Espy Family ArchiveFor more than 20 years, the Heckes Inn was the premier summer boarding establishment of Southwest Washington, due in large measure to the home-grown food, freshly caught seafood, and the amazing cooking specialties of the four Caulfield sisters.

The Caulfield Sisters

One of my first important memories of Oysterville is of the house just north of my Granny and Papa’s place. It was known to everyone far and wide as the Heckes Boarding House. It had even been written up by food critic Duncan Hines in his 1939 book, “Adventures in Good Cooking.” He rated it as one of the five outstanding eating places in the whole of Southwest Washington!

Although locals often referred to it as “The Heckes Place,” my mother and her brothers and sisters always called it “The Ant Hill.” It goes without saying to most of us out here in the west that we make no distinction between the pronunciation of “aunt” and “ant.” Since the inn was run by four inseparable, unresting sisters — Aunt Rye, Aunt Ev, Aunt Nanny and Aunt Anne — the Aunt Hill seemed a fitting description.

The four had been raised (along with a brother who died long years before they arrived in Oysterville) in Minnesota along the Canadian border. Aunt Rye was oldest (born in 1858) and according to the Oyster Shell Telegraph, back in Minnesota when she was young her father discouraged suitors because she was such a great help around the house. Her actual name was Ella or Mary Ellinor (or Elliner or Elenor — take your pick.) She was short (maybe five feet) and stout and full of fun.

She was the best cook — or so the children thought, perhaps because she specialized in desserts, especially pies. Even I (who first arrived in Oysterville in 1939) remember that she stood on a little stepstool so she could roll out those delicious crusts on a marble slab on the countertop. But I especially remember her large crock, always full of cookies, there for the taking.

Aunt Ev (Evelyn), born in 1863, married while still in Minnesota, but her husband died of appendicitis four years later and she never remarried. When the others decided to move west, she came along with them. She stayed in Portland most of the time running the “405 Clay Boarding House” as they called it. She was said to have “eyes full of tenderness though not of sparkle.”

Aunt Nanny (Edna) was born in 1869 and was married to Uncle John. Their sons were Glen and Guy. Aunt Nanny was the matriarch of the group — “the bossy one” the kids said — and took care of reservations and all the accounting. Her specialties in the kitchen were roasted meats and fried oysters and clams.

Finally, there was Aunt Ann, born in 1874. She married Uncle Lou Kemmer in 1903, and the entire family joined the honeymoon journey to the West Coast, stopping first in Grants Pass for a few years and finally went on to Portland. By the time they began the Heckes Inn, the Kemmer children — Faye, Gyla, Roy and Bob — were about the ages of the youngest Espy kids (my mother and her brothers) and they were all best friends — at least in the summertime when the Inn was operating and the Kemmers were in town.

Aunt Ann was the artistic sister. She painted and papered every room in the main house and in the additional house and cottages the family added as their clientele outgrew the original Inn. Aunt Ann also painted decorative motifs on china and canvas, arranged the lovely floral bouquets and, of course, was the cake decorator of the group. It was Aunt Ann, too, who suggested to Glen’s wife, Helen, that she begin a China bottle collection — to give her a specialty of her own among all those busy women. That bottle collection — or at least part of it — still adorns the windows of the large “Keeping Room” where Helen displayed them for many years.

Meals at the Inn were always three courses: first, a fruit or seafood cocktail; next, a salad; then, meat or fish accompanied by rice or noodles, a hot vegetable, rolls or biscuits. And always, of course, dessert! At the height of summer when the inn was often overflowing with guests, the Espy girls and others from the village were often hired to wait tables or to wash dishes after dinner.

Uncle John died in ‘39, and Uncle Lou was not far behind him. Then the aunts began dropping away. Perhaps when the first one went, the rest preferred not to remain. In 1944, the Heckes Inn closed. Somehow, even without all the boarders and the bustle of preparations in the kitchen, the house was always welcoming. Helen and Glen continued many of the traditions — there were always cookies in the crock and the coffee pot was never empty even into the next generation. Nowadays, though, people call it “The Bottle House” and I doubt that there are many of us who remember when it was “The Ant Hill” run by the indomitable Caulfield sisters.