Vignettes from Castlewood

From the mid-1920′s until about 1961, my mom and dad, with other couples (some family, some friends) had a clubhouse on the Meramec River called the Cheramis.  They pronounced it “share-a miss” in the great Missouri tradition of eschewing French pronunciation (e.g., Ver-Sales for Versailles, MO.).

They knew that “Cheramis” meant “dear friends,” however, and probably got the name from my uncle (my dad’s oldest brother), who had been in France in World War 1 and knew a little of the language.  There was a sign on the front of the clubhouse with the name Cheramis on it.  All the club houses had cute names, but I can’t remember now what the others were called.

My mom and dad probably started going out to the river (that was the expression we all used, “going out to the river”) before or soon after they were married in 1925.  I never heard them talk about taking the train out from the city, as so many people did.  Instead, they probably drove out in their Model T’s and Packards.

They went because that was where the action was for the young people in St. Louis in those days.  They went for the dances at clubs, the parties at the clubhouses, and for Lincoln Beach – to swim, picnic and canoe. They later often reminisced about those days, about Prohibition, making home brew and going to a Speak Easy or two, and it sounded as if they had a great time.   Maybe there were resorts or homes where the wealthier lived near the Meramec in those days, but my folks and their friends were working class people who found Lincoln Beach a place to enjoy themselves in the summer without spending a lot of money.  And somehow, they kept going out there during the 30′s, the Depression years, even after some, like my mom and dad, lost their jobs.  I guess it was one place they could afford to go, and everyone stuck together and enjoyed the camaraderie on the weekends.

I’m not sure if my dad, uncles and other men built the Cheramis in the 20′s or bought it already built or if they owned the land it was on or if they leased it.  I wish I’d asked more questions before they were all gone.  All I know is, it was part of their lives and mine, too, for a long time.  I don’t know why the structures out at the river were called clubhouses, because they weren’t really clubs, but that was how everyone referred to them.  “Let’s go out to the club.”

Although my memories of the Cheramis date back to when I was a little kid, in the 1940′s, the sharpest are from the 1950′s, when I was a teenager and was allowed to have friends to join us out at the river on the weekends.

And it seemed that we headed out to the river just about every weekend in the summer time.  My parents would close their grocery store on Saturdays in the summer at 5 p.m. and by 7 p.m., we’d be at the Cheramis.  Others would already be there, having arrived on Friday after work or earlier on Saturday.  Everyone stayed until dusk on Sundays and then headed back home for the next work week.   Some spent their vacation weeks out at the river, but my mom and dad never took that much time off.

Now, from looking at a Castlewood State Park map, I think I’ve located where the Cheramis was.  I doubt anything of it is left now, except maybe some concrete piles where the stilts that held the clubhouse up would have been set.  If you look at the map…

…you’ll see that Kiefer Creek Road comes south and goes under a railroad trestle.  Notice The River Scene Trail that heads west.  There is a loop that veers left off the main trail and runs south, parallel to the bend in the river,  Along that trail about an inch and a half down, is where the Cheramis probably would have stood, on the left side of a very narrow little road.

We used to drive out Manchester Road and then head south onto a two lane paved road.  We’d eventually pass what I think was Halls’ Tavern on our right (there was an old abandoned gas station on the left), then go under the railroad tracks and turn right onto a gravel road that ran parallel to a corn field on the left.

We would go only about small city block, as I remember it, before reaching a narrow muddy or dirt road (depending on weather) with ruts for tire tracks.  We would turn left onto this dirt road, driving first along the other side of that cornfield and then past it, as the road narrowed further and woods and weeds were on either side of us.  It was a bumpy road, bumpier still if our car wheels came out of the ruts many other cars had made going back and forth.  If we met another car coming from the other direction, one of the cars would need to move off the road into the weeds so the other could pass.

 We’d drive a little way on that rutted road, passing little clearings where two or three clubhouses stood on the right side, up close to the road.  You couldn’t see the river from the car, as it was down a slope below those structures.  There were wide swaths of woods between each clubhouse.

Before reaching the Cheramis, you passed at least one other clubhouse on the left side, and like the Cheramis, it sat back from the road, perhaps 25 yards or so,   It was up on stilts and was separated from the Cheramis by a fairly dense woods.  Driving past those woods, you arrived at the clearing where the Cheramis was and turned left into the yard and parked on an angle, your car facing the woods.   Across the road from the Cheramis (not directly, but just a few yards further on) was another little two-story clubhouse set close to the road.

The front yard of the Cheramis was dirt and gravel.   There was a volley ball/badminton court there and off to the side, a horse-shoes court.  There was a brick barbecue pit off to the right of the staircase that led up to the cabin.

The area underneath the cabin of the clubhouse (which sat up on stilts) had a concrete floor, and it was screened in by 50′s. There was a big sink in the back on one side, for cleaning fish.  On the other side in the back, there was an enclosed shower stall.  There were coolers for drinks, folding chaise lounges and chairs, a couple of card tables, and all kinds of recreational equipment, such as racquets, oars, fishing poles, water skis, inner tubes for floating the river, tools, etc. Everyone sat under the club house in the summer playing cards (poker, gin, Canasta) or went out front to play badminton or volley ball.  A radio was always set to KMOX for the Cardinals’ games.

There was an outhouse in the back of the clubhouse, set several yards down a path into the woods.  It was a terrifying place, inhabited by large fat hairy spiders and an occasional bat or snake. None of us kids wanted to linger there.

You got into the cabin itself by climbing the stairs on the right side of the structure. At the top, you entered through a door onto a screened-in porch area that circled the living quarters on three sides.  On the side you entered, there were two big picnic tables with benches. The table tops were covered with oil cloths.  On the front side, facing the river, were roll-away beds and army cots, along with stacks of linens, blankets and pillows, all lined up ready for bedtime.   On the far side, the porch was used for more sleeping space and storage..The porch in its entirety could sleep 10 to 15 or more.  The snoring and wheezing once everyone settled down was amazing.

From the porch, you could walk into the living quarters.   There was a little sitting room with a couch that made into a bed and a couple of easy chairs and an old stove for heat on chilly mornings early in the season.  Off this room were a small kitchen with stove, a fridge and sink; and a small bedroom with lumpy, squeaky old bed and antique dresser/mirror.  There was also a little closet-size bathroom with sink and toilet.  The sitting room had big screened windows along its walls, which opened to the porch on the river side.  The bedroom and kitchen had windows that opened towards the back woods and the outhouse.

To get to the river, you just walked across the road, went down a few steps that were carved out of the slope, and there was a short plank walk to the Cheramis dock.  The dock was made of worn wood planks that together measured about 8 x 8 in size.  There were usually a couple of boats tied up there or pulled up on the shore.  People sat on the dock to fish or went out in boats to fish.  Usually, the men ran a trot line from the dock over to the opposite shore that they baited at dusk and checked on in the morning. Or maybe it was vice versa.  Sometimes, there were enough fish on it to have a fish fry.

By the mid-fifties, one of the men in the club had bought what to us was a snazzy motor boat, so we could water ski and race up and down the river.  But the preferred mode of navigation was floating inner-tubes down the river, which we shared with water moccasins, turtles and fish.

Paddling in a southerly direction off the dock, we’d eventually get to a gravel bar on the other side of the river, pull out, hang out for awhile, then start back.  Paddling north from the dock would take us up to what was left of Lincoln Beach on the other side of the river.  I was always fascinated by that place because of the stories I’d heard, but by the 50′s, although there was still some sand there, it was weed-strewn and sad.  It was hard to imagine that, back in the 1920′s, hundreds of people had been in what was in the 50′s such a desolate and unimpressive little area.

The Meramec flooded every few years, and there were times when the Cheramis, despite being many yards from the river and sitting up on stilts, was filled with muddy water.  Once the waters receded, the clubhouse folks would go out and shovel out the mud and debris, clean the walls and floors, replace what was ruined, air the place out, and continue to enjoy going to the river on summer weekends.

Like all teenagers, my friends and I liked to occasionally get away from the adults when we were out at the river, and after we had cars, we’d would go to the stock car races on Saturday nights that were, I think, near Valley Park in those days.

The last time I was at the Cheramis was August 1959, about a month before I got married.  My mom and dad let me and some of my Mizzou sorority sisters use it for an overnight outing before classes started back in Columbia.  We decided at some point that evening that we’d like to swim and, despite the late hour, drove to Castlewood, where we found a way to get into the big spring-fed swimming pool, well after closing hours.  We had the pool all to ourselves!

And then, after four decades of going out to the river, my mom and dad and their friends gave up the Cheramis, around 1961. What happened to it after that or who may have inhabited it beyond that time, I have no idea.  My parents sold their store and moved to the Lake of the Ozarks in 1962, then to California in 1972.

Hope this gives you an idea of what the clubhouses on the Meramec were like and how they were used over the years.

Thanks for asking…