For those of us over 40 years, we all remember “Going to the Country!” This is what we called when our families packed up all our belongings including clothing, food, pots and pans, loaded them all in the station van and headed north from New York City into the Catskills.

For 8 to 10 weeks, most families with kids would rent a cottage in one of the hundreds of bungalow colonies in the Catskill Mountains in Orange, Sullivan, Orange, Ulster and surrounding counties in upstate New York.

 

These were not resort style lavish accommodations. They were old huts, typically one or two bedrooms, a kitchen and a porch. Most families did not have air condition units. What we all had was space, fresh air and happy kids who were encouraged to explore on our own, get dirty and muddy and recharge from being cooped up all winter in the tenement apartment building in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Most of us kids were children of holocaust survivors or our parents were born immediately after the war. We did not need much to be happy. The fathers worked in the city all week and only came out on Friday afternoon and left Sunday at the crack of dawn to go back work in the factories.

 

All towns still had a main street with a local pharmacy, clothing, antique shops, fruit stalls a bank and movie theater. These were before the big box chain stores shut down main street America. On Sundays, we all went shopping on Main Street. Towns like Monticello, Liberty, Livingston Manor, South Fallsburg, all had little friendly old men standing behind the counters and everyone was nice. Even little hamlets and villages like Swan Lake had a small main street with a grocery and antique stores.

 

To be continued…