Tourist Room, 148 Lake Flower Ave., Saranac Lake, N.Y. 322.

Tourist Room, 148 Lake Flower Ave., Saranac Lake, N.Y. 322.

"Tourist Room, 148 Lake Flower Ave., Saranac Lake, N.Y. 322." My family’s roots in the area go all the way back to the very beginning days of Saranac Lake. Currently there are still 3-generations of Keoughs still living in the village, though for most of the past 50-years there has been 4-generations in residence. My great grandmother Alice was a true Adirondack entrepreneur. She was born Alice V. Duprey (I think the “V” was for Veronica, but I will have to confirm that with my dad). Her family was one of the early residents of the area. There are still Dupreys living in Saranac Lake, but there aren’t too many left. Jacob Moody of Keene, NH is credited as being the original settler of the area, but the Mooodys and Dupreys have both been in the area for a very long time. Alice married John E. Keough. They had two surviving sons, Gene (taken from his father’s middle name, Eugene) and Charles. Both went on to found long-running successful businesses in the village. Charlie founded Keough’s Marina and was famous as a restorer of classic Adirondack guide boats and Chriscraft power boats. His business continues to this day as Fogarty’s Marina. Eugene worked for and then acquired the Connolly funeral home, renaming it Keough & Son Funeral home, a business that continues to this day as Fortune-Keough Funeral Home and is operated by Eugene’s grandson, Brendan. Both Charles and Gene are now long since deceased. “Great Alice”, as we called her, was a very forceful and strong willed woman. Like many people in the area at the time, Alice supplemented the family income by providing rooms for people “taking the cure”, an expression used to describe TB patients who had come to the Adirondacks for therapeutic reasons. “The cure” called for those struck with TB to sit for extended periods on porches during the winter and breathe the frigid air. Consequently, a common element of many homes in the area is the presence of large, extended, semi-enclosed porches where TB patients reclined on divans while wrapped in heavy blankets or thick furs. Gary Trudeau, creator of the comic strip Doonesbury is the great-grandson of Dr. E. L. Trudeau, the scientist who first discovered the therapeutic benefits of having TB patients breathe frigid air. Dr. Trudeau founded a research lab and TB sanatorium in Saranac Lake, spurring the development of the “cure cottage” industry in the area. When Alice told her husband that she wanted to expand the lodging business beyond cure patients, he refused to support it and (according to legend) there was a HUGE row between them over the issue. Alice, in defiance of her husband’s wishes, proceeded forward with her plans. Her husband did not support her project and told her that she would have to proceed without his help, that she would have to go it alone. All the way up until his death John said that he wanted nothing to do with his wife’s crazy idea. But -- as it turned out, Alice was a very shrewd and hard-nosed business woman. Her first project was to convert the barn behind the house into a cabin that she could rent to travelers and visiting hunters. She saved her money from the cure boarders as well as money from selling eggs and other farm produce until she had enough for the renovation. Then, using the money she made from the converted barn she built a 2nd cabin. Over the next 60-years, using only the cash that she could generate from the existing cabins, she eventually built 23-lodgings, some were stand-alone cabins, some were buildings with “hotel” rooms. All the lodgings had their own bathroom and most had full kitchens with the “modern” appliances of the day. None ever had a telephone (“…people come here to get away from all the racket”) or air conditioner (“…who needs an air conditioner with all this cool mountain air?”). She hand-made every single drapery and hand embroidered all the blankets and comforters (I have what is likely the last remaining hand-embroidered blanket). She decorated every single room with creations of her own design and fabrication (she spent the winter months sewing and crafting). When you look at a picture of one of her rooms, you are looking at the handwork of the owner. The Keough Motel, as it eventually came to be called, consisted of a little more than 5-acres. There was a tennis court, a putting green, and a large sandy beach – and an elaborate tool shed that doubled as a Christmas Manger in winter (complete with life-sized cresh figures). She refused to let her sons build a swimming pool to accommodate modern preferences. She would always say, “…why would anybody want to swim in such a dirty thing? Don’t you know that people pee when they swim? Pools are disgusting things and none of my guests would ever want to go in one.” One entire border of the property was covered with a hedge made of rose bushes. There were flower beds throughout the property. Alice was meticulous in her standards and did not tolerate sloppy work of any kind from anybody. She would walk the property every day and inspect the status of the grass height, the edging, the cleanliness, and the overall appearance of EVERYTHING. She could be seen out and about, dead-heading the Geraniums even well into her 90’s. The front of the main house was awash with brilliantly white Japanese hydrangeas which had to be cut down to the ground every winter after the snows came. Everything had to be to her standard and according to her will -- in her later years, she was known to use her cane every once in a while if she thought one of us needed a good “throttling”. Many families came and stayed at the motel for years and years, some even for decades – always coming at the same time period and always renting the same cabin. Many hearts were broken when the decision was made to sell the property to a developer who planned to raze it and build a new hotel. I can remember when President Richard Nixon’s daughter, Julie (?), stayed in Number 23. Secret Service agents were “guests” in all the surrounding units. A guest was so entranced by the motel that she sent a note to Alice, thanking her for a wonderful stay and describing how beautiful the room had been. Alice put that note under the glass of the kitchen table in the unit where the note’s author had stayed. Seeing the note, subsequent guests did likewise and Alice would take those notes and put them under the glass tops of the nightstands, kitchen tables, and desks in the unit about which the note had been written. Over the decades, the nightstands and tables in each and every room became plastered with notes and cards from previous guests, some going back generations. There was something immortal sitting about sitting at a kitchen table and reading the experiences of a guest who had stayed in your room 30 or 40 years ago. Every guest felt connected to every other guest who had come before them. Absent was the feeling of anonymity that infests most hotel rooms. Every room was its own history book. The property was sold following the 1980 Olympics to a developer who razed all but one building to build a new hotel, now a Best Western Inn. Only one of the original buildings remains today – the office and gift shop.