Borscht Belt Bungalows: Memoirs Of Catskill Summers

4. "Unzerch Menschen" (Our People)

"Unzerefi Menscfien " (Our Peop[e) Ifhere are few, if any, of the traditional bungalow colonies remaining in Sullivan County-the colonies ofmy youth, the resorts that catered to mostly nonobservant or semiobservant Jewish families with children. Mom and the kids spent the summer; father came up on weekends and stayed up for his week or two summer vacation. Today there are colonies in which the major portion of this lifestyle is practiced, but the religious complexion has changed. It is ultraorthodox and Hasidic Jews who have taken over the colonies, because these families still adhere to a traditional lifestyle like that of most New York City Jews from the 1930s to 1960s. One ofthe most frequently reported observations about who went to bungalow colonies and who went to hotels is false. In the 1980s videocassette The Rise and Fall ofthe Borscht Belt) one informant tells you that the upper class and middle class went to hotels and the working class went to bungalow colonies.l Now that was probably true in the age ofthe rooming house, but after the bungalow developed it was often a matter ofpreference whether one went to a hotel or to a bungalow colony. "My Sam and I don't like formal hotel-type life," a middle-aged woman told Joey Adams's family. "Every year we just prefer a simple bungalow at Madame Geretsky's Villa. Who wants to get dressed three times a day. I get enough of that all winter."2 While a summer at a hotel for a BORSCHT BELT BUNGALOWS family was usually more expensive than a summer at a colony, many people on a restricted income would prefer spending a week or two at a hotel to a summer at a bungalow colony. Some saw bungalows as declasse and "automatically looked down on those who were still up to their ears in chicken fat."3 Writer 64 Bern Sharfman recalls his bungalow days in the 1930s, when his parents dreamed of moving up to the hotels. When father Nathan's business-ladies panties and slips-thrived, he and his family abandoned the bungalows.4 Conversely , there were many people who could afford to spend their summers at a hotel who didn't care for the hotel regimentation, the need to change clothing at least three times a day, or the hotel diet, and who simply preferred life at a bungalow colony. Furthermore, while some colonies remained rather primitive, others offered semiluxurious accommodations. Nor were individuals exclusively bungalow or hotel people. My maternal grandmother, long a widow, preferred to vacation at a hotel and did so regularly for many years. She stayed in small hotels, all long gone, for two weeks each summer and sometimes for the Rosh Hashona holidays as well. It was via Grandma's visits that I first experienced life inside the hotels, eating meals in their dining rooms and exploring their facilities as a guest, as opposed to tagging along when Grandpa went fundraising. After Grandma remarried, in her late sixties, she and her husband started staying at a bungalow colony for the summer. You guessed it; they rented at Richman's, and we could keep the revenue , as well as their company, in the family. We had a number of tenants over the years who would go to hotels for Passover (traditionally the most expensive period) and then come to the bungalows for the summer. We even had one tenant who "took the waters" at Saratoga Springs each July before coming to our colony for the balance ofthe season. Except for small groups at each end of the spectrum, most Catskill vacationers went to hotels or colonies unfettered by class distinction. Part of this myth of hotels versus bungalow colonies derives from The Concord and Grossinger's fixation ofwriters about the Catskills. However, while The Concord and Grossinger's had the cream of the market (they were the most expensive hotels in the mountains), the run-of-the-mill hotel was a good deal less glamorous. Many of these hotels were just a step or two up from boarding houses-and many ofthem had a working-class clientele. The Oliver Hill, The Delmont, the Murray Hill, and the Hotel Furst were very ordinary hotels. Moss Hart was never the social director there as he was at The Flagler (the mountains ' first luxury hotel). Nor did Eddie Cantor "discover" Eddie Fisher there, 000000 000000 000000...