Country Roads

The winding, twisting roads somehow became ingrained in my memory. Perhaps it was all that driving during my youth, before the days of GPS and Waze came along, when we had to learn the routes by heart. We returned to the Catskill Mountains this past Shabbos weekend and in a sense, it was an opportunity to revisit my past.

Some of the highway signs on Route 17 have been there for at least a half century or perhaps longer. But gone are the billboards advertising Jackie Mason at Grossinger’s or The Four Seasons at The Concord.

There are other signs dotting this massive thoroughfare that spans most of New York State from north to south. One sign is for a furniture store in South Fallsburg and another is for Touro University. The hotels that once defined what this part of New York is all about are now mostly gone.

Despite how the Catskills should have dissolved into history, we members of the Orthodox Jewish community of New York somehow hang on as we remain indelibly attached to these thousands of acres of real estate and are indeed working on it growing at a heretofore unprecedented rate.

There are still what we always called “bungalow colonies.” But if the home where you are spending the summer and indeed during other parts of the year has five bedrooms and two or more stories, it ceases to be a “bungalow” and is now called a summer home or even a second or third home, so to speak.

Thinking back to the 60s, our family had a great bungalow. In fact, it was the kind of bungalow that I have not seen since, that is until the advent of Catskills summer homes.

My parents had two large bedrooms that I can recall with clarity. There was just one bathroom, but there was a front porch and a back porch. The front verandah was shared with a neighbor while the back one was pretty private.

When my grandparents would visit, I recall my two grandfathers sitting on the back porch usually learning a blatt Gemara or another sefer. The back porch had a great view of the distant mountains and you could actually observe the weather changes as the clouds realigned themselves off in the distant horizon. Then there was the lightning over those hills followed by some impressive and earth-shaking thunder with lots of rumbling, staples of summertime weather as memorialized in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.”

We spent the summer there until the four of us were ready to go off to sleepaway camp. Those were great summers filled with the innocence of youth and some very good times. It’s great to be a child and to be aware of the preciousness of your childhood. There was no swimming pool on the grounds of our bungalow colony known as “Pine View Hill.” The grounds featured a lake that we all swam in. I know that later in my bungalow colony days as an adult, no one would go to one of these places without a pool.

If memory serves, when I first went to Camp Gan Israel in Swan Lake, there was at first only a lake, no pool. But parts of the lake were roped off with various areas designated for different age groups based on the depth of the lake and the ages of the campers.

But let’s go back to those great country roads. I was 19 and had my own car up in the country…or the mountains…or the Catskills, however you wish to call this place. Having a car and a bit of temporary freedom makes you feel like something of a king in that environment.

My car was a genuine jalopy, but it ran exceptionally well aside from the occasional flat tire here and there. Actually, I was driving my current 2024 model car up Route 17 last Friday and reminiscing to my wife about the “Wurtsboro Hill,” which is a stretch of roadway that is in effect actual mountain climbing. In my old 1965 Dodge Coronet, I’d have to floor the accelerator in order to get the car to move at 30 mph. Even in a relatively new car today you have to depress the accelerator a little more than usual but still it’s fairly simple to maintain a speed of 70 mph.

There is nothing compared to what I think of as a vehicular romance with the side roads of the Catskills and where those roads lead. You have to understand that this so-called relationship developed before there was any kind of GPS or satellite navigational systems that tell you where to go like we have today.

With this past weekend behind us, I can pretty much say that I still know those roads like the back of my hand. I have a feel for a side road that can offer you a shortcut and a quicker way to maneuver your car for a fast trip between Monticello and Woodridge without taking the main roads.

For decades, the Catskills have been pushing for these towns and villages to become year-round communities. This last Sunday was visiting day for a few camps where some of our grandchildren spend their summer. Camp Munk doesn’t just have visiting day, they also have an after-visiting day alumni hockey game. Our son Dovi is a very focused and diligent hockey player who developed his skills over 15 years in camp and then graduated from chasing that little orange ball around a wood floor to full-speed ice hockey. His 9-year-old son Joey is following in his footsteps and in this first year of his in Camp Munk, he has emerged as a star goalie on teams of all ages. My prediction is that any team he participates on during color war will win.

We spent a couple of hours at the Bethel Creamery and Pelleh Poultry Farm Stand where there were lines for things like yogurt, waffles, Labneh dip plates, smoothies, parfaits. doughnuts made to order, and pita chips. Our daughter Dini, son-in-law, Eliezer, and mechutanim Naomi and Rafael Franklin were busy feeding the masses who somehow found their way to Happy Avenue in Swan Lake.

The farm and the café are next door to Bethel Woods, where Ishay Ribo and Avraham Fried along with Zusha will be performing on Thursday night, August 7 just prior to Shabbos Nachamu to an audience of up to 15,000 people.

We anticipated a great deal of traffic motoring our way back to the Five Towns, and trusted our fate to Waze, which took us off Route 17 at the Bloomingburg exit, which has been very much in the Jewish and national news over the last ten years. During that time period, Bloomingburg has become a subdivision or a suburb of Monroe, NY, which has been a Satmar city for decades.

Today Satmar is divided between two brothers, Aaron and Zalman Leib Teitelbaum. Rabbi Aaron has his faction in part of Williamsburg and Monroe, while R’ Zalman Leib, the younger, now pretty much rules his part of Williamsburg and Bloomingburg.

The locals who have called this sleepy suburb home for a hundred years fought hard to keep the Chassidim out from setting up their presence in the village. But you cannot discriminate in that fashion in the United States and get away with it. You can force the other side to spend a lot of money on legal fees, but that is about as much damage as you can do.

Traffic was somewhat backed up even in Bloomingburg, so we had a chance to look around and observe young children with looming payos and young girls running around in matching outfits. We saw a few nice-looking shuls and a bunch of stores, one with a big sign in Yiddish that read, “Fleish.”

I enjoyed my two days on the dark tree-lined streets of the Catskills. I knew where most of the sharp turns were but I honestly can say I didn’t remember all of them. There’s gambling up here now, and I heard from some of the locals that they’re not doing as well as they thought. I suggested that all they need is a kosher restaurant or two near the casinos and business will improve quickly.

I spent Sunday morning in Woodbourne looking for a breakfast spot. Most of the eateries were open to almost sunrise that morning so expecting them to reopen by 10 a.m. was unrealistic. The Catskills are a vacation getaway, but somehow despite the fresh mountain air and the chance to be in nature, we always come back home exhausted. But that is true of most vacations. Right? n

Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.