That box in the attic still has lots of photos that we've been rummaging through. This gent must have stayed at the hotel way back when what is now The Bunkhouse had been a secluded fishing camp on the lake known as "The Loveless Lodge".
The lodge was generally unknown but by word of mouth, and was only available to book if you knew someone who knew someone. Townies seeking accommodations for visiting family members were virtually always told they were fully booked, and few had seen it. Most often booked by small groups of out of town of men arranging their stays by communicating to each other under fictitious names to private mailboxes, it only had a capacity of 40 with a total of 15 rooms with shared baths upstairs. The kitchen, dining room and gathering hall with a check in desk, a bar with a few tables and 2 sofa suites were on the main floor. Staff lived in the basement. Of the townies who had ever been to the property, one man simply disappeared, and some other men were employed as cook, handyman and "fishing guides"; all were single with no families. It all seemed to be "on the QT."
Two cousins from Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands of England had immigrated, bought the land and built the lodge with hoarded cash after successfully entering the hospitality trade in New York City after their arrival on Ellis Island in June of 1914.
The morning of their departure from the city, the day before Christmas, 1929, Edgar noted a local vaudevillian had declared that ex-stockbrokers were being declared the state bird. They exited via train, in answer to an advertisement in a countryside periodical and headed to the hills of another state.
People said they looked remarkably alike. Their names were Edgar Loveless and Sinjin Birdwhistle, which place them solidly in a group of families whose British surnames seemed to have a visibly declining progeny, and these two were no exception. In town, quiet Edgar was overheard to say his wife died of dysentery in England, while it was said of strapping Sinjin that he wasn't the marrying kind. Seemingly popular with a few of the shop ladies whenever he came into the village for supplies, he was observed to have a high-pitched tone and a propensity to giggle at the end of nearly every other sentence, which put off all but a few of the men in town.
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