On October 2, 2011, my husband and I flew down to Ft. Lauderdale from Atlanta on a flight that originated in Albuquerque.  We were flying down in a hurry because my father was dying in a Delray Beach hospice. I had spoken to him the night before and said to him, “You wait for me.  I’ll be there tomorrow.”  Grant and I were on the next flight out of Albuquerque, which left at six the next morning. 

We almost didn’t make it.

The first leg of the trip was okay, even though we were stuck in the very last row of the plane.  The second leg was a nightmare, with flight attendants sprawling into the aisles and lots of people hyperventilating.  Oddly, before we began our galloping, life-threatening descent, I spotted a woman walking down the aisle who looked very familiar to me.  She was looking at me and smiling broadly so I assumed she found me familiar, too.  But she didn’t.  I found that out after crawling over a couple of people’s knees and staggering over to her side of the plane to say, “I noticed you smiling at me.  Do you know who I am?”

“No,” she said, looking bewildered.

“Well, I know you,” I said, surprising myself. 

“Where in the world do you know me from?” she asked.

“Tell me,” I began, “did you go to the Lebanon Country Club when you were a child?”

The Lebanon Country Club was a bungalow colony in Highland Mills, New York, one of hundreds of such colonies in the Catskill Mountains that was a popular place for predominantly urban Jews to go in the summer to escape the city heat.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes widening. 

“Is your name Leslie?  Do you have a brother Ronnie?”

“Oh my God,” she replied.  “You do know me!”

We chatted a little more and she gave me her contact information but then I had to sit down because the plane was doing a controlled crash landing into Fort Lauderdale and I was on my way to my beloved father’s death bed.  It was one day after my first book got published.  My emotions were all over the place.  In fact, I was beginning to believe that a crash landing would’ve been a poetic end to what was already a real roller coaster of a year.

My father did wait for me.  We were able to spend some time together before he died in the wee hours of October 3. 

I never did get in touch with Leslie because the following years were completely devoid of peace for me.  But a seed had been planted.  The Lebanon Country Club brought back memories that may have remained buried had I not run into Leslie.

I believe I stayed at the Lebanon Country Club twice – once when I was six and once when I was 11. 

Bungalow colonies and kuchaleins (boarding houses where you cooked for yourself) were a tradition in my family.  My grandparents had met at a kuchalein in the Catskills back in the 1920s. To my understanding, kuchaleins were the predecessors of bungalow colonies, where you also cooked for yourself but did so in the privacy of your own cottage.  (Kuchalein literally means “cook alone.”)

While fathers worked in the cruel heat of the city, mothers and children were deposited in boarding houses and, later, little cottages in the country for the summer.  Fathers came up on weekends and got a little relief.  The women entertained themselves with card games and clothing peddlers (also known as “blouse men”) during the week and the children had day camp.  Grandparents were always included in these summer getaways and grandmothers frequently wore halter tops that looked like brassieres long before Madonna (at least, that’s how it was in the ‘50s, when I came along).

Before the Lebanon Country Club (aka Weg’s), there was Saslow’s and Woodbine and Orchard Mansion (aka Horseshit Mansion and Herbie’s Paradise) which was in Moodus, CT and a fabulous place aside from the bats. After Lebanon came Skopp’s, where I met a girl who taught me how to smoke and kiss and bake brownies and dance Brooklyn-style.  Nadine and I are still friends 50 years later.

We all had fun at these bungalow colonies – even after we moved from urban apartment buildings into relatively luxurious houses on Long Island with air conditioning and swimming pools.  It was still great to go “to the country” and live in a cramped shack for a few weeks and fight mosquitos and skunks for the sheer joy of being among kindred spirits in play.  Surely, these were days of heaven for me with a few strange, lingering recollections.

For example, I was already babysitting other people’s children in bungalows by the time I was nine.  That would be unheard-of today, but, back then, there was a couple that entrusted me with their three young children.  One was an infant.

One night, they said, “A big thunderstorm is coming. Are you afraid of thunder?”

I said, “No.” 

Thunder I was okay with.  It was the lightning that terrified me. And Catskill thunderstorms were chock full of lightning.  When the couple came home, I was huddled under their kitchen table with all three of their children. 

Another time, I was being harassed by an older boy who wanted to break into the bungalow to steal liquor. 

“I’ll fix you a drink,” I said, just to get rid of him.  I made him a Bab-o cocktail that could’ve gotten rid of him permanently.  Hey, I had babies to protect.  Thank God, he threw up.  Then he threatened to kill me for the rest of the summer. That was daunting.  But I was tough.  It was my big brother who nearly got killed.

He made the mistake of calling some guy a pinhead.  A really muscular guy.  Turns out, the really muscular guy had a small head and had a thing about being called a pinhead.  So he punched my brother out. 

“Get up and fight,”  I hissed at my brother. 

“What, are you crazy?” he said from his prone position. “If I get up, he’ll only knock me down again.”  So I had a go at the big jock myself.  Fortunately, I was friends with his sister (who protected me but also looked capable of knocking my brother down).

We shared a bungalow with another family when we were at the Lebanon Country Club in 1964.  There were two separate units in one cottage but we were both across from a swamp that invited all sorts of flying insects into our living space.  I was traumatized by moths and wasps going up in flames in the high intensity lamp in the kitchen.  I still have nightmares about those self-immolating insects. 

In the meantime, the little kid next door was a real nerd who was into chasing monarch butterflies with a net.  His loutish father was always asking him, “You wanna potch?” (basically, a whack). My brother and I were always entertained by the constant litany of threats we heard through the wall that would’ve gotten the dumb shit thrown in jail today.

I also remember Color War, a week of athletic competition which included the writing of songs.  My brother (who is now an entertainer) and I were both good at lyrics. I’m sure there were other contributors, as well.  I remember one song that we wrote to the tune of “Sealed with a Kiss.”

Here at Lebanon we’re spending the summer

And with every passing day

Our love forever grows

As we cherish the memories

Which in our hearts stay

We look up and see the blue sky above us

The warmth seems to burst from the sun

And when the daylight ends

Then the sky’s kissed by moonlight

Another day is done

Nadine and I revised it the following year to, “Here at Skopp’s Day Camp we’re spending the summer.”  We recycled our lyrics.  Why waste such beautiful words?

I recently found Lebanon Country Club camp pictures from 1964, buried in one of my memory boxes.  There I am, standing in the back row with the counselors, along with the sister of the muscular pinhead.  I was a tall girl.  Seated in the lower right is Leslie – the woman from the plane.

We’re all smiling,  Life was good in the country.