In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (13 page)

Andy was low on cigarettes and that gave him the excuse to approach the register without being obvious. Arlene saw him on his collision course with her and with birdlike glances quickly took measure of the store to see where Douglas and Phil stood and if they were watching.

“Something you want?” she asked him.

“How can you say that with a straight face?” he asked.

“I mean now,” she said, suppressing the urge to smile.

“Now, yesterday, tomorrow—the answer’s the same.”

“You’re making it difficult for me, Andy,” she said.

“That’s the
last
thing I want to do. Give me a pack of Luckies,” he sighed, “and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Don’t go too far,” she answered and handed him his change.

Part 2

B
OARDING
H
OUSE
, B
UNGALOW
,
AND
K
UCHALAYN
L
IFE

Breezy Corners, Kiamesha Lake (above) and Five Star Cottages, Monticello (below). Two operating bungalow colonies that began as kuchalayns, 2000. The large building in each of these colonies is evidence of the earlier kuchalayn building.
P
HIL
B
ROWN

Shandalee Camp, Livingston Manor.
C
ATSKILLS
I
NSTITUTE

Boris Colony Club, Glen Wild. Martin Boris grew up on his parents’ colony and got much of the material there for his book
Woodridge, 1946
.
M
ARTIN
B
ORIS

A bungalow colony handball court overgrown with vines, 1998. Such overgrown courts and swimming pools are common archaeological relics on the roads of the Catskills.
P
HIL
B
ROWN

Kolel Tartikov Bungalows, Thompsonville, 1998. This is one of the few orthodox bungalow colonies that tell you what the original name was.
P
HIL
B
ROWN

I
NTRODUCTION

M
ost Catskills resorts were modest in the early days, with only a few large hotels. The familial nature of the Catskills experience was cemented in the farm/boarding house that was an extension of a home. When boarding houses expanded into kuchalayns and bungalow colonies, they provided a milieu where people were together the entire summer, forming very close connections and a very interesting minisociety. In the kuchalayn, you rented a room and got shared cooking and eating privileges in the kitchen and dining room. In a bungalow colony, you rented a whole building, small as it usually was, and had your own privacy for cooking and eating. Some places were hybrids of both types. By the 1950s few kuchalayns remained, though many would refer to bungalow colonies as kuchalayns, even if the characterization was not accurate.

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story, “The Yearning Heifer,” is an autobiographical tale of Singer’s foray to a Catskill farm in search of a quiet place to write. Rather than finding a farmhouse eager to take in boarders, Singer’s character encounters a surly farmer whose wife is angry that he placed an advertisement in the paper. Singer’s story illustrates the primitive conditions in which an early twentieth-century farm family lived, the relations between Jewish and Gentile farmers, and developing friendship between the boarder and his or her “farmer,” as boarding house and kuchalayn renters often referred to their proprietors, even if they were no longer actively engaged in farming.

Martin Boris read from his
Woodridge 1946
(an excerpt appears in the prior section) at an early History of the Catskills Conference, and he became interested in a particularly fascinating local bungalow colony a mile down the same road, long since closed. “Grine Felder—A Place in the Country” is the outcome of Boris’s research into the Yiddishist and arts-oriented colony that Isaac Bashevis Singer visited on occasion. This essay shows the importance of the arts for certain resorts. While most bungalow colonies were not so cultured, there was a tradition of high culture in a minority of colonies and hotels. The significance of the Yiddish language, seen in Grine Felder, was very widespread in the Catskills, especially before World War II.

Thane Rosenbaum has only one piece on the Catskills, “Bingo by the Bungalow,” in his collection
Elijah Visible
, which he read at one of the History of the Catskills Conferences. It portrays the intimacy of daily bungalow colony life through Adam Posner, growing up the child of Holocaust survivors. At Cohen’s Summer Cottages in Kiamesha Lake, Adam is the only child in the colony; his mother is a bingo addict, looking for the small tsotchkes from her own and adjoining colonies, and for the mammoth $200 Labor Day jackpot. The omnipresent doom and tragedy of the survivor shows up—Adam suffers a compound fracture learning to play baseball, and his father’s heart condition puts him in the hospital at the same time. The communal caretaking by the colony residents reminds us of this important element of bungalow life. A rainstorm washes out the bingo game, though Adam needs only one more number to fill his card. As in Rosenbaum’s other stories, deliverance at the end just doesn’t come—we are still waiting for Elijah, for peace. And like other writers of Catskills fiction, Rosenbaum has his protagonist come back as a father, with his own boy, to scour the ruins of the colony.

Irwin Richman’s “Bungalow Colony Life” comes from his definitive work on the topic,
Borscht Belt Bungalows
. Not only did Richman grow up on his family’s colony, but he later worked as counselor and camp director in other colonies; his grandfather provided mortgages to many others. This selection details many of the activities in which bungalow dwellers engaged and demonstrates their close connectedness.

Arthur Tanney’s “Bungalow Stories” was originally written for an Internet discussion group, and later published on the Catskills Institute Web site and read at two of the History of the Catskills Conferences. They are very moving reminiscences of Tanney’s many summers living in colonies, both as a child and later as an adult with his own family. Tanney shows how significant some of the most ordinary activities and experiences of bungalow life were for the inhabitants.