Se Hace Camino Al Andar

Here’s my first shot at Memoir Mondays. Thankfully, I was able to use Stacey’s idea for this entry, writing about a place, then and now. I suffer from the same condition many students suffer from–”I-don’t-know-what-to-write-about-itis”. (By the way, I recommend two great books for memoir writing in the classroom: Writing a Life, by Katherine Bomer and What You Know by Heart, by Katie Ray)

Because I’ve got summer on the brain, thanks to this awesome Memorial Day Weekend weather we’re having, the first place that comes to mind is my grandparents’ summer rental in the Catskills. From May or June to the High Holy Days, usually, my grandparents rented a little yellow house in Kerhonkson from Cousin Sadie and Nate, who owned consecutive properties on a winding country road that included the former Brookside Resort.

You’ve heard of the Borscht Belt? This is it… The Brookside Resort was one of those old-school resorts, albeit smaller than the nearby Nevele Grande or The Granit. When I was a kid, The Brookside was on it’s way out. My most vivid memory is the seedy basement with the dark red and gold carpet, littered with cigarette butts where we played video games and the pool outside that Sadie still kept full. Years later, I would meet people my age whose parents also had memories of The Brookside, weirdly enough. It became a point of pride for me–”Oh yeah, my cousin Sadie owned that!”

Days in Kerhonkson were filled with adventures at Cousin Sadie’s, who had a huge pond behind her house, bordered by fuzzy, brown cattails–one of which I ate when I was 2, convinced it was a hot dog. We peeked into Cousin Nate’s pottery studio in the old chicken coop. I would go with my mother to bring a jar of chicken soup to old Uncle Sam, who lived somewhere on the property or nearby. We’d trek up the country road to visit Lilian Moore, the famous author. To this day, I remain awestruck at the floor to ceiling bookcases in her living room, every shelf full. Sometimes, we took a special trip to Stewart’s for ice cream sundaes. I still think Stewart’s ice cream sundaes are the best. Little memories pop up here and there–Grandma washing clothes with a washboard in the sink, helping her hang those clothes on the line, investigating various tins in the kitchen until we found the mandel bread that my grandmother always made from scratch, the screen door constantly banging shut from all the traffic going in and out of the house.

The little yellow house seemed huge to me as a kid but as an adult, I was struck by how low the ceilings were, how tiny the bedrooms were. I don’t know how we all fit in there–my sisters and I in one bedroom, my grandparents in the other bedroom, and I guess my parents slept on the sofabed in the living room? Out back was a long gazebo, where my grandmother played canasta with her friends and other people sat around eating chopped liver on ritz crackers and drinking beer (the things we remember!). We left those old people behind to follow my dad through the woods to Flat Rocks, a swimming hole nestled deep in the trees, where minnows and catfish nibbled our toes. We slid down big, smooth rocks that formed a slide that dumped into a deep pool, hence the name Flat Rocks. My own father and his brother had spent their summers in this swimming hole. It was nature at it’s best. As adults, or semi-adults, we took another trip back to Flat Rocks where I saw tangible evidence of environmental neglect and decay. The floating catfish, bloated and dead. The water seemed lower– was I older and bigger, or was Flat Rocks really running dry? And was that garbage floating in the water? It was an early environmental awakening for me. We took a last look, turned and walked back out of the woods.

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