I'm going to start with an unlikely thing: the benches. That's what stood out to me, the benches.
These elders (what shall we call them?) These folks liked to meet daily on benches and sit and talk.
The men talk about one type of subject, philosophy, etc., the women, another, children, etc...wasn't that interesting?
I found myself wishing I could hear the men...I wonder why?
Which group would you have wanted to listen to?
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But these benches, this gathering and grouping by gender, hit me with a long ago memory.
In the US from the 1920's to the 70's if you said the words "Catskills" and "Borscht Belt" to any person in the NorthEast of this great country, they immediately knew what you were talking about.
Here's Wikiwackia on it:
Borscht Belt hotels, bungalow colonies, summer camps, and קאָך-אַליינס kokh-aleyns (a Yiddish name for self-catered boarding houses, literally, "cook-alones") were frequented by families of middle and working class Jewish New Yorkers, mostly Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants. Antisemitism, particularly in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, meant that they were often denied accommodation elsewhere.
Some of the Catskill hotels were converted from farms that immigrant Jews had started in the early 1900's. As the area grew, it began to cater specifically to Jews, providing kosher food, synagogues, and other features of Jewish communities, including entertainment. The area became known as "The Jewish Alps", and the Sullivan County portion as "Solomon County".
From the 1920s through the 1970s, nearly all notable Jewish entertainers would hone their skills at resorts in the Sullivan County area. Fallsburg became the catalyst for American stand-up comedy.[4] Comedy legends Mel Blanc, Milton Berle, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye and Red Buttons made an early living at the night clubs here, as would Hollywood stars Mel Brooks, Billy Crystal, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles, and Joan Rivers. Famed prize fighters like Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, and Muhammad Ali trained here. Millions of tourists, especially New Yorkers, came to swim in the lakes and oversized hotel pools, to ski or ice-skate or take lessons in golf, tennis, and dancing. No fewer than 538 hotels sprang up in this area of Eastern New York
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These mammoth resorts are hard to imagine now. The big ones like Grossingers (that second G is pronounced, like "Gross in GRRRs") and the Concord saw the likes of Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher (who got married there) and I remember seeing Slammin' Sammy Snead play golf there. Grossingers, who thought it would ever die? The Concord, Neveles. Gigantic places. Books have been written on their declines.
But the benches?
In the summer of 1961 I, a blond blue eyed Protestant, before starting college, worked the summer at Tennannah Lake House,
a Kosher Jewish Resort not far from Grossingers and the Concord. One of the "Paleys," (not the Babe Paley of Truman Capote, not the famous CBS Paley, one of the lesser brothers or relatives or something), ran it. It kept Kosher like many of them did but was a lot smaller and less opulent, appealing to perhaps a comfortable middle class, tho why I say middle class I have no idea. The staff (including members of the band who played for Johnny Carson's show in their off time making money here) lived in airless top floor rooms which were so small they didn't even have a closet but I never will forget the room rate on the door: $125 per night in the main lodge. For no closet. That was NOT Middle Class in 1961, particularly if you'd stay a month.
And believe it or not, that is NOT Tennanah Lake House in the photo, it's a smaller place they took down to build the real one, which sat back from the lake, long gone in photos and memory except for those of us who stayed there. I always thought one day I'll come back here, but not as a staff member, I'll come back here and stay as a guest, but it fell almost immediately in the great 60's decline, to an Ashram and I believe it burned down. I won't be staying there, the mah jongg tiles will be silent forever.
The families would meet, year after year, at the great lodge, and enjoy summer fun, concerts, swimming in the huge lake, the big pool, billiards, anything and everything you can think of, these resorts offered. There were big name comedians in the night club, and there was this sitting, by the old folks, on the porch on benches catching up with the other families who came every year and appeared to stay for months. Sitting and commenting on anything and everything. Something for every age to do in the Catskills in the summer.
I picked up a lot of Yiddish here. I also failed at every single job given me to do. Finally they gave me the job of "Receptionist," because I had such a "pretty voice, like singing," (they should hear me now).... which involved using one of those push telephone console things people make jokes about now, with all the wires and trunk tubes, you talk about difficult. ....that lasted until somebody called about fall accommodations and inquired "Are you open after the Holidays?"
"What holiday? " I asked. Silence (about the same silence that occurred when I ordered a glass of milk in the dining room once, even tho we ate a long way back from the paying guests)...and then..."Is this Tennannah Lake House?" ... Me: "Yes." "Can I speak to somebody who knows what they are doing?"
hahahaa I miss that? I miss that entire way of talking and thinking.
I can hear the mah jongg tiles now that the Chinese kitchen staff would gather to play after hours in the dark. We were warned this was serious business and not to disturb or interrupt them in any way...just a wonder to be seen wherever you turned your eyes. It was like a United Nations, the wait staff came from Miami, the Maitre d' was Italian and brought up all his kinsmen to be waiters and lifeguards.
And like so many things of the past, particularly in this area, that's all gone. That is the great resorts, how heartbreaking it is to see the ruin of Grossingers, whoever thought IT would die? People discovered Florida, cars and planes took people to more exotic vacations, and the huge culture which was, is no longer.
There's a DVD called Things That Aren't There Any More, of the area I actually grew up in, in PA, and they aren't. The great amusement park Willow Grove Park, gone, the famous Ball Park. Gone.
But people still gather on benches, don't they? And the thing that I've been wondering, is.....I wonder how much of this is particularly Jewish, how much of this is a particular
Ashkenazi Jewish Culture, and how much of this is human nature?
These people don't seem exotic to me. Do they to you?
They seem normal, they seem very strong (or are they?) Is it strong to want to live by yourself? Or is it something else?
I love this book and I hope we can talk from all our various backgrounds and understandings to see what we think.
But what do YOU think? What struck you?
