Old Forge

Adirondack Mountains painted by Winslow Homer

Tuesday, February 6, 2007
for Marion, with love, Anne

Just as Mildred was my dad’s favorite sister, her sons were my favorite cousins when I was growing up. Richie was exactly my age, we were best friends, and Alan was only two years younger, he could be included in our play. And even tho my little brother was 5 years younger then me, Richie nicknamed him Guchie and included him too. Every Sunday we drove over to their apartment in Jackson Heights, where the two sets of parents had coffee and cake together, and the 4 of us played together. We always had a wonderful time.

And in the summers we were all up in Old Forge together. On beach days we all were at the beach together and I played with Richie in the water. But mountain summers don’t have that many beach days, half the week is always cold and cloudy and rainy. I would walk over to Richie’s house in my raincoat and boots and we'd lie on his bed and read comic books and then walk over to the drug store for a phosphate, and visit the dogs in the neighborhood, there was a collie I liked a lot. I loved our summers in Old Forge but Richie didn’t. He said “it is boring, there is nothing to do,” he had far more fun with his friends back in Jackson Heights.

Life only got interesting for him when he sent away in the comic book for that Daisy BB gun, and set up the targets outside, and shot at them with his gun. We were best friends then and of course he offered to take turns with me and I tried. But the BB gun didn’t do anything for me, and it did everything for Richie. I guess it marked the end of our friendship because after that all he wanted to do was play with his BB gun, and it just didn’t hold my interest. A girl named Nina arrived with her family to rent the house next door, and after that I spent all my time with Nina.

Richie and I had done a lot of things together before the BB gun arrived. We would fish together off the pier, we would go in the canoe together, he would take the back, I would take the front. And we would plan when we had real money to buy a motorboat together. He said he will have money when he has his Bar Mitzvah and I said I will have money when I have my Sweet 16.

I really don’t know why I was so completely content up in Old Forge and Richie was so bored. When he said he had so much more fun with his friends back in Jackson Heights, I just took his word for it. I mean I assumed he had far more fun with his friends back in the city than I had with my friends. But I wonder now if that was true. I visited Richie and Alan as kid, and sure it was fun throwing water balloons out the window on people, and flipping baseball cards, and playing fort with his friends downstairs in the trees around the apartment building. But I was a jump-rope freak, what more fun is there than jump-rope with all your friends! And we played Skelsy, and Girls and Boys, and over-the-knee, and Jacks, and Chinese handball and stickball and Potsy, and the box with the marbles game. We had a lot of good games too.

When I was very young in Old Forge I played with the Dennises across the street. They had so many kids, that playing with one family meant we could play all our games, thrilling games of Hide and Seek and Kick the Can. And Richie and Alan had the Beckinhams, with 10 kids, next door to them, as well as Dolphie in the big house, so they had kids to play with too.

I just liked our routine in Old Forge, I didn’t miss my NYC life when I was up there at all. I found it totally fulfilling to be there. I would wake up and get out my bike and ride my brother on the back fender, and ride into town for jelly donuts. I loved jelly donuts. The lady who worked in the bakery of D and D who sold us the jelly donuts was Floanne Wormwood’s mother. She and Floanne lived in a trailer not far from us and I was friends with Floanne.

When my dad woke up he would build the fire in the pot belly stove, mountain mornings are cold. And when my mom put up the hot cereal, he and I would take long walk together while the cereal was cooking. We would walk down the road to where Floanne’s trailer was and the other trailers, and then take the path behind it thru the woods, and walk on that path as long as we wanted to. It was probably a logging road, the Adirondacks is filled with logging roads. And we would chat and then come home for hot cereal.

When I was even littler, his favorite walk was to Charlie Able’s farm. To get there we walked right on Route 28 in front of our house, there was a kind of footpath next to it, no sidewalks. And we’d pass about 4 houses. And just before the big fancy stone house which belonged to the principal, was Charlie Able’s farm. We’d walk up the long winding road to reach it. And my dad loved talking to Charlie Able, and I got to have my one and only experience of a farm. I got to see the baby pigs and the chickens and everything. I loved it. And my dad loved Charley Able. A rose bush grew up in front of our house which had the most beautiful smelling roses there was, pretty pink roses with a fragrance to die for. And Leon always said he must have picked up the seeds on his shoes when he was visiting Charley Able, that was his explanation of the roses. He loved those roses. And when I went away to camp he would always include one in the letter he sent me, and it would still have its miraculous perfume even if it had lost its beauty.

After that I would put on my swim suit underneath my dungarees and flannel shirt and head to the beach. Because Maurice Dennis, the father of the kids across the street, was the beach lifeguard back then, and he gave swimming lessons in the early morning. And I wanted to earn those Red Cross cards. I took Beginners with him, I took Elementary, I took Intermediate Swimming. I earned card after card. And then the big day came when I was allowed to take Junior Life Saving which was my passion back then.

We had an eat-in glass porch. Which meant there was table there to look out at the woods and field, and 4 burner hot plate with small black stove sitting on top of it, my mother did all her cooking on that. The field was adjacent to our house but where our house ended the woods began. And my father would sit and have his meals there and watch the deer come out of the forest. Or his favorite, watch the humming birds alight on the field wild flowers. He loved both. There would be hush when he would espy the deer arriving, and his thrilled joy at the humming birds. When the sun was actually warm and if it was sunny day, my mother would put up roast chicken in the little black oven on top of the burner, and we’d all set off for the beach.

I was allowed to buy jelly donuts for me and my brother in the early morning in town because my mission was to buy the New York Times for my father. He did not like to go one day without reading his New York Times and he had arranged with one of the drug stores to have one put aside for him each morning. So I would waltz in with my brother and ask for my father’s New York Times and they would give it to me. My brother and I ate our jelly donuts right away, I discovered jelly donuts up in Old Forge. And then arrived home with Leon’s New York Times.

It was on one of these excursions home with the New York Times in the basket of my bike and my brother on the back fender, that we bumped into my father’s friend from New York, Vicky. She was older than even my father’s big sister Esther. She was the doyenne of all the school teacher families from New York. And she said “did you hear the great news the war is over.” I realize now she was referring to the Korean War, but at the time it didn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t even aware there was a war, I wasn’t even aware what war was. I was in a world of jelly donuts and swimming lessons. She was beside herself with joy and excitement and happiness, and I tried to chime in. But I don’t know if I even mentioned it to my parents when I got back home, it simply didn’t register. All that registered was that Vicky had talked to me as if I was a grown up. Saying “great news the war is over” seemed like grown up talk to me.

My mother set up our beach blanket next to the other families from NY, and I looked for Richie and we went into the water together and played games in the water. And I guess my father headed straight for the tennis court and played tennis. And we all had glorious time until my mom said “time to go home for dinner.” In Old Forge we had our meals differently. We had dinner at lunch. When we arrived home the roast chicken was already roasted, the apple pie she had made from apples in the backyard was already baked, and we had our delicious meal on our eat-in porch. And that is when my father would see the deer or the humming birds.

Then we would return to the beach and it was the long wait of one hour before we were allowed to go back in the water. Old Forge was so far north, evening did not start till quite late. So there was time for endless afternoons. Richie and I played in the water, walked up to Rudy’s for ice cream cones, collected empty bottles, brought them to Rudy’s for two cents each and bought candy with it, and we played a lot of cards. The men all sat on one big blanket and played Hearts.

And when we had changed out of our bathing suits and back into shorts and tops again, the serious tennis playing began. All my aunts and uncles played tennis, they played doubles with each other. But my father was the best tennis player of all and long after all my cousins and aunts and uncles had gone home, my brother and I would sit on the bench, I guess my mom was there too, and my father would play with all the best tennis players in the neighborhood. There was one young man who would come from up the Channel on his motor boat to play with Leon every evening. He was a great tennis player too. And my brother and I sat there for long endless beautiful match. It was how tennis got into our blood. Love ten, Love twenty, Deuce, all the names, we knew them by heart. Set, match, serves, backhands.

My father taught both of us how to play tennis as soon as we could hold a tennis racquet. Each time he got a new racquet he gave his old one to my mom, who gave her old one to me, and I gave my old one to my brother. Back then you had to keep your tennis racquet in a press with screws, and sometimes I got a good enough one from my mother that I had to do that too. I knew all about tennis racquets and which were the best ones. We would play as a family if no one else wanted the courts.

Sometimes instead of watching my dad play tennis, my mom would take me and my brother in the car to go buy the chicken and eggs from the egg lady. That was a nice drive in a different direction, around the lake, up and up a windy road, and we would come to some house. And she would ask for her capon and her two dozen eggs.

Supper was simple. I was allowed to go to the movies once a week. There was a movie theater just before you hit the center of town. I used to take the short cut in the field beside it when I was visiting Richie. Outside the movie theater were the movie posters. And I would study them to make my choices. The other night “Shane” came on TV, and I remembered when I had stood outside that movie theater and the poster from “Shane” had been up, and how long and hard I had looked at it trying to decide if that would be my choice.


The movies changed on Saturday, Sunday was different movie, I could only see one. I did miss “I Love Lucy” my favorite show, when I was up there, we had no TV, and when the movie poster showed “Long Long Trailer” with Lucy and Ricky, of course I chose that. The other choice was Danny Kaye movie “The Court Jester.” But for me there was no competition with Lucy. I chose “Long Long Trailer” and went to see it. It was not good. The next evening my parents went to see the Danny Kaye movie, and my mother loved it so much she broke the rule for me. She said “you can see it too even tho you already went to the movies.” And I loved it. I had felt very gypped that the one I had chosen turned out to be a lemon and the one I had not chosen was so great.

Danny and Sarah, one of the couples up there as New York City school teachers, knew how to lead folk dancing, so once a week, in some huge long log cabin affair, officially called the hay fever center, with an old cannon from the revolutionary war in front of it with plaque, Danny and Sarah held folk dancing. First all the children had folk dancing. Then the grown ups. Sometimes we stayed to watch the grown ups dance, most of the time my brother and I were sent home to bed. I had no idea that after the folk dancing the grown ups would walk across the street to the beach, take off their clothes and swim naked in the lake, until one morning my mom told me “we were all swimming naked in the water, and when we wanted to come out and get dressed, there were teenagers on the swings, and we couldn’t get out of the water until they left, and they would not leave.”

There was bingo in the Fire House once a week which I loved too.

And then Chuck who worked in the Post Office told me he was opening up a miniature golf course, and of course once that happened life really took off. I fell in love with miniature golf, I loved it. It was open every night and they sold popcorn there too. It was high up, on top of the big hill across from the Fire House, and all thru August we would watch the shooting stars as we played miniature golf. My cousins did that too, I played with Richie. And I learned to see the Big Dipper and the North Star and the Little Dipper too.

And some mornings instead of beach, or maybe when it was too cold and cloudy for beach, my mother took us all near the ski slopes to go huckleberry picking. I always think of huckleberries in hot dry dusty places, but there is no way we would be huckleberry picking instead of at the beach unless it was not beach weather.

And on Wednesday mornings she took all the cousins horseback riding in Thendara, which I loved too. Richie’s horse was Daisy, a pinto. And I rode Freckles. I don’t know which horse my brother rode. I remember my mom rode Dexter, he was chestnut.

Mrs. DuBois ran the riding stable and CarolAnn who lived across the street was her assistant. CarolAnn was my age and we became friends, and she taught me games to play with horses. How you can slide off backwards, like on a slide. You just slide down their tail, it was fun.

My dad once took home movies of me sliding off the horse that way, but for some reason it was at night, the movies are too dark to see. If I hadn’t known what I was doing in them I wouldn’t have known. But there is CarolAnn and me and my horse and my climbing up again and again for the fun of sliding off. I wonder now what the horse thought, but I guess he found it fun playing with two joyous little girls.

Because it rained so much up there, many many afternoons I put on my raincoat and boots and walked into town to the library. It was right next to the movie theater. There was a wonderful librarian there. As soon as I walked in she would say “I know just what you would like” and she would pick out ten books for me, and they were all heaven. My father had paid Maurice Dennis to remodel the house one winter, to put in a knotty pine kitchen, and a little bedroom next to it so I could have my own room, and have the little bedroom painted pink the color I wanted. Before that I shared a bedroom with my brother on the second floor next door to the bathroom and my parent’s bedroom.

I loved my little pink bedroom on the ground floor. There was a little brass bed in there. I would lie in bed and practice my scissors kick for Intermediate Swimming, that is when you are taught the side stroke. But mainly I would read. Yes I found “The Saturdays” all on my own in the Pomonok library near our house in Flushing and I discovered it was a series and I read all of them. And I think I discovered “Dr Doolittle” in Queens too and read all of them, that was a huge favorite. But the librarian in Old Forge introduced me to everything. I read “Black Beauty” because of her, and “Bambi,” and a book about a whale where the whale describes his whole life thru the seas, that was an amazing book. I read so many books from the point of view of animals that she found me. I even read a book about the adventures on a submarine, the only book my cousin Richie took out too. I don’t think we had the same taste in books but he and I both liked that wonderful adventure book of the submarine. I am sure she found “Mary Poppins” for me. I had read a chapter from “Caddie Woodlawn” in my reader in school and loved it, and she showed me they had “Caddie Woodlawn” there and I read the book and loved it. And she introduced me to “Little House on the Prairie” and I loved them all.

And several months ago when I was wondering what a perfect life in Heaven meant, and I tried to think about a perfect life-- how I wanted to have everything I have in Tucson, my beautiful desert, and everything I loved in Old Forge, a lake and docks and trees. And I thought about all the people I wanted to be friends with, I remembered that wonderful librarian in Old Forge and wanted her to be my friend too.