In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (25 page)

There were other nights that Martin visited me as I sat under the Catskills stars, standing watch over the Goldstein twins. He told me stories of having seen Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson. One night he brought a baseball and, in the quiet evening, he began instructing me on the proper grips for throwing a curveball, and a knuckleball, too. I began experimenting with these pitches, to become both exhilarated and bewildered when the ball commenced breaking and arching, moving to some mysterious heretofore-unknown music that I was suddenly able to master by the simple placement of my fingers on the horsehide.

Sitting near the pool one Sunday late in August, an atypically warm day for so deep into summer, I became aware of a small commotion on the central lawn. The parents had fled the pool to assemble in a small mob, gesturing and arguing with great animation. Then, on top of the hill, at the front entrance to the colony, from behind the colony store, a red and white ambulance rolled onto the grounds. It slowly moved across the center of the grounds, passing between two bungalows to the rear, where I knew only the laundry room, clotheslines, and handymen’s quarters stood.

I raced from the pool with my friends David and Joel, to be cut off by our moms just feet from the water. No one was volunteering any information to the kids, but somehow, intuitively, we knew. Someone either was very, very ill, or worse. Judging by the meandering pace of the ambulance, we would bet on the latter.

I don’t remember anyone actually telling me Martin had died. He’d been found lying in his bed, still clothed, a half-empty bottle of gin and the latest
Sports Illustrated
propped next to his stiffening body. I remember very little else from that day or the few that followed. I remember sitting behind my bungalow and crying. I remember my dad, and a few of the other dads, returning from the city midweek, something they’d never done before, to be present at a small, sparsely attended graveside service. I remember developing circuitous routes about the colony so I might avoid passing by Martin’s now vacant shack. I remember babysitting those last weeks of summer, after his demise, and being afraid to sit by myself in the night, retreating inside the Goldstein bungalow.

A few weeks later the summer ended, and we said our good-byes to friends and neighbors, returning to the city, where, in a few days, our lives resumed their normal cadence and routine. The ensuing ten months passed quickly, and the following June we returned to the bungalow colony. Martin was gone, of course, and Paul, we were informed, had moved to Florida, to be closer to his adult children, with whom he’d reunited during the winter. In their place were two new men, one black, one Hispanic. They were good workers, polite, easygoing, friendly, and they managed to last the entire season. But that was all, and the following summer they were replaced by a parade of unreliable drunkards and sinners.

In the years that followed I sharpened my skills with the hardball, succeeding in baffling my peers with a sharp breaking curve and an unpredictable, but infuriating knuckler. I suspect I was the only high school kid throwing the knuckler in all of New York. And oftentimes, standing alone on the mound, peering in and waiting for my catcher to flash a signal, I would think of Martin and those sweet, lost summer nights when he’d taken the time to pass me his legacy, such as it was.

Part 3

H
OTEL
L
IFE

Four postcards by Alfred Landis, the great artist of the genre.
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ATSKILLS
I
NSTITUTE

Landis watercolor of the Hollywood Hotel, Livingston Manor. Landis painted watercolors of his clients’ hotels and bungalow colonies and used them as models for the postcards he produced back in his studio in Wurtsboro. Often, Landis gave the hotel a package price for the painting and the cards, allowing the owner to keep the watercolor. The Sullivan County Historical Society has several of these in their collection.
K
ATE
H
YDEN

Ruins of the Main House of the Youngs Gap Hotel, Parksville, 1999.
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HIL
B
ROWN

Rainbow Hotel, Ulster Heights, 2000. The Rainbow, previously the Alpine Hotel, has been run for about a decade by Russian Jews. The unmodernized shape and stucco front retain the original style of a small Catskills hotel from the 1920s to the 1950s. This is the probably the best preserved small hotel in the Catskills.
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HIL
B
ROWN