In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (23 page)

It’s been more than 30 years now, but I can still vividly remember the way the film would crackle over that screen, breaking up, as it counted down from 10 to 1, just at the moment before the color would appear. I remember the stream of white foggy light flowing out from the noisy old projector, bisecting the darkened casino, and how when the screen was still blank but for light some kid would thrust his hands into that beam and adroitly fashion his fingers into shadow puppets. I remember the sweet and tart taste of Orange Crush on my tongue, and how bits of potato chips would somehow wind up floating in the bottle. I remember sitting there in the darkness, my best friends in the world all around me, looking up to the screen and hoping against hope there were another 5 or 6 or more cartoons left on the reel.

Of course, years passed, and we all aged, and then we one summer we discovered that by some mysterious decree we were suddenly old enough to be included with the elite group of “older” kids who got to see the “adult” film. We set up our lawn chairs in the front of the row upon row of casino folding chairs and waited for the few fans to blow some stale, stagnant air our way, while watching the flickering images of Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Doris Day, et al.

There were no VCRs or cable TV. The movies were saw were truly a special amusement. There were some films that were pretty much bungalow colony movie night classics. Remember?
Charade
is one. And all the Rock Hudson–Doris Day flicks—especially
Pillow Talk
. Then there was
The Thrill of It All
.
The Apartment
. I remember seeing
Rear Window
and being scared silly by
Psycho
. Cary Grant was always big; aside from
Charade
, there was
North by Northwest, That Touch of Mink, Houseboat, Father Goose
. Jack Lemmon was a staple, too—
Under the Yum Yum Tree, Some Like It Hot, It Happened to Jane
. Oh, and Judy Holiday and Paul Douglas in
The Solid Gold Cadillac
. When the film ended and the clacking of the final reel was done, we exited into the sweet summer night, startled by how the air had cooled so, brushing popcorn and pretzel crumbs off our clothing, toting our lawn chairs, and yawning, headed off for crisp, cold sheets and stacks of Supermans and Batmans and Green Lanterns, and maybe Archies, too.

You know, we never had what our kids do now—computers, video games, and 98 channels of TV, VCRs, and videos at $12.99. But maybe what we had was better. It certainly seems so in the remembering.

F
RIDAY
N
IGHT
—R
ETURN OF THE
D
ADS

Looking back today, it’s obvious that it was a classic matriarchal society. Close to maybe what had existed so many years before, when the senior men in the clan were out hunting and foraging and the women tended home fires and children. But in the remembering it is clear that the weekdays were devoid of fathers and husbands, except for the colony owner and maybe the camp director.

At some time between dinner Sunday and breakfast Monday, the dads vanished, banished back to “the city,” where they slaved long and hard to earn the bounty that made our summer’s solace possible.

Disappearing along with them were all vehicles of the internal-combustion variety. On Monday mornings the colony parking lot was as empty as a temple ten minutes after the shofar blows on Yom Kippur. From Monday through Friday, we were pretty much landlocked to that little plot of grass and asphalt—remanded to the handball court, ball field, casino, swimming pool, and rows of little shacks that were our respite from the teeming and steaming streets of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens.

The weekdays were full—with day camp and ball games and swimming and horseplay; and the moms had meals to prepare and washes to do, and, more essentially, mah-jongg and canasta to play. But invariably, Friday rolled around again, and with it the much-heralded return of our the wandering dads.

Friday came, and our moms, who on other evenings would throw anything at all together for dinner, often “pot-lucking” it between two or three or more families, would suddenly emerge as Jewish Julia Childs incarnate, and spend hours preparing lavish “Friday” (or “Shabbos” to the more observant few) repasts. They roasted chickens and turkeys and made chicken soup from scratch. They made chopped liver, chopping the liver and eggs and onions and chicken fat in those old wooden bowls with a gleaming, steel, sharper-than-the-devil’s-tongue hand chopper that preceded
Sling Blade
by a good three decades. They baked kugels and bought or baked fresh challah. I remember my mom would stock away jars of cold borscht, or schav—a foul-smelling, mysterious, green concoction that my dad downed with relish preceding his dinner.

They began arriving sometime after six, those that were fortunate enough to be able to leave their offices an hour or so before regular closing. The small, winding country road that for five days had been practically barren now witnessed a continuing, relentless clump-clump of tires bounding over its weary blacktop. The cars knew not from air conditioning, and the Chevys and Fords and Oldsmobiles and Dodges appeared, windows opened wide in search of a small breeze. The dads emerged from the steamy cars in short-sleeved white shirts opened at the collar, a hint of perspiration stain at the underarms, stopping to stretch, then await the rushing onslaught of their children, who, gratefully, were still young enough to be excited by the simple reappearance of an absent parent. I recall us charging my dad with the zeal of the bulls at Pamplona, eager to discover what treat or surprise he’d smuggled up from the city. One weekend it was my grandfather, replete with overstuffed valise, intent on a two-week stay, armed with enough loose change to keep me in pinball heaven for the fortnight. Another time it was a stack of new Supermans. One time it was a surprise visit from a city friend, although that one backfired, because, well, the city friends and country friends, they were two different breeds, you see, and they mixed as well as gasoline and turpentine.

I remember those Friday nights like they were last week. The promise of dusk settling around the colony as we spied my dad’s car turning into the parking lot. He lumbered from the car, and you caught a hint of his smell—that dad smell. Part Old Spice, part Pepsodent, part Lucky Strikes, part perspiration. And he’d been three hours on the road, but he was anxious and eager to hear all about your week in camp, and the softball game you won with a late-inning base hit, and the movie you’d seen the other night in the casino, and the new high you’d posted on the colony pinball machine, and anything and everything else you wanted to share. Harry Chapin wrote a lot of great songs, but fortunately, “Cat’s in the Cradle” didn’t apply to us. We really did know when Dad was coming home, and we really did have a great time then. We really did.

V
ENDORS
, P
EDDLERS, AND
K
NISHMEN IN THE
S
UMMER

The vendors usually made their rounds midweek, which always puzzled me a little. Either they were ignorant of the fact that the husbands held most of the cash, or they were banking on the husbands’ absence liberating the wives’ conscience, allowing a free-spending attitude to permeate the women on the colony. Either way, I remember them arriving on weekdays, while we were in day camp, either playing softball or splashing in the pool or simply lazing around on the grass, in the shade, telling each other lies and battling a Fudgesicle to a draw—equal amounts in the mouth and drizzled down the front of our camp T-shirt.

Usually the concessionaire, or colony owner, announced the vendor’s appearance on the colony PA system. Sometimes, though, it was the vendor himself. Ruby the Knishman, whose proclamations were as famous as his dreamy, greasy, sumptuous knishes, stands out above all. Ah, but I digress.

Looking back, it’s truly a remarkable phenomenon—these mobile vendors, like New World descendants of the old Jewish peddlers who’d roamed the rocky dirt roads of the “old country.” They pulled onto the colony grounds in their dusty station wagons or panel trucks and erected a few bridge tables on which to display their wares. There was the bathing suit guy, and the sweater guy. There was the T-shirt guy and the jeans guy. There was an assortment of anonymous shoe men. Honestly, most of the clothing vendors were forgettable, except, in the late 1960s, for an old school bus painted in psychedelic colors and covered with peace signs that had been christened “Bus Stop Boutique.” It was little more than a head shop on wheels, but the time was right, and for kids marooned on a bungalow colony with little access to rolling papers and screens, it was a Godsend. They also stocked great tie-dye wear, and a varied assortment of the latest record releases. I remember buying James Taylor’s seminal album,
Sweet Baby James
, for $2.99. Also the second Blood, Sweat and Tears, the faded brown cover, with “Spinning Wheel” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.”

Some of the vendors were so colorful and unique that they remain indelibly on my memory circuits even with the confounded passing of more than three decades. There was the “Knishman from Mountaindale.” He would arrive on our colony each and every Thursday afternoon, his truck laden with freshly roasted chickens, brisket, soup, kishka, kugels, cholent, and, of course, those marvelous knishes—potato and kasha. A harried and hurried mom could purchase an entire Friday dinner with some mah-jongg winnings, and save Friday afternoon for sunning at the pool. And they did.

There was “Shimmy the Pickle King.” He owned a huge blue truck, the side painted with giant pickles. His garlic sours were a thing of beauty, a joyous memory forever—crisp, flavorful, and tart. He also moved jars of sweet red peppers, sour tomatoes, and sauerkraut, as well as nuts and dried fruit.

There was Chow-Chow Cup, of blessed memory. We savored chicken chow mein that came in that wonderful bowl made of Chinese noodles, and the Chinese hot dogs, just corn dogs on a stick, really, that came encased in a wrapper with Chinese lettering all over. The egg rolls were loaded with enough oil to slick the hair of the entire Lincoln High School football team. On the first bite the grease saturated the flimsy napkin and stained every article of clothing within 200 yards.

There was an unending and countless assortment of peddlers—honest men and women hustling hard in the heat to make a buck. They hawked everything from pocketbooks to kids’ sweatshirts, cheap watches to fresh fruit. But no matter what it was they were pushing, one thing was a constant—the rushing tide of the mothers from their mah-jongg and canasta games, and from their poolside sun perches, just to “look, I’m just looking, sweetheart.” Of course, suffice to say that God has yet to create a Jewish woman who could “just look,” and inevitably, you’d return from camp at day’s end to discover some new, hideous, and utterly unnecessary addition to your bungalow, or worse, your summer wardrobe, an item your mom was certain was “just perfect” for you. Then you did your best to relegate the item to the back and bottom of your dresser drawer, hoping it would be forgotten until well after Labor Day, when, in the rush to pack the bungalow, you might succeed in misplacing it forever.

Of all the vendors that came and went through all those enchanted summers, my favorite, an authentic Mountains character, was Ruby the Knishman. I close my eyes and see his long, thin face, three days’ salt-and-pepper stubble riding his gaunt cheeks. His fingers are long and thin and crooked, and he doesn’t walk so much as lope, a little stooped, until, standing in the concession as he announces his presence on the microphone, you see him stretch and realize he is actually tall. He wears a soiled old sport shirt and a pair of beaten trousers, a baseball cap on his head, and he speaks to the microphone in a voice part gravel, part velvet. I only wish I’d once thought to record his announcements, because they were rich in ad libs and merriment.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he would intone, “I am back! Ruby the Knishman is now on the premises, with my delicious and nutritious, hot, homogenized, pasteurized, and recently circumcised kosher knishes. We got today for you potato, onion, kasha, mushroom, and pizza knishes. Come on, folks, I need the money. I gotta send my wife to Florida. She’s killing me! Oy! Have some
rachmunis
on an old man and buy a dozen. Buy two dozen!”

The knishes, at half a buck each, were the best buy in 100 miles. They were unlike any other kind of knish I’ve had before or since—a fried covering, like a pouch, inside filled with cloudy dollops of potato, or potato and mushroom, or, for the adventurous few who also desired to fulfill some dubious dietary necessity—broccoli. I haven’t had a Ruby’s knish—he called them “Mom’s Knishes” because his wife, “Mom,” was their sainted creator—in more than ten years now, but the taste is just beyond my tongue as if it were yesterday.

Ruby is gone now. After he passed on, his wife and kids operated a store in Woodbourne, turning out the same remarkable product. That lasted a few summers. I’ve heard rumors of a place in Loch Sheldrake stocking a knish somewhat akin to what Ruby once fed us. But it wouldn’t be the same. Not without the battered truck he had, held together with spit and a prayer; not without his glorious and memorable announcements on the colony loudspeaker; and certainly not without being touched by the hands of Ruby himself, the true Pied Piper of knishes from my childhood, all those years ago.

E
NCHANTED
S
UMMER
N
IGHTS