The fathers would drink beer and play cards. The 4 or 5 German families would travel together to Butt Reservoir ( a local lake) and spend the day playing in the water. Trout ponds behind the restaurant supplied fish for dinner…. When it was time to cut them loose… we ran! I once caught 20 snakes and put them in a burlap sack (these were harmless racer snakes). Once that was done we’d build dams in the streams, push each other in to the river, and catch snakes. The hotel/restaurant had stocked trout ponds in the back… and under Walter Jr’s supervision we could catch the day’s dinner quota. And I would give a lot to have Helga’s recipe for Graupen Suppe… it was outstanding! Heaven for KidsĮvery morning at breakfast we kids would ask the kitchen how many fish would be needed for dinner. It also meant eating German Food (lots of schnitzel and brat kartoffel). Personal computers were still years away, but there was serious fun to be had. There were cuckoo clocks on the wall, plaques with German expressions and images of stags (and for some reason, that famous dogs playing poker tapestry was hung in the bar…) There were only 9 rooms in the lodge, and there were no TVs in them. The Black Forest Lodge was a fairly rustic and basic place to stay… exactly as it should be for a place in the woods. We had the run of the place for the next 10 days with other German Families that we knew. It was like stepping out of our California life, and slipping into Germany. The owners, Walter and Helga Albert, and much of the staff were German.
10 hours later, after a million rounds of “she’s touching me” and “she’s on my side” and ” Hört ihr jetzt mal AUF!!!” (“Stop it right now!”) we’d arrive. My sleepy eyed sister and I were shoved in to the back seat… no leg room (the wells were filled with Dad’s beer and the extra cooler of food and drink), but we sort of stretched out on our designated half as well as we could. It was a 10 hour drive, and dad insisted on all of us getting in to the car at 3am to get “ an early start“. So, instead of hopping on a cheap flight to Germanyon Condor, they packed up the family’s green 1970 Monte Carlo with supplies and headed north to Chester, California near Lassen National Park where we would stay at a German run hotel and restaurant called The Black Forest Lodge. In the 1970s travel to Germany was expensive, but my parents still wanted that German Vacation experience.
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