A World of Its Own

1. Bungalow

Every Wednesday evening around six o'clock a beige and red truck appeared on Old Murphy Road. In the distance we heard the announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Chow-Chow Cup is here," accompanied by a poor imitation of Chinese music sounding as if it emanated from a very old music box, and the summer residents of Lansman's Bungalow Colony all emerged from their bungalows.

Lansman's, with close to one hundred bungalows, each painted white with red trim, was much larger than the other Borscht Belt colonies. It had more facilities: a nice-sized pool and the most popular new attraction, tennis courts. Old Murphy Road, a paved country thoroughfare with no lane markers, divided Lansman's in two. On our side were the casino, the old handball court, the pool, and the campgrounds. The comedians and crooners who entertained the parents in the casino on Friday and Saturday nights, although not headliners like the ones who played the Concord, Grossinger's and Kutscher's, the area's large ritzy hotels, were at the top of the B-list. Lansman's Day Camp was popular enough to draw children from smaller colonies that did not have camps of their own.

I can remember only one family at Lansman's that wasn't Jewish. Most lived the rest of the year in the boroughs, except for those who had already made the jump to the suburbs in Long Island or New Jersey, becoming truly middle class, or what my parents called "nouveau riche." Most of the families were of the same socio-economic status. My parents, like most of the others, never went to college. The mothers were primarily, until the '70s when most went to work to help support the family, housewives. The fathers worked in the garment industry, in sales, or in low to middle management. The exceptions, both mothers and fathers, were a handful of teachers. Most parents, like mine, were first generation Americans born during or just after the Depression, and had children around the same ages as my brother, then ten, and me, almost seven.

Even though we kept kosher in our bungalow, just as we did the rest of the year in our Brooklyn apartment, I rushed to the road to join the line to buy my dinner from the Chow-Chow Cup, returning to eat with plastic utensils my spare ribs, egg roll, chow mein, and the ubiquitous Chow-Chow Cup itself - a perfectly round scoop of fried rice in a small bowl made of crunchy noodle - on one of the picnic tables on the lawn outside our bungalow.

Besides the Chow-Chow Cup, the mothers' weekly foray to Liberty, a nearby town, for roast pork on garlic bread and endless ice cream cones, there was Katz's bakery in Monticello. Every week the colony concession took orders for Katz's baked goods, especially large black and white cookies - softly risen dough covered half with chocolate frosting, half with vanilla. If we were lucky, my mother ordered a freshly baked Katz's cheesecake - plain, cherry, or blueberry - smaller and more cakelike, as well as more deliciously creamy than the cheesecake we ate in diners back home in Brooklyn.

1967 was our first summer at Lansman's. We rented a bungalow in the "horseshoe" complex, six small one-bedroom units off a U-shaped communal porch, down the hill from the casino. The horseshoe bungalows, though centrally located, were small and provided little privacy. These were also some of the cheapest bungalows on the grounds. Ours was at one end of the horseshoe, so our one bedroom, equipped with a bunkbed (my brother on top, me on the bottom) and a double bed for my parents, did not share a wall with another unit. For this luxury, my parents paid an extra fifty dollars.

Even compared to the cramped living in our Brooklyn apartment, life at Lansman's was even more public. As I passed by a friend's...