Upon returning to the US Paul served a parish in Braddock, Pa. and then became an adminstrator in the Eastern District,LCMS, before retiring. Paul and Carol now live in Bel Air, Md. Their email address is iggyk48@juno.com.

"Our family camped up there in the summer of 1926. We had two tents, and my father built a kitchen "shelter" out of wood he scrounged at the site of the construction of Forest and Pocohanne going on that summer. I guess it had become officially "Lutherland" by then.

The rustic cabins were already there but the Laura Dahlen Playhouse was not built until later.

The Halama family camped next to us that summer. There were times when I went to sleep in the tent, but woke up in one of the rustic cabins that was unoccupied.

I had my 5th birthday up there on August 20, 1926. There was a family renting one of the cabins named Pape. On my birthday, they gave me a wooden pop-gun, the kind with the cork attached on a string, and also a corn-popper which worked well in the fireplace.

We shopped at Bonzer's, which was a general store, and at times bought bread, and also blueberry pie at Hoffman's, which at that time was a bakery and restaurant, not a bar.

At that time, Lake Tamaqua had not yet appeared. There was a small nine-hole golf course there. There was a big hollow tree near the golf course which we thought was fun, and maybe the home of elves.

I remember the joy of walking down to Bonser's, for there were always so many interesting things to see- things I otherwise would not get to see. And then there was the added joy of some candy, either a gift of the Bonsers, or maybe even from my Dad.

And those home-made huckleberry pies from Hoffmann's! I remember we walked down to Hoffmann's one evening, and got caught in a sudden thunderstorm on the way back. We sat on the cots eating huckleberry pie in the
darkness, and,of course, spilling huckleberry pie all over the beds.

The roundhouse was on a back road amd still had a roof, but was full of all kinds of stuff- furniture, bath tubs, old pennants, etc. It was very dusty, so we got filthy. On those rainy days playing in the roundhouse was our recreation. We would line up the bathtubs in opposing lines, pretending they pretending they were World War I trenches, and shoot at each other with sticks or other imaginary rifles and other weapons. The pennants we would roll up and tie with the strings, and then lob them at the "enemy" as hand-grenades, making the appropriate sounds. The roundhouse finally did collapse in later years."

The round house that Paul speaks of was originally the Auditorium of the Pocono Pines Assembly. It was built around 1905 and reportedly seated almost 1,000 people.