Was It All Just A Dream? Grossinger’s Resort in The Catskill Mountains

Was It All Just A Dream? Grossinger’s Resort in The Catskill Mountains

By Michael J. Herman

By scribing this article, I am not only revealing my age, but my pathetically romantic nature. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the 1970s. It was a time when Americana was still something cool and desirable. Yes, a time when things meant something.

I’ve seen so many things from my childhood disappear from existence that at one time as each one would blip out, I’d become more and more melancholy about it.

Even though some things have gone away, they still linger.

Things like Disco Music,

TVs you actually had to go to in order to change the channel or up the volume.

Waterfalls I climbed as a child that I would later find out were dammed up and now only a trickle of water drips down the dry lake beds.

My elementary school building where I spent four of the best years of my education crumbles and tilts over from age.

The traveling carnivals that polka dotted the landscapes of the North East Coast for decades now barely show up once each year and barely stay a weekend.

Juke boxes, pinball machines, Atari, 8 track tapes, LPs, 45s, 8 track tapes, cassettes, classic toys of the ’70s like 12” GI Joe Action Figures, water rockets, and now the final salvo to an already diminishing culture of my childhood, Grossinger’s Resort in the Catskill Mountains of New York is now nothing but a dwindling, decaying ghost town.

Most will probably remember The Catskills from the famed 1980s film “Dirty Dancing”, which took place at a fictionalized Catskills resort in the 1950s-‘60s. For what it’s worth, I always thought the Catskills were well represented in the film.

What happened? Where did the voice of a generation go? No, not Bob Dylan, Shecky Greene, Morty Gunty, Henny Youngman, Joan Rivers, Bette Midler, Red Buttons, Alan King, Milton Berle, and of course, Buddy Hacket, but the smell of Springtime as it gave birth to summertime..

When I grew up, (which wasn’t that long ago), these were the names in common conversation. These were the Jerry Seinfelds and Seth McFarlands for more than 40 years.

I’m not ranting. I’m sharing.

An important commodity we’re not aware we need is disappearing. The commodity is our past.

I suppose I’m so sentimental about it because I was a boy, and I remember it in its glory. In my memory, all the resorts were a sizzling volcano, an exciting, and fun place to go in the warm weather for boating and swimming, or in the winter to go skiing and snowmobiling.

I remember this most about Grossinger’s:

I used to play Simon Says and I never lasted very long in the game, but the guy who ran the game was the world record holder for being the fastest Simon Says Master of all. Or at least that’s what the sign said. He was masterful, and although it’s been almost 45 years since I have seen him, I can still see him running the game and how much fun it was.

I remember learning how to ski at Grossinger’s. The snow was powdery and the hill seemed tall, until I started down it and fell over only 5 feet down the hill and had to try it over and over again. I also remember the moment I decided I didn’t like snow skiing. It was at Grossinger’s.

I remember the soda fountain with its endless supply of strawberry ice cream and whipped cream, and discovering root beer floats. I think I had 20 the weekend we were there. I remember seeing hundreds of little kids like me running around the place and all of us were friends.

I remember driving up with my parents and my sisters and thinking how great this was. I still think it was pretty great. I wonder, do they remember it like I do?

I remember visiting my best friend Marc Feinstein in high school after I moved from New York to Los Angeles several years earlier and he, his pal Jay Silver, and I went up to Kutshers for a couple of nights and had a blast. We were older and we could drive. So it was different. We saw something I never saw in the Catskills before…

Girls.

And lots of them!

But I think maybe my most wonderful memory of all from all my times to The Catskills and all my stays at the resorts is this one:

When I was 12 my father took Marc and I to The Stevensville Hotel down the street from Grossinger’s to the national convention for the pinball, arcade game, and jukebox industry. We had all day free play on every attraction and machine on display. We were literally let loose in a fun house and it was amazing. How could it not be? I was with my hero (my dad), my best friend, and games I loved. Marc and I still share that memory from time-to-time.

And the fact is that once the buildings that barely still stand in the once thriving Borscht Belt crumble and topple over, there will be no evidence that this flicker of time ever even existed, except in the fading still photographs and ever flickering memories of sentimental fools like me.

Grossinger’s represents more than a memory; it was a blip in time when no one thought twice about where their kid was at the resort.

They were having fun.

No one worried about time or money, we were young and money reigned from the skies and our parents were the clouds. We ran around with so much excitement for every morning that when bedtime came we negotiated for just a few more minutes.

Kickball and tennis

Backgammon and Chess

Swimming and laughing

Ice cream trucks

Block parties

Franklin Ace, TRS80 computers, and Atari

Typewriters and adding machines

Riding bikes on dirt roads before helmets were invented

Pinball, Pong, and Air hockey

And

Rock N’ Roll.

It’ was the 70s.

Jukeboxes

Record players that played 45s or 33 RPM LP albums

Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family.

Or Happy Days and Welcome Back Kotter.

KC and The Sunshine Band, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, and Shanana.

Nixon resigns and Elvis dies.

Bar Mitzvahs, girls, and puberty.

It all went by so quickly. Some of these things still remain, but all too few. They now only reside as flickers and flashes in my mind. But a sip of root beer and Grossinger’s is reopened. The sound of Marc’s voice or a song that thrusts me back in time and once again I’m 12 years old.

Surely Grossinger’s, Kutsher’s, and the Concord are still there?

Yes, most still stand, but all are decrepit, crumbling, and abandoned. They stand like ghost towns of the Old West with the proverbial creaking swinging saloon door. Rust has replaced glitz. Hallow echoes and forgotten times remain in the place where memories were made and lives started, grew, and completed.

Most remaining structures still resemble visually an image of the once grandeur of a thriving time when kitsch was king and youth was everywhere, but a simple peer through a window and the stark, unkind transition of time and weather reveal the harsh, stark, and austere truth that ballrooms filled with dancing, big band orchestras and ice cream floats fade and wait patiently for the next resurgence of a future yet unclaimed and undefined.

I emote. But I have the right. I lived it, it was great, and part of me still wants it to come back. The problem as I see it is we don’t talk about the past in ways that keeps it alive and vibrant. So I invite you to revive the past.

If you have a memory that predates wireless, high speed cable, and Netflix; If you can remember a time when as kids we played outside until the last drip of sunlight melted on the distant horizon, and when if you wanted it you had to work for it? Then share it with someone. Talk about your memories. Keep them alive. Do not let the memories, emotions, and sensations of your life fade like the conga line at the most wonderful resorts that linger no more.

Even though some things have gone away, they still linger.

Michael J. Herman is the author of 14 books and the forthcoming Side Hustle With Muscle: Stop Wasting Your Talents. Start Your Small Business. LinkedIn.com/MichaelJHerman