SMALL ENOUGH TO FIX

     Like I said, my earliest memories are of riding out a hurricane with my grandfather at Wolf Lake in the eastern Catskills, on August 31, 1954, the day my brother Bird was born. On that day Hurricane Carol whipped Long Island and some bands drifted north into the mountains. This would explain why I was with my grandfather at the cabin. My parents were obviously busy. I was two years old. Could I possibly have that early of a memory or had I just been told the story so many times I think I remember? In either case, Bird, the cabin and I are still here…a little worse for the wear.

    In those sixty-five years since Carol hit, the Catskills have changed much and not changed at all. Geologically speaking it is the same place Stephen Crane described as a “county….formed by a very reckless and distracted giant who, observing the tract of tipped up and impossible ground, stood off and pelted trees and boulders at it. Not admiring the results of his labors he set off several earthquakes under it and tried to wreck it. He succeeded beyond his utmost expectations, undoubtedly.”  Cole and Cropsey may have been the propagandists of the northern Catskills, but Stephen Crane was our guy here on the southern tier. Born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, Crane’s family moved to Port Jervis when he was very young and his earliest published work reflects all that was gritty Sullivan County in that post-Civil War era. His writing is filled with those feeder pond tangles, grizzled deer hunters and their interaction with the city visitor. As my buddy Carlo McCormick put it, “Sullivan County, our home, famously lives and dies  on the exchange between these worlds, by joining city based travelers with an escape to fantasies of private retreats, the great outdoors, life on the farm…..”simpler times.” 

    Another very early memory I have is of a sign on the Quickway (Future 86)— WELCOME CASINOS! This was the 1950’s. I didn’t even know what a casino was. It would take a lifetime to actually get a casino in the county. After two years in operation, it has gone bankrupt. The dream came a little late. In the 50’s and 60’s giant, colorful billboards lined the highway hyping Borsht Belt comedians like Jerry Lewis and “high end” hotels like Grossingers, Browns, The Concord, The Pines, and a slew of others. Bungalows were everywhere and we couldn’t wait to get to Canal Road and spend the summer without a phone, TV or potable water. We only lived twenty miles away in Montgomery, but we too were tourists. The hotels are all gone, the bungalows are now Hasidic enclaves and the lakes are high end, year round communities. Yet, the “exchange between worlds” continues at an accelerated pace.   

Here’s a recent email I sent on a chain of my friends, trying to give the shopkeepers in Mountaindale a little local history:         

     

   For some perspective I have an article from June 28, 1998 Times Herald Record on the efforts to revitalize Mountaindale by the Resnicks and Schmitts. One old time resident talked of the heyday- "In the 60’s there were two stop lights. All shops were open. There were three butcher shops, two bakeries and a drug store.” By 1979 it “was a ghost town.” When I moved up in 1995 it was a scary mess with drug slinging in the open market. Since 1998 the efforts to bring this town back to viable community have been met with fits and starts of money and enthusiasm. This latest effort has been the most successful and I think will have long lasting effects. As Raymond calls us, I am a “concerned” community member. I pay no rent, but I do participate, display my work and support the efforts of all. The best quote from that article is from Erna Hutchinson: “This town has always been small enough to fix.” Time, community and concerted effort will win out without finger pointing or defensiveness. Ba and Me was packed Monday night. The Fall will rock! 

“Small enough to fix” should be printed on a banner across the highway at the border of Sullivan County. The renovations continue.