Borscht Belt Bungalows: Memoirs Of Catskill Summers

6. Noodling Around: Kids at Large

6 Noot/ung Around: Kids at Large W hen we weren't doing chores, swimming, or playing in the woods, what else did we do? Diversions can be divided into two major categories: the eternal and the trendy. Swings and the see-saw were popular well into our teens; admittedly, the older we got, the more the aim of see-saw play was who could bounce the hardest and make the other kid falloff. We also had the big sandbox Grandpa made. Our toys included the usual, brightly painted, commercial tin pails, shovels, and sand strainers of the period, as well as toy cars and old kitchen utensils. As a little kid, I had a tricycle , which I peddled vigorously around the grounds-and was forced to share with the tenants' children: "Be nice to the customers." One day when I was five, I was displaying my prowess when I slammed into one ofthe whitewashed rocks lining our driveway, hit my mouth, and knocked out my front teeth. No more tricycle for anyone. We were never allowed to have bicycles because, "When your uncle had one, he broke his arm! Bicycles are dangerous." Of course, none of our tenant kids had bikes either due to the problem of transporting them from the city. As we grew older, we wanted a Ping-Pong table, and finally Grandpa relented and built one for us out of boards. It was structurally sound, but the individual boards warped and playing was treacherous. The table, however, was BORSCHT BELT BUNGALOWS always booked. Better players frequently proposed tournaments so they could dominate the table. During World War II, Ping-Pong balls were in short supply and a crushed ball was always a tragedy. We would try to remove minor dents from balls by boiling them. A basketball hoop nailed to a tree, sans back88 board, was our only other built-in piece of equipment, and that carne when I was ten. As kids, we always wanted what we saw at other colonies, but Grandma, who was especially conservative about money, was never amenable to cCnariskeit)) (foolishness). And what she said around the colony went. Other places had lawn gliders; we didn't. Other places had "tea houses," a 1930s term for small gazebos. These were taken over by kids for playing all manner of domestic games. Our neighbors, the Franks, had one, as did the Abe Furmans. I wanted one, but never got one. Nor did we ever get a handball court, complete with a real basketball hoop and backboard mounted on a post on the side ofthe cement playing area. That was the ultimate dream athletic center. The Franks had one and occasionally, but rarely, we would sneak over and use it. Before the age of the swimming pool, the handball court was the most common piece of athletic equipment that bungalow colonies adopted from hotels. Mter World War II, many bungalow colonies copied hotel casinos (or playhouses), and many handball courts became one wall of the casino. Badminton and volleyball were popular sports because all you needed was a net and equipment-no court, no major expense. Baseball, softball actually, was played less often than we would have liked. The lawn was too small, especially as we got older. The other site was the cow pasture across the road-when it was empty of cows. The cow flop always made that a less than desirable option , but one we resorted to when we could. We also used the cow pasture to fly kites. Water pistols, balloons, and cap guns were perennials. Rolls of caps had great noise potential, other than in cap pistols. You could put a cap on the sidewalk and slam it with your foot. In another popular form, you placed a cap in a nut between two screws and tossed it into the air over a sidewalk. Impact caused a satisfactory bang. My grandparents adopted a less than indulgent attitude toward this activity, thinking what this could do to their sidewalks-and so, for the most part, we only did it in the city where no one cared what you did at play on the sidewalk. Airborne toys were always popular. Some kids, including Seymour, made model airplanes, cutting the structural elements ofbalsa wood patterns with Exacto knives, assembling them with airplane glue, and then covering the frame with tissue. This was always tricky in the crowded living conditions...