Paradise on the Tennessee River
by Rainer Klauss
Class of '64
Ah, Ossa-win-tha! (A Cherokee word for “the place where the Germans gather to swim.”) I don’t know who discovered it, but the word got around, and in the early 50s, a group of Huntsville’s German families began spending their Sundays at that rustic resort/fish camp on Highway 79 (between Guntersville and Scottsboro). Amongst the pines beside the Tennessee River, there stood a main office, a few cabins to rent, a swimming pier, a small sand/mud beach, a boat dock with a gasoline pump, and ample room for kids to frolic and parents to set up camp and commence to socialize.
Preparations began Saturday evening when my mother would fry hamburgers, make potato salad, and organize the other provisions. After we had a light breakfast on Sunday morning, the tray of the big red Coca-Cola cooler would be packed with food, and a big block of ice would be placed in the bottom compartment, along with Cokes, Dr Peppers, coffee and beer. Then we’d head up Bankhead Parkway in our jade green ’51 Mercury, the trunk stuffed with camp chairs, blankets, inner tubes, and food.
In those days, you had to drive through New Hope on the old Hwy 431 to get to Hwy 79. Once we passed the turn-off for Guntersville Dam, we knew the destination wasn’t far away. Upon arrival, the Klauss kids piled out of the car, looked for their friends and helped to set up the family’s spot, and Dad went to the office to pay the fee for the day. Once that was all taken care of, you got the green light to go have fun.
I remember the river bottom being firm and kind of pebbly near the swimming pier, where I spent most of my time. Out at the end of the pier, which stretched about 30 feet, the water was about 12 feet deep (two fathoms of pretty clear water). The accompanying picture shows my mother, brother Dieter (6 years older), and me having fun on our inner tubes. I look like I’m about 7, so this picture was probably snapped in 1953.
Though it interrupted our water-play, the break for lunch was always welcome-- time to devour that picnic food! Some families might set up for a wienie roast or some other grilled food, but I found my mom’s cold burgers delicious. Their dressings of chilled tomatoes, onions, mustard, ketchup, and mayo were a piquant delight. There are many types of German potato salad (hot/cold, variations within variations). My mom often made hers with a mustard base, so it was tangy. A sugary, ice-cold ’53 Co-cola was the perfect complement to such an international meal. Chips and pastry treats (often home-made) completed the requirements for the picnic food pyramid.
The afternoons brought a mixture of aquatic and dry-land activities: more swimming, diving and pushing each other off the pier, voyages on inner tubes, card games, board games, or just running around under the trees—all in all, an idyllic day for everyone.
I can’t remember how many years we flocked back there in the summer, but probably not much past the middle 50s. By then some of the German families had gone on to another stage of the American dream and assimilation and bought boats or water lots on the lakes and rivers of the Tennessee Valley. My parents may have considered such acquisitions, but decided against them. For one thing, we had just moved into a new house. I don’t think my father wanted to get involved with clearing brush and trees or another construction project out in the boonies—no matter how appealing the view. Instead, we were often the guests of our friends at their properties on the Tennessee, Whitaker Lake, the Flint River, Guntersville Lake, or we cruised on those bodies of water in their boats. It was all pleasurable, but something was missing—the communal joy and free spirits of those early days at Ossa-win-tha.
As of two years ago, Ossa-win-tha was still a going business, though in decline. Gudrun, her mother, and I drove out there on a sentimental journey—to stop at Guntersville Dam and to see if our old watering hole up the road was still open. After so many years away, we were surprised to see that it still existed. The cabins were there, the central office, too, but there were a lot of small trailers on blocks, aging recreational vehicles and camper trucks scattered around, so it had become mostly a retirement spot beside the milfoil-choked river. The path to the swimming pier was blocked and overgrown with weeds, and the pier itself was a derelict, missing lots of boards. We had brought a few sandwiches, and sitting there in the car we looked out across the river, remembering the good old days.
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More Inputs on Ossa-win-tha
Ann Schrimsher Franklin, Rison Class of '51 - Ah Ossa-Win-Tha - a great place.
For many years I had considered Ossa-Win-Tha primarily a place for boating and swimming, neither of which I enjoyed, but I learned that I was wrong - it was much more than that.
I first rented a cabin right near the water for several years and then bought a trailer on the property. What an experience! What I enjoyed:
•The absolutely beautiful sunrises and sunsets.
•Night sounds.
•Crisp winter mornings and evenings.
•Food of any kind tasted better.
•Outdoor church services from Spring to Fall.
•Walks on the grounds - grounds that remind you of Monte Sano.
•Being able to be either sociable or spending time alone.
•Driving to Guntersville, Albertville and Boaz and checking out side
"roads untraveled," sometimes getting lost and then getting found.
•Knowing that I'd be back the next weekend.
Ossa-Win-Tha is not a luxurious place but it is a special place. I had all the luxuries I needed in that I could sleep indoors, had a telephone, TV, and a bathroom.
Before I retired, I decided that I no longer needed a "home away from home" so I sold my trailer and that ended my days at Ossa-Win-Tha. My daughter and I recently took a sentimental drive through the property and stopped to visit with the resort's owner/manager, Michelle, the original owner's (Inez Edwards Reese) granddaughter.
If you don't know about Ossa-Win-Tha you may want to check it out. There are many good memories waiting to be had!
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Glenn James, Class of '65 - Osawintha was a resort on Guntersville Lake. I don't think it is in operation as I heard the lady that owned it has passed away and it had gotten in bad repair.
Sherry and I went there one summer for vacation with her family. As I remember it was like the summer resorts from the '40s & '50s. It had some old wooden cabins and a pier out in the lake.
The swimming area had a sandy bottom at one time, but it had silted over and was mostly mud. I remember there was a playground for the kids with swings and see-saws like the ones at Big Spring Park. But there wasn't much to do other than swim and fish.
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John Drummond, Class of '65 - "Ossawintha" is a Cherokee Indian word that means: "place in the pines." It is the name of a small lakeside resort NE of Huntsville and NW of Guntersville. The term "resort" is probably a bit generous; it was more like a family-oriented summer camp. Spread out among the pine trees, families could rent sites for tents, trailers, mobile homes or even a few cottages by the week during the summer, at a very low cost. There was a central lodge, with a large meeting room, that also sold groceries. Most folks brought all their own food (there was no restaurant) and grilled out in the evening. It was a very low-key, laid-back place, with no organized activities; a great place to do nothing. Volleyball, fishing, horseshoes, shuffleboard and hammock-swinging were available for the more adventurous (but not much else) during the day. Remember, this was in the early 60s, when "aerobic" only meant certain types of bacteria. At night, we would play Monopoly or Scrabble, or just read for pleasure. We kids griped about not having any TV to watch, but in retrospect that was probably the best part, because it forced us to interact and get along with each other as a family; what we would now categorize as "quality time." If a 21st-century family vacationed at Osawintha, I suspect each kid would be plugged into his/her own iPod, video game, cellphone or laptop. This visual mental image makes me want to call up my 28-year-old son to arrange a horseshoe match, but I don't dare do that. On summer vacations he compared me to the Chevy Chase character in those National Lampoon movies, rolling his eyes skyward as he groaned: "Dad, you're pulling another Clark Griswold on us." Then he would put the big earphones back on, lost in his own generation's music, while I kept my hands on the steering wheel and tried in vain to look dignified.
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Kevin Rice, Class of '71 - "OSSAWINTHA" brings back alot of early memories to me ......if your talking about the little fish camp of cabins,off Highway 79, tween Guntersville and Scottsboro.
That is where my family would spend one week and sometimes two during the Summer. My dad worked at the Huntsville Times, and we and a few other families from the Times would vacation together down there.
I loved waking up with the lake smells all around. Get up and head out for the daily rounds of visiting and playing....and in the evenings, just weekends I think, there would be a GREAT puppet show put on by the ladies that ran the place back in the late 50ties. It was the best, even though some young blonde kept getting in front of the audience line,(U know who U r) and they would close the show.
Wife and I went back a couple of years ago and spent the weekend in one of the cabins....the place is really run down and has alot more trailors than cabins.....but I found my memories walkin down the ole dirt road.
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Bruce Fowler, Class of '66 - Ah, Ossawintha! It was a fishing camp east of HWY 79 between Guntersville and Albertsville. A rather primitive place of rustic cabins and paleometallic trailers whose only integrity was rust. It was run by the Edwards family and its solitary theme was fishing. From the mid-50's until I decamped for undergraduate school (and more significantly my family moved to Guntersville where my father could fish regularly,) my father would take us there for several weeks each year as family vacations.
As I recall those vacations would consist of him rising at about 0400 or so to fish until mid morning, nap in the afternoon, and return to fishing at the onset of twilight until deep dark. My mother still had to cook and clean, the latter no mean feat given the decrepit state she considered the lodgings to occupy. I would wander off into the relative wilderness to explore and immerse myself in a book and my younger brother would likewise disappear. That happily was in days before teenagers had to be watched for perversion and depredation. Diversion at the camp consisted of a teeter-totter and a couple of swings, hardly attractive to teenagers. In the latter years outdoor rental movies were shown a couple of evenings a week, mostly B or C movies from the '50's.
One of my most vivid memories of high school was a long new year's weekend that my family shared the largest cabin with that of my father's first cousin. W. R. Lowrey. No matter the relative largeness of the cabin, packing it with four adults and five children over a hideously stormy, cold (for Alabama) weekend was the stuff that classic gothic English murder mysteries are spun about.
Ossawintha is still there, I believe run by one of the Edwards' grandchildren but now almost exclusively a camper/RV park for snowbirds. It was closed for several years while the estate was settled by the legal instrumentality but when I last checked almost a year ago it was dense with people and aluminium caravans.
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