Lyon Mountain: A handmade knife with a story

LYON MOUNTAIN | A McGee family keepsake long held in memory of their father Claude McGee will be on display at the Lyon Mountain Mining & Railroad Museum. The hand-made hunting knife and sheath have a unique story of wartime, a close call and raising a family after the depression. "My father was originally from Peru, where his mother had a bar called Della's Inn," daughter Sylvia McGee Newman said of the family's local roots. People in Peru today do remember Della's. "It was on Telegraph Street, but the name changed to Dashnaw Road when the Northway went through," Sylvia said. The McGee family moved to Merrill when their dad, Claude, began working the iron mines in Lyon Mountain. He and his wife Agnes raised three children, Robert, Paul and Sylvia. "It was pretty dangerous, a lot of men were killed in the mines," the oldest brother, Robert "Bob" McGee, said in a recent interview. "He was caught in the chute, where they moved the big chunks of rock after drilling into the lower cart. The big chunks were difficult to move," Bob said of the accident in 1944. "The chute got jammed up and so they sent him in to free it up. The load shifted and he got hit by the rock. It crushed his shoulder and collarbone." Caught in the chute for six hours, Claude McGee was working 300 feet underground. But he went back to work. While in rehabilitation, he was sent to help with repairs in the machine shop, where he found an old, discarded sharpening file. Bob jotted down a handwritten history of the knife they've lent the museum. "He used an old worn-out file that was thrown away," Bob said. "He used the flat part to make the blade and the end of the file for the knife handle. The handle was made up of two brass connectors, one on each end. In the middle, he used fiber electrical insulator pieces, with metal washers in between. "He made two of them," Bob said of the fabrication. "If that accident hadn't happened, he probably wouldn't have made those knives. "The person he gave the other one to lived close by us in Merrill. My brother and I both attended that one-room schoolhouse in Merrill; it's still there." At the end of rehab, Bob said, the foreman came along and told Claude he had to go back down underground to work. "Dad said 'no I'm not,' and the foreman said, 'you have to or I'll turn you into the Draft Board.' It was wartime, World War II," Robert said. "Dad replied, 'too late. I have a job at Tahawus in an open-pit mine.' So the family moved on in the summer of 1944." The National Lead Industries mine at Tahawus was booming in the mid-1940s, providing titanium for the war effort. "Tahawus was looking for help. It was during the war and they discovered titanium up there," Bob said. "The first year he went up there, all the houses weren't finished, that was in 1944. They finished them in 1945, and we got a brand new house." By 1945, National Lead had erected 84 new buildings. In 1961, they moved them all, along with the churches and the general store to a section of Newcomb. The company had discovered another titanium deposit under the mining town and upended it. Robert said their house, Number 69B in Tahawus, was among those relocated to Newcomb. He visited some years ago, he said, and found it, though was unable to spot it on a second, more recent trip. About a year later, Claude and Agnes moved the family moved out to her hometown in California. From Arroyo, CA, Agnes Marsalek McGee's family had a walnut farm. Again, housing was tough to find. "We lived there in Verde Canyon, California, because there were no houses available in Arroyo," Bob said. "They met when dad was in the CCC's (Civilian Conservation Corps). He worked CCC in the mines in New York first, then Montana, then California in the oil fields, where he met our mother." CCC was a New Deal work relief program established by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to improve public lands and forests. The federally funded jobs program helped pull the United States, and thousands of citizens, out of the Great Depression. CCC ended in 1942 as America entered World War II. "We moved back here to Peru in 1948 because his mother wanted him to come back and run Della's," Bob said. "He ran it for several years, and then went into the woodsmen's business on his own, logging and cutting pulpwood for paper." "Our grandmother built us a house right next to her bar," Sylvia recalled. HAND MADE The knife stayed handy through the many moves. Hunting was a big part of life in the 1940s, as much to provide food for the table as for sport. "Dad also built a hunting camp on the other side of The Narrows past Merrill," Robert said. "He named it Camp Arroyo, after our mother's hometown in California. He loved hunting." The knife has a sheath that was handmade for that blade by Agnes. Sylvia remembers her mother was a homemaker and attended Adult Education classes in the 1950s, where she learned how to work the leather. "It was a different time," Sylvia said. "We made it work. When something broke at the mines or at home, they fixed it themselves." Living memory in the North Country summons an era of self-reliance. And history is telling in little details that connect a whole sequence of events. Shifting jobs, Draft Boards, housing, wars and mining. "History is important for the next generation," Sylvia mused. She wrote and published three history books for the Town of Saranac and for years, put together a historical photograph calendar. Funds from town calendar sales went toward the restoration of the Civil War monument at Independence Cemetery in Saranac. Bob is also a local historian though in the Town of Peru. He often called upon to verify information and context. He's led history walks and talks through the streets of Peru. Both Bob and Sylvia have provided interviews with Clinton County Historian Helen Nerska, and their reflections are archived on the Town of Peru website on the History Page: History Chats www.perutown.com/history.htm "There's so much history in this area," Sylvia said. "It was a different kind of life. When we grew up, we were all poor, we just didn't know it." But rich, maybe, with self-sufficiency The McGee family presented the knife to Friends of Lyon Mountain at the Lyon Mountain Mining and Railroad Museum on Sept. 27. ................................ SEASON'S END Lyon Mountain Mining & Railroad Museum is open on Wednesday and Saturday for a few more weeks, through mid-October. Located at 2914 Standish Rd. in Lyon Mountain, the history center was created to preserve the historic railroad depot by The Friends of Lyon Mountain in 1999. The group purchased the former D&H Railroad Station in 2000, renovated the property and opened in 2006. The museum collection showcases mining, railroad and community exhibits.

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Lyon Mountain: A handmade knife with a story

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