Meals were always a large group affair with ten to fifteen people at the table at the same time. The arrangement was that anyone who complained about the food had to wash the dishes, so comments about the food were generally positive, except for one time. Bob apparently didn’t like the mashed potatoes one evening, so he said, “The mashed potatoes are kind of lumpy,” and then remembering that he had left himself open for doing the dishes, he continued, “But, that’s the way I like them.” I still don’t believe it, but they let him get away with it.

One of the favorite evening activities of the gang was playing the game, “Pit.” If you have played the game, you know how raucous it can become with everyone trying to trade for all of the cards of a particular grain. There is no organized bidding or exchange in Pit, you just yell, “Two for two” or “three for three”, and then trade with anyone who agrees to trade with you, trying to obtain all the cards of a certain grain, thus having a “corner on wheat” or whatever. Played with a single deck, this game can get loud, but the Kantner Gang liked to play with a double deck; hence it was even louder. One memorable evening my father and one of his friends decided to each keep one card of each grain so no one could “get a corner” on any grain. After about fifteen minutes of frustrating trading, everyone noticed that no one was getting a corner. They also noticed that my dad and his friend weren’t trading with anyone, so their trick was discovered, and they were watched more closely after that.

My memories of Potter County of course are filled with tales of games and meals and rides and swimming , but when I think of Potter County ,a great peace comes over me as I remember the majestic forests, the bubbling streams with the many fish often visible, the fields with thirty or so deer eating peacefully in them, a glimpse of a doe and a young mottled fawn, and the camaraderie I witnessed among my parents and their friends.