In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (24 page)

“Night” was always late arriving. The days stretched on forever, refusing to surrender the sunlight, so that even after nine o’clock there were traces of pink and crimson in the western sky, the horizon flaming with the promise of another glorious summer day.

Actually, what just constituted “night” was open to wide and varied interpretation. As far as our parents were concerned, “night” was anytime after we returned home, ragged and ragamuffin, from day camp. Certainly, for their purposes, it commenced with the conclusion of dinner, when we would bound from bungalows like stampeding livestock. Of course, as kids, we contended that for the “night” to be officially under way, a few requirements needed to be fulfilled. First was the absence of the pajama-clad “little kids.” Second was the mandatory appearance of at least three stars in the inky sky. Finally, and most important, was the beginning of a game we called “Ring-a-leevio.”

The group divided equally, each team took a turn being “it.” The team that was “it” had to scatter to all corners of the colony. The other team secured an area as the “jail,” and after a period of time allowing the “it” team to hide, they began seeking out the enemy. When a member of the adversarial team was sighted, he had to be stopped—often with a flying, leaping tackle—and secured to the count of “Ring-a-leevio, one two three, one two three!” That accomplished, the “caught” man was escorted to jail, where he waited, with the other unfortunates of his team, to be “rescued” or until the entire team was jailed. Rescue occurred when a team member succeeded in breaching the outer barrier of the “jail” area to touch the hands of his imprisoned teammates before he himself was apprehended.

Ring-a-leevio was the passion of our summer’s evenings. We played from dusk till our mothers, on a break from their mah-jongg and canasta games, shouted us into our bungalows. On Friday nights, with a camp-free day to follow, we played deep into the night. As experienced ring-a-leevio players we became familiar with each corner, nook, and cranny of the colony, filing away new hiding places and reworking mysterious routes and passageways.

It’s been thirty years since my last game of ring-a-leevio. Yet, sitting here now, eyes closed, I can recall waiting in the tall grass, bent to one knee, the ground damp, the night air icy cold in my lungs, breath short as I struggled to be quiet and assess if I might succeed in a mad dash across the open lawn to the rear corner of the handball court, where my teammates were in “jail.” To be the last free man on a captured team and manage to vanquish all the competition then guarding one’s teammates, thus setting companions free for another round, was an accomplishment akin to winning a game with a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth.

Ring-a-leevio was a passion, but it was hardly all we played. There was “Johnny on the Pony,” or “Buck-Buck.” Two teams, equally divided, took turns leaping onto each others’ prostrate backs and, once supported for the required time, reversed position. Here, the heaviest kid, usually a late selection when choosing up teams for baseball and other games, became a hot commodity, often the first round draft pick.

The summer nights were filled with camaraderie. Our bungalows were without TVs, let alone VCRs, cable, video games, computers, air conditioners, or phones. In place of electronic advancements we were stuck with, well, each other. If we were fortunate enough to have lights on the handball court, we could play stickball well into the night. Basketball, too.

As the years matured us, we graduated from organized games to “hanging out.” Sitting in a wide circle on painted Adirondack chairs and lawn chairs made of woven straps, we bundled up in winter coats against the cool evenings. The stars illuminated our friends’ faces, and we talked of our lives at a time when we were young and cocky, and so ignorant and self-absorbed and wonderfully foolish, that the future lay before us like a great, wide boulevard on which options were innumerable and anything seemed possible.

On those nights we took our first tentative steps toward being adults. We sampled cigarettes and pot and wine, and a girl’s soft, sweet mouth (or a boy’s, as the case might be). Under a canopy of Catskills stars we pulled grass from the ground and playfully tossed it at one another, as James Taylor, the Beatles, the Rascals, or Tommy James and the Shondells played softly in the darkness. We laughed and kidded and plotted and planned, and we swore we’d know one another forever. And life was so full and easy and simple that we felt no pressure or stress or strain, and we were convinced we would all live forever.

T
HE
I
DES OF
A
UGUST

By mid-August came the chill. The nights, which previously had held a blessed respite from the torrid days, now snapped cold. Your mom dug deep into the closet, behind the broken lawn chairs, to pull out the reliable old bungalow heater. The heaters were of two varieties, really. There were the kerosene heaters, of which I hold little memory; then there was the electric coiled type. This heater was plugged in and soon its tightly wrapped coils glowed red, like the inside workings of a giant toaster. These heaters, not much bigger than a small TV, gave off a surprising amount of warmth. But your mom wasn’t satisfied. She proceeded to ignite all four of the stovetop burners, and on very frigid nights the oven, too, with its door swung open. The bungalow retained a small hint of gas, but it was warm and toasty as you came in from a fierce game of ring-a-leevio or tag, the night air icy in your chest, to sit at the linoleum kitchen table and devour hot chocolate and a sleeve of Oreos.

If the dawn of August marked summer’s midpoint, then halfway through August began the death watch. The vacation rapidly diminished, and you began counting off the days on your fingers. The evening cold now invaded the days. You dressed in sweatshirts and jeans, your T-shirts and shorts abandoned in the drawer, or worse, sent home with your dad in the first or second shipment of “cleaning out” for summer’s end. You found yourself walking by the deserted swimming pool with longing in your eyes, hoping against hope for a late summer heat wave that would convince your mom it was swimming weather again. You noticed that when the air moved through the trees, the leaves would not only rustle and bend in the breeze, but many would begin their slow descent to the ground. Around the perimeter of the colony you could distinguish small touches of yellow and red and bronze on the branches. The small stand of apple trees near the play area had birthed an avalanche of apples—small, green, and sour. They were great for war games, but hell to eat.

Your letter writing to home began to slacken off. You’d see them all soon enough. You began to cling ever closer to your summer friends, forging bonds you believed were sacrosanct, decreed to survive a long ten-month winter. Day camp wound down, as the camp play loomed a week away, to be followed by the prom. Then, invariably, came the last hurrah—the final week of summer, no camp, no supervision, all freedom for play as your mom hurried against the clock to complete packing up the bungalow.

You hated seeing the bungalow that final week. When you entered the kitchen and discovered Mom had removed the “good” cover from the high-riser, replacing it with the “winter spread,” you knew it was as good as over. Slowly but inexorably, your summer dream was being dismantled. Just days to go and so much to do.

You didn’t know, couldn’t know, how quickly the ensuing ten months would leave the calendar, and that in an eye’s blink you’d be back there again, in June, the trees verdant and the days long and warm and the promise of the summer lush and alive. All you knew was that it had gone too fast, had fled like a thief in the night, leaving a long winter to stand before the return. Foolish, how we pushed the days away to get back to those fleeting ten weeks. If only all our days had been like summer. But then, if so, would they have held such magic and wonder?

D
ON’T
C
ALL
T
HEM
“B
IMMIES
”

They were mostly anonymous men. Often they’d be gathered in late spring from the county jail, having been arrested for drunk and disorderly. Not bad men, just guys who were older and weary and down on their luck for so long that it had managed to become a chronic condition. Where our parents had friends, family, jobs, and community, these guys had the weekly paycheck and what solace there was at the bottom of a bottle. It might not have been much, but it was dependable and affordable.

Too often they caught crap from the colony kids, but it wasn’t warranted and it wasn’t pretty. The older kids called them “bimmies” and winos. But, for the most part, what drinking they did they did on their own, in their cramped dingy quarters, or in local shot and beer joints we had been instructed to avoid at all costs. Mostly they did their jobs with little or no notice—repairs to bungalow roofs, minor plumbing, routine carpentry, groundskeeping, pool maintenance.

Of all the faceless and nameless men that filled these thankless jobs over so many summers, two stand out in memory. In our small Mountaindale bungalow colony the owner’s right-hand men were Paul and Martin. Both were tall, strong, and weather-beaten men. They gave the appearance of being as old as the mountains, though in looking back I realize they were likely no older than I am today—late thirties, early forties. I remember them always in soiled T-shirts and khaki work pants. They wore beaten-up lace-up boots, even in the dog days of summer, and each man owned a tattered and faded baseball cap that was his daily guard against the sun burning a balding scalp. Paul had various tattoos over his biceps, but now I can’t quite recall what any were. Martin, though, carried a vibrant tattoo of a warship, the USS something or other, on which he had dutifully served during World War II.

Paul had had a family. My dad had told me that, one day after we’d seen him in town, sucking on a can of Schlitz outside the local grocery. For some reason I failed to ascertain at the ripe age of nine, my dad held a special affinity for both Paul and Martin. I remember my mom berating him for lending money to the men, because she was certain the cash would do little else but contribute to their almost constant off-duty state of inebriation.

Yet, for whatever their shortcomings, each June we returned to find Paul and Martin dutifully at work painting bungalows, repairing lawn furniture, seeding gardens, prepping the pool, and apparently genuinely happy to see the return of the summer guests. Where they dispersed to each autumn, and how they passed their winters, was a never-answered mystery. One time, when we were returning from visiting a maiden aunt in Manhattan, I imagined seeing them among the lost and lonely roaming the Bowery, but I am now certain that was youthful whimsy.

In the summer I was to turn twelve, I secured steady weekend employment baby-sitting the Goldstein twins in bungalow 12. The twins were three, and usually asleep before I arrived to take charge from the casino-bound parents. It was an easy gig. Janet Goldstein was a nice lady, not too tall, with generous hips and an easy smile, and her kitchen was often better stocked with junk food than the local grocery. I’d arrive with an armful of comic books and sports magazines, and on the umbrella table outside the bungalow I’d arrange myself a small banquet of potato chips, pretzels, M&Ms, Raisinettes, cookies, and soda. Then I’d wipe a lawn chair free of dew, switch on my flashlight, and start in on my reading material, cognizant of the seventy-five cents I was earning as each hour ticked off the clock. It was one Saturday night just like that, under a speckled night sky, amid the incessant din of the crickets and cicadas, that Martin decided to keep me company.

I couldn’t tell if he was drunk. He certainly seemed sober enough, and there was no telltale scent of liquor. He ambled out of the darkness and pulled up a wooden lawn chair. He stretched out, crossing his long, lean legs and placing his muddy boots up on the metal table. Squinting in the moonlight, he reached into his T-shirt pocket for a pair of grimy eyeglasses, placed them on the bridge of his nose, and began examining my reading material, pausing at the most recent issues of
Baseball Digest
.

“Ya a baseball fan, huh?” he said. It was more words than I’d ever heard him speak at one time. His voice had the feel of gravel, deep and husky and rumbling. I thought it might have hurt his throat to speak.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Seen ya playing softball,” he said, still perusing the magazine. “Ya play third base?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Hard spot, the corner. That’s why they call it the hot corner. Ya know?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Played third base myself,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Before I became a pitcher.” Then he hawked a bit, twisted his head, and spit into the night.

“Baseball and softball be two different animals,” he said. “Softball like an old ladies’ game. Ball up there big as a watermelon. How kin ya not hit it?”

Then he hawked again and spit again and reached into his trousers pocket to take a cigarette from a crumbled pack of Camels, which he lit with a shiny, steel Zippo lighter.

“Ya play baseball?” he said.

I nodded that I did. He nodded. The smoke snaked out from his nostrils in a long, spiraling helix, then disappeared into the night. He was quiet for a long time. I said nothing. After a while his breathing settled into a quiet cadence, his chest moving so slightly he might be taken for dead. The cigarette burned down to a stub, and softly dropped from his mangled fingers. I leaned forward to see that his eyes had shut, and I noticed, too, that his mouth had moved slightly, so that in his sleep there was just the trace of a smile about his lips.