In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (56 page)

“What does all of that mean?” I asked.

“With Amy, it means you know she’s Jewish, but you don’t know what being Jewish means. Not up here,” he advised quietly. “And I’ll bet you don’t even know what it means back in Georgia. You asked me if I thought her mother believed the story about all of us going to the movies, and I told you she didn’t. I meant that. Why do you think her mother’s so nervous around you? She knows what’s going on, Bobo. I don’t know how she knows, but she does, believe me. Maybe Amy told her. But after tonight, she’ll be watching you like an eagle.”

Carter fumbled for another cigarette and lit it. He fell back into the lounge chair and flipped small smoke rings into the night air with his tongue. He said pleasantly, “Does it get this cold at night in Georgia?”

“Not in the summer.”

“Then I think I’ll move down there,” he mumbled. “I hate freezing my ass off.”

“Down there, you sweat it off,” I told him. Then I asked, “Carter, what does it mean to you—Amy being Jewish?”

“What it means, Bobo, is that nothing is ever going to happen between the two of you. Nothing more than tonight. Oh, you may diddle with her, and love it, but that’s as far as it goes. Some things just don’t happen. New York Jew and Georgia redneck, that’s one of those things. Not in your lifetime.”

I thought of Amy’s warning: “There’ll be so many things against us.”

Part 6

R
ELIGION

Passover seder at Grossinger’s, 1960. Many people came to the Mountains for Passover so that they wouldn’t have to kosher their homes. Large hotels like Grossinger’s had famous cantors, such as Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill, and large choirs.
M
ARTHA
M
ENDELSON

Passover seder at Hibsher’s Hotel, Liberty. This very small hotel offered a very different kind of seder than Grossinger’s.
M
ELVIN
G
UNSBERG

Yiddish ads for Catskills hotels, 1956. Even in the 1950s, many hotels that were not religious ran ads in Yiddish.
C
ATSKILLS
I
NSTITUTE

The Swan Lake/White Lake shul, 2000. This shul was built by people who lived too far away to walk to the shuls in Swan Lake or White Lake; it is right in between. The style of the façade comes from eighteenth-century Polish synagogues and is found in a huge proportion of the hotels as well.
I
RWIN
R
ICHMAN

The Ulster Heights Shul, 1999.
P
HIL
B
ROWN

Street scene in Woodbourne, 1998. Most of the stores that remain open in this small town are orthodox establishments, such as this bookstore that is open as late as 11 p.m.    P
HIL
B
ROWN

Hasidim loading furniture bought at Concord liquidation sale, 1999. The Catskills’ largest hotel went broke and had a two-month-long liquidation sale. Hasidim were among the many people who furnished bungalow colonies and homes with that hotel’s furniture, dishes, and silverware.
P
HIL
B
ROWN