Memories of the Catskills

It's a world of morning dew and starlight strolls, of mink stoles on Saturday night and softball games on Sunday morning, of kibitzing over a treat from the knish man or a glass of milk from the milk man.
It's "the Catskills," said in a certain way, in a certain accent, a certain tone of voice. And it's a world that's fast fading, never to return
To know what this summer world really meant, and to savor a slice of it before it disappears, you have to know about the couple with bungalows in their blood, Judy and Josef Scher.
The story begins when Mickey Mantle was still swatting 35 homers, and 50,000 tulips were blooming at the now-crumbling Concord resort. This is when Judy Scher picked out 10 dresses for the 10 Saturdays of summer, so she shouldn't wear the same one twice. Josef tested the nylon line for his fishing rod. Then the Schers and their baby, Scott, left the steamy city for a life in the mountains.

WHEN THE SCHERS came to the Catskills, more than 100,000 parents and kids paid $450 per family for a summer in those 2,000 bungalow colonies with names like Salzman's, Kaplan's Kottages and Green Acres. Today, fewer than 200 colonies survive.
"The old bungalow world is like a dinosaur, extinct," says Allen Frishman, Town of Fallsburg building inspector and a historian of the old Catskills.
But what a life it was.
While Josef worked in the garment district, Judy and the other moms at Salzman's in Ferndale would wake up in the unheated two-room bungalows and turn on the electric heater to ward off the Catskill chill. They'd make toast – and turn off that heater, or else a fuse would blow.
Then, after a little lounge-chair conversation and coffee with other moms, Judy might push her stroller along Route 55 to Swan Lake, to Sol and Marion's variety shop, which sold egg creams for eight cents and cut hair for $1.
When exhausted husbands like Josef drove up and over the Wurtsboro mountain on Friday night, they'd see a movie like "Fiddler on the Roof" in the "casino," which was really a bigger bungalow with a pingpong table.
On Saturday night in that same casino, they'd bring a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream or Canadian Club. They'd buy some Wise potato chips and Canada Dry seltzer with their summer charge account and listen to a three-piece combo play songs like "The Hokey Pokey."
And on Labor Day, they really got a treat – a burlesque show, which meant the windows would be covered with cardboard, so the kids couldn't peek, although they tried.

THIS IS HOW summers in the '60s and '70s went for the Schers – and thousands of bungalow colony families.
When one colony was sold, you moved to another. After Salzman's, Judy and Josef drove around until they found Kappy's Kottages in Ferndale, where, over homemade gefilte fish, Rose Kaplan offered them a bungalow.
"This was the big time," says Judy. "We paid $500 for the summer, not $450."
The Schers stayed at Kappy's for 24 summers, summers of friendships that would last forever. Their second son, Jeffrey, now 38, came to the mountains as a baby. These days, he e-mails his bungalow day camp buddy in New Mexico.
When Rose and Irving Kaplan sold Kappy's, Hasidim bought it. So the Schers moved to the Ideal colony in Monticello. Hasidim bought that, too.
In the mid-'90s, the Schers found Crescent Lake Estates in Monticello, which was filled with old-timers from the heydays. Ben Kaplan, the former executive director of the Sullivan County Hotel Association, was there – blowing a whistle at 4:30 p.m. for cocktail hour. Ann Kaplan of the now-shuttered Kaplan's Deli in Monticello was there, too.
"And so was Selvin the barber and Madnick the baker," says Judy.
But last year, Crescent Lake was sold – and bought by Hasidim. So the Schers searched for their current colony, Sunshine Estates in Thompsonville, between Monticello and South Fallsburg.

THE NEAT WHITE-SHINGLED bungalows sit off a road with faded billboards for old colonies like Maywood Estates. Other billboards on Heiden Road are blank, except for phone numbers to rent them, with exchanges like "GL2" from the days of party lines.
But of the 35 Sunshine Estates bungalows, only 17 are full. The pool sits empty with cracked powder blue paint. A group of Hasidim moves in next year.
Still, 41 years after they first journeyed to the mountains, Judy and Josef Scher aren't ready to forsake their summer world. They just found a bungalow for next summer, outside Monticello. It's owned by a woman in her 70s.
The Schers are hoping to stay there a few summers. "As long as the owner's health is OK," says Judy.


http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/09/04/sibungw.htm