Episode 118 - Borscht Belt Times with Peter Chester

[00:00:00] This episode is dedicated to my friend John's cat, Juju. May he rest in peace. He was a

[00:00:05] chunky little fellow just like John. Okay, so here's the record that's right. Initially,

[00:00:13] the hotels hired hunky looking college boys who were like 20-ish or so. And part of it

[00:00:23] was to keep the young mommies occupied. All right, we've heard enough now. Okay, this is

[00:00:30] going beyond explosive. No, I gotta hear this. I gotta hear this. Young mommies and into

[00:00:36] to a degree dirty dancing, it was the truth of it was that yeah, you had a hunky looking staff

[00:00:45] to keep the female guests occupied. And you can take that word occupied and present it any number

[00:00:54] of ways. And you're not ruling out any particular way that anyone's mind wanders when presenting this

[00:01:00] in said ways. I go back to the paper that I wrote. And I'll give you for example. The one

[00:01:11] that was conveniently destroyed. But I remember it pretty vaguely, pretty clearly. Basically,

[00:01:18] you know what happened was when I titled it the Brooklyn boys married the best girls.

[00:01:23] The rest of it was and they got married and instead of making out in the backseat or the

[00:01:29] front seat of the cars, my father said, you see now why single men should never buy cars with

[00:01:34] bucket seats. In my macho, I think it's gone.

[00:01:50] The bush wax were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains or life really.

[00:01:57] Whereas pants and mount is totally opposite to the mountain on top of the face.

[00:02:02] I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult.

[00:02:08] It is really the development of New York State. Catskills were responsible.

[00:02:18] Now you're listening to Inside the Light. The Catskill Mountains podcast.

[00:02:32] All right. All right, so welcome to episode 118 of Inside the Line, the Catskill Mountain podcast.

[00:02:38] Sorry. Tonight Peter Chester reminisces about his unforgettable experiences, colorful tales

[00:02:43] from the heyday of the Borsch Bell era. We also chat about some upcoming at this time of recording

[00:02:50] that has already happened April winter storm, the lack of winter here out east but the mass

[00:02:58] of winter out west and the solar eclipse, which is going to be absolutely phenomenal. And of course,

[00:03:02] a little dose of Catskill Mountains rescue on Wittenberg Mountain that I just got informed about

[00:03:09] today. So welcome to the show guys. I hope you're doing well on this really weird,

[00:03:15] reary, rainy day up here that I hadn't known yet. What do you guys got going on down there?

[00:03:19] How about you Peter? The same thing. It's been raining and raining and they're predicting

[00:03:25] some snow. Nobody panics up here anymore. The old timers like myself, I remember

[00:03:31] one memorial they would call a decoration day at Grand Mountain where I worked for many, many years.

[00:03:36] We had snow. We woke up one Saturday morning. It was about three inches of snow on the ground.

[00:03:41] So of course, you know, everybody was panicking. God, what are we going to do?

[00:03:45] It was it was gone by 10 o'clock as I expected to be, you know, if we get anything on

[00:03:51] Thursday, but it's one of those damped very, damped very days when back in the back in the

[00:03:57] hotel era we'd see a movie or sit in the lobby or, you know, put on the sweatshirts. Nice.

[00:04:04] Ted, what about you? What's going on down there? More of the same. More of the same.

[00:04:09] Lots of rain. Everything's wet. Thinking about the snow this weekend.

[00:04:14] Yeah. So of course, we, we, most of us who knows Catskills, we have a winter storm coming

[00:04:20] Tuesday through Thursday within the Catskill Mountains, the higher peaks where we're going

[00:04:25] to be receiving 10 to 20 inches of snow up here in the Onianta area. We're only predicting

[00:04:31] a one to three inches of snow. You know, Ted, I don't know about you down, down,

[00:04:36] down towards the south or what they're predicting up there.

[00:04:40] Down in the lower elevation here in the Hudson Valley, they're just mainly calling for rain.

[00:04:45] Okay. Oh wow. Yeah. So Catskill high peaks are going to be receiving some amazing, probably

[00:04:51] heavy snow. I'm guessing this is heavy since it's rain and stuff. It's not fluffy good stuff. So,

[00:04:57] you know, if you're getting out this weekend, it's going to be a snowshoeing season again

[00:05:02] because we are going to be getting some heavy. It's been such a crazy on and off season, you

[00:05:08] know. Peter, I don't know what you can say about, you know, I'm 40 years old. I can, I can't remember

[00:05:15] a time before we would have rain, snow, sunshine, rain, snow, sunshine. You know,

[00:05:21] do you remember these days like this? Yeah. Once upon a time I was 40 years old also.

[00:05:28] I was, I'm tickling 71. I remember some strange weather, but I never remember it

[00:05:34] being, being this strange. It was always Aprilish, Marchish Aprilish was always,

[00:05:40] was always unpredictable. May, June it started to calm down. So the summer was kind of consistent,

[00:05:46] but the winter was very, very strange. You know, all the Almanacs predicted we'd get clobbered,

[00:05:51] but I'm kind of like an old timer. There are a few farmers left up here and

[00:05:57] who's far not too far from me and Calicoon by the Villaroma, which is, I guess we could,

[00:06:04] we can call it a Borsfeld resort except for the fact that it's Italian run and, you know,

[00:06:09] they haven't pasta bajoli instead. There you go. And they tell me, you know,

[00:06:16] he's one of the farmers that will like this, you know, okay, it's going to rain today.

[00:06:21] He kind of said it's a lot of BS. We're going to have a strange winter,

[00:06:24] but this has been strange. I don't remember it as a kid's say, but for, you know, an occasional

[00:06:30] blast of snow or cold weather in May and then many, many years ago, this is going back to the 19th,

[00:06:37] early 1960s. The end of the summer was always dicey, particularly for bungalow people because

[00:06:43] the bungalows really had no insulation. When you had a little bit of snow, a little bit of

[00:06:49] ice, a little bit of the mixed stuff at the end of August. So people were panicking and

[00:06:56] we also had all wheel drive cars, four rear wheel drive cars. So SUVs and all of this stuff

[00:07:04] were unknown to everybody except for the drugs. Yeah. So it's been a crazy winter for us

[00:07:11] over here on the East. You know, we have places closing down, you know,

[00:07:16] some ski resorts closing down already and then we get this massive snowfall that they might be opening

[00:07:21] up. But you know, we talk about what we've had over here, which is kind of ice and snow and

[00:07:28] ice and snow and rain, but over out West, Mammoth over in the California area has received over

[00:07:38] 300 inches of snowfall in this season. Yeah. The last night, what this is recorded March 30th,

[00:07:47] so two nights ago, 13 inches of snow fell on Mammoth Mountain. Mammoth Mountain is probably

[00:07:52] one of the biggest ski resorts over on the West Coast besides some places in Utah. And

[00:07:58] just it has been absolutely insane over there on the West Coast for them. They have gotten

[00:08:03] significant amount of snowfall, which is actually great because it's going to supply the reservoirs

[00:08:08] and stuff for the rain. And thunderstorms could be happening once again over in the lower

[00:08:15] elevation area, but in higher elevation, two to three feet of snow could happen

[00:08:20] above 6000 feet. And it's just it's been going once again. You can't remember

[00:08:29] of this happening. You know, we used to have constant snow or nothing, but it was usually

[00:08:35] just constant snow. And now, you know, last season over in California, we had a severe drought

[00:08:41] and there was forest fires and everywhere. And now look at this season, 300 inches of snow.

[00:08:46] I remember, you know, something about in Utah received, I forgot how much snow they get,

[00:08:53] they received an amazing amount of snow and the lines are just galore for that for these areas. And

[00:09:00] you know, I don't blame them. You want to catch the snow while you have it.

[00:09:05] You know, we had it that was last year of the year before when they had

[00:09:08] six or seven sheet up in Buffalo at that end of the I mean, the North country always gets

[00:09:13] clobbered. And I remember a friend of mine who lives in West Henrietta, which is not

[00:09:17] too far from Buffalo saying to me, you know, they had to actually dig get loaders that were in

[00:09:23] garages to dig out the loaders that were not those big, the big ones where you got,

[00:09:28] you know, that you're talking about something that itself is seven or eight feet tall.

[00:09:34] Or they could just clear, just clear the through way and the northern part of the

[00:09:41] through way, it just looked like you were going through the tunnels through the Swiss Alps,

[00:09:45] where you would see these rolls of snow on either side. We had that here, I think it was in 1995 or

[00:09:52] 1996. I looked not too far from Monticello Raceway. So that that route, they pushed the snow to the

[00:09:58] side and it was the same thing. You know, you couldn't see part of the racetrack on the road

[00:10:04] side because the piles of snow were so high. And then it would it would stop, then it would

[00:10:10] start and it was held for the road crews. And they know what they're doing here. But

[00:10:14] nonetheless, you know, keeping up with it and just when you've done clearing the road,

[00:10:17] you turn out to go over again. Yeah.

[00:10:22] Ted, what are your thoughts about this crazy winter season?

[00:10:27] I think it's become the new norm these marginal winters where we have these

[00:10:31] escalations between winter as we knew it and winter as we're coming to no winter.

[00:10:39] So I wouldn't recommend going out and buying shares of stock in Disney, which just bought

[00:10:46] Vale Resorts. It doesn't seem doesn't seem like all that good of an investment. And

[00:10:53] I've frankly given up my skis for a pair of snowshoes, which I hope to use more than

[00:10:58] occasionally in the Catskills and hopefully this coming weekend.

[00:11:02] Yeah, right. We might have the chance. Hopefully we've seen Peter this is,

[00:11:09] I would say this is more of a hiking podcast, but I love doing history

[00:11:14] once in a great while and we haven't done a podcast history lesson about the

[00:11:20] Borsch Belt since episode four. So it's been a long time coming. But you know,

[00:11:25] snowshoes has been a snowshoeing is an absolute phenomenal time to once again connect with nature

[00:11:32] and to feel the beauty of winter and such. And you know, you had kind of like the times of that

[00:11:38] during the Borsch Belt era when they had the ski resorts on the sides of the Borsch Belt when

[00:11:44] they on the museum, not the museums, but the hotels that they had to fake snow that was

[00:11:50] first brought in and it was absolutely phenomenal.

[00:11:55] I can segue into that the whole hiking thing is interesting. Seasonal hotels didn't have to deal

[00:12:00] with unless Passover was early, which was you know, which was the vein of everyone's existence,

[00:12:06] particularly in the smaller hotel that we call 250 resorts that were not very well heated. And

[00:12:12] the guests would stay in the dining room not only for the meals, but for the shows and

[00:12:17] everything else because it turned out to be the warmest place. But the larger hotels,

[00:12:21] grossingers as early as 1930s started experimenting not only with artificial snow,

[00:12:28] but with coloring the snow. So you would have the Concord ball and suit and so on and so on

[00:12:33] in other places. So you could have you could be skiing and the sideboards of skiing up here

[00:12:38] in the Borsch Belt, the Catskills in Sullivan was never very good. We have one big one

[00:12:44] here, Holiday Mountain that this local local entrepreneur, this fellow Mike Taylor, who owns a

[00:12:51] fuel company up here just rehabilitated and he you know, he had a pretty good first season,

[00:12:57] but it was actually a month short on either end because of the weather conditions. But the larger

[00:13:03] hotels had had snowshoeing. They had they had there was a lose run at grossingers. There

[00:13:13] was a lot of gross country skiing on the golf courses of the hotels. So you had that with the

[00:13:20] larger places that were open that were open all year long, in addition to having an indoor heated

[00:13:26] indoor swimming pool and ice skating and all that stuff. So but but hiking hiking was interesting

[00:13:33] because even in the warmer weather, hiking was was was a way of life for the vacationers

[00:13:40] came up here, one that came up from the city where you know it's it's nice to take a walk

[00:13:46] on the streets of Brooklyn. But it's not what we call a hike. So you know here they could

[00:13:52] they could they could hike they could they could not only walk on the country roads,

[00:13:57] they could go off the country roads, they could walk across the fields.

[00:14:02] Hiking to Mountaindale was was was interesting because it would take you longer than it

[00:14:08] normally would because you know you'd go off the the country road, you pick berries, you look at the

[00:14:12] wildlife. And the sidebar was you know the dangerous forms of wildlife that the bear, the snakes, deer

[00:14:21] and the critters as we call them the skunks and the raccoons were always there but

[00:14:24] but it was almost like that generation didn't care about it. It was the just the exhilaration

[00:14:29] of breathing the fresh air or Yiddish fish aloof which is the fresh air and the reason people

[00:14:36] came up here. So hiking was it was it was an interesting attraction for the smaller hotels

[00:14:43] that didn't have the smaller hotels that didn't have the that didn't have the indoor pools,

[00:14:50] you know that didn't have the ice skating links, that didn't have all of the indoor

[00:14:54] activities that the larger places had. So hiking, hiking very picking for the smaller

[00:15:00] hotels for the bungalow colonies more so more so for the adults although we used to have it

[00:15:08] at the place I was at before I started working there. We used to have the annual hike from

[00:15:14] Greenfield Park to Ellenville. Oh wow nice. He did go along the highway we went we went

[00:15:20] up some old country roads here to be safer you know and then we would we'd stray and we

[00:15:26] would look at that you know different wildlife and things that a lot of the kids who grew up in

[00:15:32] the city never saw because you know our Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Central Park are very nice.

[00:15:37] It's not the same kind of same kind of country layout that you have up here. True yeah and

[00:15:45] you know coming across the hiking stuff you know we once it's it's it's it's brought into a

[00:15:52] whole different perspective now in this era and now we have hikers going on on the big summits and

[00:15:59] stuff like that. Now we have incidences and today I was just brought upon this incident

[00:16:05] from the the rangers perspective and we had this in the recently which was March 31st two

[00:16:14] days ago in the town of Shandaken. Ray Book Disprac received a call from the Hiker report

[00:16:20] and they have fallen down a rock face near the summit of Cornel Mountain. Cornel Mountain is one

[00:16:25] of the 3,500 peaks it's around 3,800, 3,900 feet over in the boroughs range and they suffered an

[00:16:33] ankle injury. Now due to the severity of the injury and the location Forest Rangers the New

[00:16:39] York State Police Aviation required some assistance and Ranger Martin who has been on

[00:16:45] the show has been an awesome guy he spoke to the 64 year old hiker who had indicated she had

[00:16:52] splinted her ankle and would walk towards the Wittenberg Mountain. So once again the Rangers

[00:16:57] and the woman kind of worked together with this and the New York State Police pilot Sergeant

[00:17:02] Plisius Plisius that's a tough name to say flew rangers strattin and horned to the area

[00:17:09] which was probably I'm guessing by the picture was the summit of and the viewpoint of Wittenberg

[00:17:17] Mountain and they assisted them so the Ranger Horde to get the hiker secured in a hoist rescue

[00:17:24] following the successful hoist of four rangers hiked up to Wittenberg Mountain from Wolden

[00:17:28] Valley to assist the hiker's husband to his vehicle so they went down. This started all at

[00:17:34] 1.45 p.m. and ended at 5.30 p.m. where they were all cleared out so four hour rescue awesome they

[00:17:43] have this online probably at any social media area of the hoist rescue off of Wittenberg Mountain

[00:17:49] it looks like a beautiful day so awesome job by the Rangers once again on Wittenberg Mountain

[00:17:55] who for the last couple years we had several rescues on there and the search and rescue

[00:18:00] team was called out a couple times to there but they've unfortunately needed the New York State Police

[00:18:07] to help out in the aviation rescues because it's just too much of a haul to bring someone down that

[00:18:11] four miles from the top of Wittenberg Mountain and god those rangers and the state police have

[00:18:19] been kicking acts all year the long so yeah they're remarkable it's interesting to just

[00:18:25] call it back before my family my parents were Holocaust survivors so the first trip was not to

[00:18:32] this type of horse belt that we went to a place in in beginnig and so I'm familiar with Shandakin

[00:18:38] and well that's over there I mean we would hike you know as a little kid with my my parents like

[00:18:47] to do it and you know when you think about you didn't have that type of that type of of patrol

[00:18:53] available there yeah so you had you had your hiking stick you had your hiking stick you may have

[00:19:01] had some flares and even then you didn't have it cell phones of course we're on the herd of

[00:19:06] but those mountains are those mountains are incredible I mean they when they when they put

[00:19:11] the water tunnel which they can came from the Ashokin reservoir they changed the landscape of

[00:19:20] that you know significantly so the that in the whole area of the soap is creek so

[00:19:26] so the pitches and the terrain and then the the consistency of the land itself so

[00:19:33] you know you could you could walk and I'm not an avid hiker but I've done some hiking

[00:19:38] many years ago and they're telling you that just you know be careful where you're walking

[00:19:44] right because they look consistent but you know due to you know due to what was done with infrastructure

[00:19:51] uh you know it changed significantly but the state police and the the uh the local gentry responsible

[00:19:59] to safety of hikers are just incredible I mean they do this you know even the most difficult

[00:20:05] the situations they're able to to do this in the record yeah phenomenal stuff so once again

[00:20:13] thank you to uh anybody and anybody who participated in this rescue event in any rescue events right

[00:20:20] it's just phenomenal so once again thank you to the monthly supporters Chris, Darren, Vicki, John,

[00:20:27] Betsy, Denise, Vanessa, Joseph, Jim, Michael, Bongner, David, Mead, love you guys thank you

[00:20:34] most so much for supporting the show also congratulations on Vicki for receiving her

[00:20:40] LNT or leave no trace certificate uh also check out our sponsors uh Outdoor Chronicles

[00:20:46] Photography Molly from Outdoor Chronicles Photography specializes in adventure alohpn and

[00:20:51] adventure couple photography in the Catskills Adirondack and White Mountains she is an

[00:20:55] officiant for getting married but she is also a Lansing's guide but she is also a story maker

[00:21:00] Molly won't just give you photos she'll give you memories that will last forever

[00:21:04] don't hesitate to get ahold of Molly on all platforms also have you ever wanted to more

[00:21:09] learn more about hiking or backpacking or even just brush up on some of your old skills in the back

[00:21:14] country check out Trailbunk Project a hiking and backpacking school located in New Jersey

[00:21:20] Scott and Joe from the New Jersey search and rescue team have amazing background in

[00:21:23] Wilderness First Aid Wilderness First Respond to End the Mountain Rescue Association

[00:21:27] and they are here for you to learn old and new skills of hiking and backpacking

[00:21:31] and she's anything from First Aid map and compass and many other skills that could help

[00:21:36] you and others out in the trail check them out in their social media websites and all platforms

[00:21:42] so uh you guys drinking anything tonight uh peter what do you have in tonight anything

[00:21:48] oh i'm gonna well i'm gonna be a good boy i had a heart valve implant several months ago so i

[00:21:55] got a her back on on some of the uh the locally produced stuff which is uh you know but i'm

[00:22:02] cheating every every day that i'm getting closer to the to the uh the doctors okay you can

[00:22:11] give me the company line don't do it but i'm going to give you the real life just just

[00:22:15] you know ease your way back into it so i'm down to uh my essential water because they

[00:22:22] told me among other things as i trek on to the seventh decade of my existence that

[00:22:27] my blood chemistry is a little bit too acidic so i should be drinking

[00:22:32] my ph uh alcohol and water so you know so we're doing that but but we're pretty good for the

[00:22:39] time being could call tad what about you sir stortz i'm sticking with i'm sticking with the usual

[00:22:45] cuppa fresh brewed coffee keep me to keep me up so i can get through this tonight

[00:22:52] oh god i'd love to have a hot bowl of borsch in front of me that's what i'm really hankering for

[00:22:59] but we're gonna hear all about that i suppose peter well i'm gonna i'll while we're talking

[00:23:04] about borsch i i can't i can't develop a taste for the stuff hot cold i can't look at it i can't

[00:23:11] smell it i don't know and i've had every everything from from uh mothers in the jar to

[00:23:20] homemade stuff made by by by real russian cop the christians who trace their ancestry back to

[00:23:27] whenever i just can't develop a taste so right i'm just bringing up stash i think we need to

[00:23:33] stop this whole podcast right here if if peter is not a connoisseur of borsch

[00:23:39] what is he doing on the show what i mean peter seriously you have the borsch belt museum shirt

[00:23:45] on but you're telling us you're you're basically a fake that's what i'm hearing are you really

[00:23:51] i i i really am uh i can i can make this stuff uh i can i'm told that when i make it and i've

[00:23:58] done it as i'll tell it's pretty good um i think part of it is is because my first my next to

[00:24:05] the uh we're all adults next to the the smell for yourself there you go well sometimes

[00:24:13] still an 18 year old uh in in front of me uh although the hormones are not working as they

[00:24:20] once were we don't have to go there peter and no we're gonna we'll we'll we'll we'll keep it clean

[00:24:26] uh the second the second most annoying odor that i uh smelled in the cat skills was the uh the

[00:24:33] smell of the boiling of the beats that started shortly before the 4th of july and this was a

[00:24:40] seasonal hotel called grand mountain the greenfield park where i spent most of the time in those days

[00:24:45] everything was really freshly made the uh the hotel had hillcrest farm attached to it so

[00:24:50] this was one of those those real jewish farmers uh takes in guests in the 19 room farmhouse and

[00:24:57] then builds bungalows and builds a hotel and the hotel morphs into into a resort and the

[00:25:02] country club uh so so the lingering the smell of the beats was the kitchen it was in the dining room

[00:25:11] you know and that combined with the uh the occasional smell coming from the septic tanks

[00:25:16] made for an interesting interesting combination but but with the issue of the boys you know i

[00:25:21] i may i just i've tasted it it just doesn't it just doesn't do anything for me but although

[00:25:26] i can drink shop which is which or grass juice which is a green concoction uh i i uh i i do recall

[00:25:35] very fondly that overwhelming majority of the guests wanted their borscht cold they wanted it

[00:25:43] either served in in what we call the water glass uh or they had it in the glass and they poured

[00:25:51] into a like a cereal bowl with a boiled potato and uh there was a dollop of sour cream that was

[00:25:59] that was that was put inside and it would be stirred together in some of the pictures if you see

[00:26:05] the the glass you can see some of the the white dots which is sour cream floating around it

[00:26:12] i i have tasted it i tasted tasted cold borscht hot borscht uh in between borscht

[00:26:18] with boiled potatoes uh so so i guess i guess if that would make me the fraud i i i i own up to it

[00:26:26] we're just being honest here well you know i i i do own i do own up to the uh the other

[00:26:33] delicacies up here i i very very very fond of you know from the gefilte fish which was homemade

[00:26:40] the chopped liver everything you know let me just scroll it back all of this stuff back in

[00:26:44] the day at my day actually began when i was old enough to understand what it's still about when my

[00:26:50] parents trekked from big indian to uh to the borscht belty cat skills you know i was i was

[00:26:58] brought up on that because of the german jewish background the ate all of this stuff uh not

[00:27:04] particularly good for the arteries but you know it tastes very good so all of these things

[00:27:10] were uh were foods that my now grandchildren look at me and say yeah you know pop pop

[00:27:16] googling gefilte fish and it doesn't look like a fish you know i said no that's because

[00:27:20] there's no such thing as a gefilte fish that's you know so so you know this is all second

[00:27:25] nature to me but you know in the hotels all of this was freshly yeah definitely

[00:27:31] farmed farm the table yeah you know when they talk about farm the table and i had this

[00:27:36] discussion with with uh some of the people who resettled up here some many since covid but

[00:27:43] a number of four that farmed to table was the backbone and in fact one of the great attractions

[00:27:50] of coming to coming to the hotels so everything was farmed to table everything from the cheese to

[00:27:57] the milk uh to all the vegetables to all the fruits uh the only the only kind of fruit and

[00:28:04] vegetable that that that was not farmed to table were those that you couldn't grow up here the the

[00:28:10] chickens uh while they weren't free range per se uh the the chicken farmers would let them out of

[00:28:17] the poops into into a a pen in the yard and just throw out the feed because it was easier to do

[00:28:25] that than to go from from each each confined area within the coop so farmed to table you know

[00:28:31] i used to say uh you know i was very much turned on by tolcrest farms so when i was a little kid

[00:28:37] i was milking cows and you know it was one of the few kids in the city and i can still do it by the

[00:28:41] way very well another thing that my grandchildren stayed away from yeah right yeah speaking of

[00:28:50] farms table uh i got a rev spirits oh what is it oh cherry baby uh 8.5 alcohol cherry vanilla

[00:28:59] me that's absolutely phenomenal pretty pretty kick ass pretty pretty fancy yeah i mean we didn't you

[00:29:06] know the the the local breweries are a relatively new invention although uh you know royal kettem

[00:29:12] winery uh has been in the hudson river valley at highland which is not too far from from where

[00:29:18] you are home of sloy paterson the boxing you know royal kettem and royal kettem does everything

[00:29:25] from and harvest the grapes to fester grapes to bottle the wine to to put labels on it that says

[00:29:32] bottles especially for tamarack lodge or a concord of rosehingers and uh and and send about

[00:29:39] sent about the hotels uh the other stuff uh you know the the beer and the other stuff was

[00:29:44] that are usual jenny crema and schlitz and jenny crema baby i have to like jenny crema

[00:29:53] i mean i went to suny bigam tim for a little while and that was you know we would brush our teeth

[00:29:57] like that so that was actually pretty good i love this guy this is yeah peter's flexing on us this

[00:30:03] guy's flexing now all right he starts off he's drinking ph balanced water or something like that

[00:30:08] now he's now it's he he does uh shots of jenny crema you know his mouthwash and

[00:30:16] it's a world we are shot and that it would be fun you know

[00:30:21] one two one two yeah so peter i know that uh stash here wants to tell us about a recent hike

[00:30:28] that uh he was on and and maybe a little catskill mountain history so when we get into the

[00:30:33] Catskill mountain history i want to i want to know where you were in august of 1969

[00:30:40] but first let's hear about stash's recent hike just to tickle you for a moment exactly where

[00:30:46] you thought i was i actually lived not too far from that oh but i didn't see it all time but we

[00:30:52] can talk about that a bit definitely so uh we talked about previous hike so i went up

[00:30:57] on over acro point and uh actually you know what i'm gonna rephrase this i'm gonna edit this

[00:31:04] you know i went up and over a mountain to look at a glider crash that is once on the east side

[00:31:11] of of the blackhead range area and uh i'm a plain crash fanatic and i was just like you know what

[00:31:20] you know screw the trail i'm in a bushwhack absolutely phenomenal open woods going up

[00:31:26] uh 20 mile per hour winds wind chill was beautiful i look over on the the range

[00:31:32] blackhead range there was snow happening on the tippy top of the peaks probably like 3900

[00:31:38] absolutely beautiful nominal phenomenal day i find the the plain crash i i get back to the

[00:31:44] trail and like do i want to go over to viewpoint yes i absolutely do i want to see the view of the

[00:31:51] blackhead range and uh you know i'm i'm number one i love views i i'm a view fanatic

[00:31:58] and uh i just like hiking in general i'm not a list guy and just the whole day being out there

[00:32:06] in the wilderness with uh you know one side being you know 20 mile per hour constant winds

[00:32:13] and you know maybe down in the low 20s was phenomenal and the other side was just absolutely

[00:32:21] no winds was just phenomenal and then finding finding the crash and then going back to the viewpoint

[00:32:29] i was just blown away and it was one of those days where you could see so far but also right at

[00:32:37] the tippy top of our peaks in the Catskills were with snow squalls happening and i was just blown

[00:32:43] away i cannot there's there's a time you know where where you're just like ah you know i didn't

[00:32:50] enjoy this but once again getting out there and uh you know like like these peoples of the borsch belt

[00:32:56] times breathing that fresh Catskill mountain air god it just kills you it just feels so good

[00:33:04] so were you hiking solo 100 solo i love and this is one of the crashes you hadn't been to

[00:33:11] before right correct one of the crashes this is number 27 wow and had you searched this area for

[00:33:19] this crash before or was this your first time looking for it first time yeah and so how long

[00:33:25] did it take you to zero in on where it was and find it oh god it was nothing i'm a bush

[00:33:32] wagon fiend and uh you know if i if i have a location i can find it within you know 30

[00:33:38] minutes and uh you know good friend so good when you see at a location do you have coordinates or

[00:33:45] just a general idea coordinates i did really okay well good for you now is this speaking of good

[00:33:52] for you and maybe this is a really really poor segue um did the fellow or whoever was a passenger

[00:33:59] in the glider survive that is a question i've yet to answer i have to ask my friend about that

[00:34:06] and you know judging by the looks of the glider you know i don't you probably south swatter now

[00:34:15] peter i'm gonna send you a photo really quick i'm pretty sure that uh he did survive judging by the

[00:34:23] the glider look of the crash because it was uh it looked there's only number one one wing

[00:34:31] that was detached and uh i was surprised uh by how far you could kind of go into the forest with a

[00:34:42] glider i when i saw it from a distance i was just like could that be it and uh you know the

[00:34:49] reflection of course of the of the glider and i was i was blown away i was like wow there's

[00:34:56] still a huge wing those wings gotta be at least 20 to 25 feet wide and there was only one wing

[00:35:03] missing and it looked like kind of like the uh the the area where the he would be hanging from

[00:35:11] or gliding from was intact and you know i was i was kind of blown away uh peter i just

[00:35:19] sent you this to the email so check that out and do you know where this guy or the

[00:35:24] pilot had taken off from in the glider you know i i don't have any previous information

[00:35:30] i gotta ask my friend joe about that that's interesting so do you know whether or not um

[00:35:35] the federal aviation safety board does a review or investigation of glider crashes or is that just

[00:35:44] motorized aircraft um did you with the glider you have to have an aviation

[00:35:50] certification for that so you do have an aviation number there is actual number on the wing for that

[00:35:57] and does the safety board investigate those crashes as well or not uh i know they do an

[00:36:04] investigation yeah so it'd be interesting i'm sure you're gonna look for that safety report

[00:36:09] to get more of the backstory on what happened yeah with respect to that crash

[00:36:14] so while you're looking while you're looking for that i did get out um with danie davis over the weekend

[00:36:22] we weren't peak bagging uh we had a very interesting hike up one of the cobs in the cat skills i

[00:36:28] learned a lot more about the geology and the forces that shaped the cat skill mountains

[00:36:34] and what was interesting is the week before i wish almost wish i had my snowshoes with me

[00:36:40] this past weekend no shows no snowshoes no spikes required and who knows what you'll need

[00:36:47] this coming weekends no shoes spikes all of the above he's arrived i think he's arrived

[00:36:55] it's it's crazy so we'll get uh peter's uh thought about that in a little and

[00:37:01] in a little bit when he sees it so once again cat skill mountain news volunteer definitely always

[00:37:07] volunteer 3500 go cat skill trail crew cat skill mountain clubs visitor center rollei

[00:37:13] driver rovers trail crew uh brand new mountain fire towers looking for some volunteers uh up

[00:37:19] towards me you know that's tough i actually got a e or a text message from uh god eric

[00:37:28] freedman who is of the cat skill mountain trail crew and he said he was listening to the later

[00:37:33] podcast and he they're heading up to the terrace mountain lean to on four five which is april fifth

[00:37:39] april seventh to finish up some stone pedio started it also looks like they have uh been doing some

[00:37:45] stuff on friday mountain as well uh which is weird i find that a little weird because that is bush

[00:37:51] whack the d ec put approvals for the 2024 projects um their events can be found on the

[00:37:59] the trail conference website uh under getting involved so check them out cat skill trail crew

[00:38:05] definitely doing some amazing work around the cat skills once again us all coming together and working

[00:38:12] together can improve our trails out here in the cat skills and that's basically why i'm doing

[00:38:18] this podcast it's just to get us all united and to uh for us to kick ass in the cat skills

[00:38:27] and uh i also do this podcast about history sorry peter you know it's like history trail come you

[00:38:33] know back and forth well i'm looking at this interesting uh you know i only see part of the

[00:38:39] fuselage and i'm thinking um he either he had jumped out before it works it doesn't look

[00:38:49] like there would be a survivor because i'm looking at where the uh i've actually flown

[00:38:54] been in gliders here at worksboro well not recently wow uh you're the most exhilarating

[00:38:59] experiences that's familiar with that area because you've got the uh the ridges swan and ridge

[00:39:05] that's surrounding you uh and they've been doing that for a very long time it's a big big appeal

[00:39:12] and i remember the first time i did it it was like you know you'd be like tap i said wait a

[00:39:17] minute this this thing isn't how many wheels are there because you know what you're doing

[00:39:24] i'm telling you what the what the plane is feeling when it hits the ground uh again assuming

[00:39:32] it's under some kind of control this looks this this looks pretty damaging yeah it's it's definitely

[00:39:39] a controversial topic because you know the way the the area are kind of like the

[00:39:49] the landing was and stuff like that so who knows i i sent my message friend or my friend a message

[00:39:57] and we'll see what he comes up with with this uh with this report because i know he's done

[00:40:02] his background checks so the hiking one of the big initiatives and uh

[00:40:07] do you aware of it uh who's the rails to trails uh that that happens in salam county uh

[00:40:13] it kind of masks this stupidity of uh of getting rid of rail service which back in its day that

[00:40:20] actually predates me i i remember the rights of way i remember since some old some old relics

[00:40:25] of the ontario and western that uh it was all it was all steam locomotives so it's a little

[00:40:31] little bit of diesel service with also steam and it was an interconnect system it was interesting

[00:40:36] because a lot of the a lot of small towns up here actually had charlie service that that

[00:40:40] interconnected them but in sullivan you had the own double railway so you know you could you

[00:40:44] could get on that train in mount dale and going into a place else within sullivan you could

[00:40:49] go you could actually go to calico and take a train that would take you almost up to dinghamton

[00:40:54] so when they uh when they started to to tear up the right of way uh it sat dormant many

[00:41:00] many years and so i'm gonna say ten years ago when people said well these are great hiking trails

[00:41:05] because the the roadbed of the railroad railroad is fairly flat it could blend itself to you know

[00:41:12] it could blend itself to a nice comfortable hike so they've they've uh the idea is to have you go

[00:41:18] basically from the station in mount dale all the way on through and and eventually wind up

[00:41:24] at early bill which would follow most of the pathway the ones that you couldn't of course

[00:41:28] is where they had where they had the bridges uh there's a tunnel the tunnel in the worst

[00:41:33] boat tunnel that goes actually the high view tunnel that goes from the high view which is

[00:41:39] right before word spell and high view because uh it's it's a higher elevation and one of the

[00:41:44] guy kind of hotels that long a lot so it was up there so the story of that tunnel is that

[00:41:50] the uh the tunnel was built by was built as most of them were by by by hand uh and and they came in

[00:41:58] from both they didn't have sophisticated boring uh equipment so they came in from two sides and

[00:42:04] the story and it was fact check is that they were off like like a foot wow

[00:42:12] in with respect to the uh the illustrious second avenue subway in mchatn where they

[00:42:19] couldn't they somehow couldn't you know how to make it watertight when it with all the technology

[00:42:25] how they couldn't make it watertight or anything uh these rivers so this thing and i mean parts of

[00:42:30] it is still there they they've got part of it boarded up it's not particularly safe but i've

[00:42:36] walked into a little bit of it it's just amazing to see that and this thing you know it just

[00:42:41] about fits the steam locomotives that went through it you know of course you know they

[00:42:46] tell you to roll the windows up because otherwise you'd be you'd be covered with soot but but they

[00:42:52] did wonderful things with that hiking trail and and they you know they put some historic markers

[00:42:56] along the way and the the long range idea is to is to have it so that you would be able to have

[00:43:02] a link on the phone uh that would that would give you the the tour of what you would be seeing

[00:43:09] which is a nice idea it certainly took them long definitely it took them in fact took

[00:43:16] them i'm gonna be snarky it took them way too long yeah i mean i mean we've come a long way of course

[00:43:24] and uh you know talking about the rail trails you know we have amazing rail trails here over

[00:43:29] and the Ashokan area uh the Hunter area the Tarransville area and they're connecting

[00:43:35] everything together and it's making an absolute phenomenal time for for people who

[00:43:40] can enjoy these high peaks you know they can only do so much uh to enjoy the Catskills and the Ashokan

[00:43:47] rail trail is absolutely phenomenal and this once again follows the existing area of the rail

[00:43:52] trails that brought people once again from the city all the way up to Tarransville or all the way

[00:43:58] up to the Monticello area and such so got amazing history um that to talk about so let's get on to

[00:44:08] quickly the the weather aspect of this of the podcast so if we usually talk about the the weekends but

[00:44:16] you know Wednesday Thursday uh even Tuesday tonight you know where we're supposed to receive up in the

[00:44:24] high peaks at least up to 20 inches of snow going into Thursday and then Friday Saturday Sunday

[00:44:31] supposed to be some clouds lingering in but once again 20 inches of snow up in the high peaks

[00:44:37] this is predicted from slide mountain area which is the tallest peak in the Catskills receives the

[00:44:43] most weather in the Catskills so you might as well be prepared and uh we're gonna go from 32 degrees

[00:44:50] all the way down to seven degrees with wind chills so be prepared for anything and I hate to say

[00:44:57] this freaking everything that you can handle in the mountains because we're gonna have it

[00:45:03] within this coming five to six days uh with this recording which is on Tuesday I like to record on

[00:45:10] Tuesday just so I can edit and and get this done before I can pass out within the time

[00:45:17] the prediction for us is an inch or two three inches so that however the yeah the problem is

[00:45:23] when you when you're sitting at 31 32 33 29 and and you start to get that that funny looking

[00:45:30] mix up here that I mean they grind the roads but the reality is uh you know you really really

[00:45:36] shouldn't be driving in there's ice right roads although yeah unless you want to go back that peak

[00:45:44] then you a bit off to city folk but it's it's you know oh I got a four by four I got a big

[00:45:50] hijacked up four by four with big tires yeah that'll slide also so instead of having

[00:45:55] the two drive tires slide you can have four of them off good and any like except for the fact

[00:46:03] that you know you'll slam on the brakes you won't zigzag but you keep going you keep going straight

[00:46:08] until you know the car stops or something or something stops it's a lot right and just goes

[00:46:14] to the other side you know they put you know even even the uh the lawn furniture of course

[00:46:19] and Home Depot and the chains comes out on January 2nd uh so so if you want to get a bag

[00:46:29] or even a bag of sand that means it's kind of difficult uh shovels and snowblowers right

[00:46:37] I know a little bit better I don't I don't I don't clean the snowblower pack it away until

[00:46:44] end of April yeah so um yeah so once again be prepared for anything and everything in the

[00:46:51] Catskills mountain shoe uh mountain you know snowshoes mountain spikes whatever uh get ready

[00:46:58] for anything and everything um so we're gonna go until I mean we're gonna be talking about

[00:47:04] Catskill Mountain History but you know Ted has a question for you Peter about a little bit

[00:47:10] of Catskill Mountain History so sure I'd like you to answer this yeah so so Peter I already gave you

[00:47:16] a little preview but you know it's a big part of the the Catskills big part of Sullivan County

[00:47:23] was the Woodstock Festival in August of 1969 so with with your background of being in

[00:47:33] the Catskills in the summer I gotta ask tell us where you were August 15th 16th 17th and 18th of

[00:47:42] 1969 I was actually at Woodstock for a short period of time I live not too far from the uh

[00:47:49] from the festival site uh I was uh 16-19-15 I was 16 and a half years old I was working at

[00:47:56] Grand Mountain uh you know and it was kind of dicey because you know well well you could get away

[00:48:03] you know like Thursday ish quite a Friday but getting away after that you know and then

[00:48:08] you know you had the lingering effects of the uh of the cannabis haze that pretty much covered

[00:48:16] pretty much covered the county actually um the weather was terrible the weather you know

[00:48:23] the weather was terrible the uh the yazgar farm and there are a couple of other farms that are

[00:48:27] that are on that side of 17th it's about it's about 10 or so 12 miles from where I live now

[00:48:34] I'm right off of 17th uh so so we got there let's say Thursday ish or so something like that

[00:48:42] and the sky started to open up so that by Friday morning it it was you know you were

[00:48:48] sinking in the mud unlike everybody else who came and drove down 17b they would get off

[00:48:55] route 17 and exit 1 4 go past the raceway uh us pseudo country folk uh came on 55 which went past

[00:49:05] your end of 55 would go past the rundowns and then they never sink and you could come all the

[00:49:12] way around and you could go through uh the county on the lake uh and then you could kind of

[00:49:20] weasel your way down down down to the site uh there were people on top of people on top people

[00:49:27] just it was just it was you know it was just just the the site alone I mean the site alone

[00:49:33] and and and the because of the the weather conditions that it was kind of dampened and

[00:49:38] dirty but it was the warm side it would exacerbate the the cloud of marijuana and

[00:49:45] uh an opiate of cash and everything else that that was being smoked and being shared people were very

[00:49:50] gracious so were you were you smoking and sharing yourself peter well I I I'm gonna you don't have

[00:49:57] to answer that you can start on what the statute of limitations is if you want to take the

[00:50:01] fest well I will tell you that yeah I did but you really didn't have to because a contact

[00:50:07] eye that you get was uh which is that you get the contact you would get the case you if you if you

[00:50:14] sunroofs were unknown at those times and then most of the guys didn't have air conditioning

[00:50:21] some had convertibles so you know you would start to get the contact high when you got off of

[00:50:26] route 17 the quick way at exit 104 so and as you got closer and closer it was it was it was

[00:50:33] more pronounced were you able to did you get into the festival itself yeah yeah I actually I

[00:50:40] I actually had tickets nice one of the few paying customers well you know it's interesting there were

[00:50:46] there were a number of paying customers but because it was just so exponentially greater than

[00:50:51] they expected uh the sidebar to that is I had unmolested Woodstock tickets uh that my my mother

[00:50:58] who my god bless her but but you know she it wasn't her junk she was a junk lady with her own

[00:51:04] junk but it wasn't her junk she'd get rid of it so of course you know she threw out the Woodstock

[00:51:08] tickets with my unmolested case of Billy beer uh so needless to say I would be you know

[00:51:17] my biggest problem would be where to dock the yacht that she would not sure so for

[00:51:22] those who don't know the reference to Billy beer is that uh uh president Carter's brother Billy Carter

[00:51:29] yeah and this was interesting because this was uh this was a 24 pack of Billy beer that

[00:51:35] in the cardboard in the cardboard box and how was it how was it that you resisted

[00:51:40] cracking open one of those Billy beers for all those years I actually I actually had some

[00:51:45] that I did drink uh it was uh was it as bad as the borscht soup it was it was it was it was

[00:51:54] bad as a borscht soup it was somewhere it was somewhere is between somewhere's in between

[00:51:59] flat peels and warm schlitz oh that's that is trash talk

[00:52:07] with all due respect to you know what what's you know what was it which one made no walkie

[00:52:12] famous was a schlitz or something like one of one of those uh but you know it there the issue

[00:52:19] we issue with Woodstock I mean that because of because of the geography of not only the farm itself

[00:52:26] but because of the geography of the area you could you could hear with a reasonable amount

[00:52:31] of clarity you could hear the music several miles away in in every direction uh so it it's

[00:52:39] it's it was it was an event uh locals I think the locals they're just getting over the shock of it now

[00:52:48] some you know some or they're dead uh no responsibility for killing them but

[00:52:57] I do remember a lot of them were we're sitting out on there sitting out on their porch and say

[00:53:02] where air's so pretty damn good here you know so that that part you know that that part of

[00:53:09] the county as you started to get west of Sullivan County of Monticello you had less less borscht

[00:53:15] belt and uh you know more more of the locals uh and they were completely in awe not not not only

[00:53:24] because you know you had these crazy hippies around uh but but just the sheer number of

[00:53:29] people who they're definitely and and just because it's a common misconception um we should just make

[00:53:37] it clear that the festival itself was not in Woodstock New York of course

[00:53:44] uh battle yeah it was an yeah it was called an aquarium exposition in white lake New York

[00:53:50] white lake is in the town of Bethel the county like like like your neighboring county chopped

[00:53:55] up into uh into township so the actual site of the Asker farm was was in was in Bethel absolute farm

[00:54:05] area that the area was just an open pasture of everything which is crazy yeah even today you

[00:54:11] know where the vessel vessel uh wood center for the arts built on it and you know you have

[00:54:18] the memorial or the stage was and all of that just that vista alone is this magnificent

[00:54:25] it's really part of the county that's that's unspoiled so it looks the vista that you would see

[00:54:32] looking down from from where the art center is to where the memorial plaque is is exactly the same

[00:54:40] as it was at that time you would just you would just see what what were just just acres and acres

[00:54:49] grassland exactly the same with the exception of the cannabis cloud yeah the cannabis

[00:54:57] not there anymore although uh i feel like believe it is i think they've opened a cannabis store

[00:55:05] you know because of newer ventilation uh ventilation in the homes uh the cannabis

[00:55:11] cloud but they will never you know there's never going to be no the cannabis any place in the

[00:55:16] universe that's gonna that's gonna rival that that that that cannabis uh someone who goes to

[00:55:23] like reggae festivals like me uh and and concerts absolutely not you know something that my parents

[00:55:30] said that they traveled up from uh mass apiqua in long island and gave gave like their doubt halfway

[00:55:37] through because they couldn't make it up there because the long line of of cars they they gave

[00:55:43] up and a just just a thought of what it was back in 1969 was just absolutely it blows my mind every

[00:55:53] time to think wow as you know those pictures you see uh on 17b that that's how it was i mean

[00:56:01] you know the reality is the sidebar to this is uh i i think my i think my father knew i went but

[00:56:07] for the most part i was i was a kid i mean i was i was i was the youngest of the weight staff

[00:56:16] so you know i was i would i would be the one that that that they would miss so

[00:56:20] you know my my instead of staying the other guys they the agreement was i could go with them

[00:56:27] but i would have to go back and then they did manage to get me back the same way because once

[00:56:32] the cars were locked in place on 17b then there was no problem with the other highways you know you

[00:56:40] could always find a little you know uh careful and again there were no no four by fours or nothing

[00:56:46] that you could say well you know i don't care if it's a drainage bridge on the side my truck

[00:56:50] would get me through that uh so the understanding was that my time would be finite because i would

[00:56:55] have to go back and somehow cover for the guys until and they came back saturday-ish because you

[00:57:04] would really be screwed if you would not be there saturday night wow you know so before we before

[00:57:11] we move along peter do you remember any of the acts that played while you were there uh

[00:57:17] shan and i was there when i was there uh what's her name john bias was there uh i'm having a brain

[00:57:24] i'm having a brain fog it's the residual a brain fog or cannabis cloud is over there when i think

[00:57:31] of it there's still some lingering you know lingering cannabis which is probably is that

[00:57:37] is that what's growing in the background over your right shoulder yeah that's actually i tell

[00:57:43] everybody that that's one of the uh asian bamboo plants that you can buy in the malls but

[00:57:48] that's really okay just as long as you've got the experience of that uh you know i couldn't

[00:57:56] imagine of uh like my parents said halfway through they they decided to debail on that and

[00:58:05] just just that you know it was it was a miracle in a sense that that there was not a real

[00:58:11] health catastrophe uh with all the locals uh they some of them were selling glasses of water for a

[00:58:20] dollar so you know it wasn't all about peace and everything the mess that was there was you know

[00:58:27] again it was because not not on purpose because you know while the hippie culture looked sloppy

[00:58:33] and dirty they really weren't but there was no place you know so you would your plastic

[00:58:38] garbage bags were unknown they were just beginning to get the plastic garbage bags so there was nothing

[00:58:45] to put the garbage in and if you did have something to put the garbage in there was no place to take

[00:58:51] the garbage too because again back in those days that the hotels in the bungalow columns they would

[00:58:56] they would burn it and bury it there was very very little municipal sanitation so you would

[00:59:03] take it to the dump and if you were a resident you know you would buy bypasses to uh you still have

[00:59:09] that by the time that uh where you get you get poop on both and you can take certain things to the

[00:59:16] dump so uh you know in defense there was it's not that they didn't want to they they they

[00:59:21] didn't know how to in terms of taking it from the site and getting and getting rid of it uh

[00:59:28] surprisingly and this I can't tell you firsthand this was second hand getting out of what appeared to be

[00:59:35] you know a mess that oh these cars are going to be here for the next 10 years they did manage to

[00:59:40] to you know within it took it took uh it took six seven eight ten hours to clear the traffic

[00:59:51] you know but it did you know it did eventually it did eventually move down the cannabis

[00:59:57] cloud with something else you know we had to yeah yeah speaking of eight to ten hours to clear the

[01:00:04] traffic that kind of sounds like what's coming up this month coming monday with the solar eclipse

[01:00:10] right yeah i mean probably going to be I you know it's interesting because uh you know if if

[01:00:16] all goes according to plan we should we should get in the mid 80 percent of the trips yeah

[01:00:24] sure and that site on the Bepplewoods campus is it's a nice site for viewing as is uh

[01:00:30] minus solar raceway which is close to that so yeah yeah you're probably well I'm going to watch it

[01:00:36] for my back backyard I can see stashes nudging us along to the the next segment here so I'm

[01:00:44] heating up my borscht soup right now to get ready for it all right so let's get on to the the

[01:00:51] sponsors uh once again cap and Catskill is it time for new gear or hiking in the Catskill say no more

[01:00:57] Camp Catskill in Tannersville has all your hiking needs footwear socks moisture wicking shirts free

[01:01:02] side meals Catskill merchandise and more they have all the essential needs located in Tannersville

[01:01:08] and online check out camp Catskill if you want free stickers stop here also if you're ready hit

[01:01:13] the trolls make sure you take the scenic route our guides are helping here to help you with

[01:01:17] your goals big or small like marcia or slider low in their stores check out scenic route guiding

[01:01:23] and gear rentals on instagram and facebook for more information also if you mentioned the podcast

[01:01:28] you can get 10 off use the codeword mountain line also check out another summit a nonprofit program

[01:01:36] that leads outdoor adventure activities for veterans and first responders for free

[01:01:40] another summits a epic adventure applications are open and this year's epic adventures includes

[01:01:46] nine-day canoe trip in the north wind woods and a through hike of the north full plasma trail in

[01:01:52] the adirondack epic adventures are a step up program where you receive classroom introduction

[01:01:58] wilderness first day training and a custom three-day training all leading up to adventure

[01:02:03] that you'll never forget this course is also 100 percent for free for veterans as first

[01:02:09] responders applications are open for may 1st for the Allagos River canoe strip of the main

[01:02:15] and may 15th for the north soil plastic barrel apply for day on another summit.org

[01:02:22] you look all spiffy what what's uh i'm trying to stay warm really like it's like through a sweat or

[01:02:30] run i don't have it's you know i don't have the luxury of burning all that excess fuel that

[01:02:37] you do so i'm got a sweater on here outrageous all my fuel is in my car you know i'm i'm burning up

[01:02:46] talking about this great borscht belt time so i'm just excited you know we to be honest i haven't

[01:02:55] i talked about this with steve erin back in the ellenville area uh when he did the uh

[01:03:01] uh episode four so jesus that was 113 episodes ago and he was talking about the uh

[01:03:10] how uh tag correct me what's the the name of the the place he worked at nevelie falls you

[01:03:17] grave nevelie the nevelie which is 11 spelt backwards exactly and i told my wife that and

[01:03:24] she was like wow so uh let's get on to finally the guest of the night

[01:03:32] boom an hour and eight minutes into this and we are getting into finally the the guests of the

[01:03:38] night uh dr peter chester he's a doctor i didn't know this beforehand but i as i said at the beginning

[01:03:46] it's it's a phd which according to my father you know this was actually i got finally i was

[01:03:53] was all but dissertation for a long time and i figured in 2009 i had long since retired and i said

[01:03:59] you know and i had set up my own selling business uh so yeah you know what i mean we'll do it because

[01:04:06] i'm paying new york university this maintenance of meticulation and matriculation fee so in in

[01:04:11] may of 2009 i said to my father pop you know i got my doctorate and you know in his in his mix

[01:04:18] of german and giddish and english bus my dots what does that mean i said no see you know what is that

[01:04:24] about philosophy so you're a philosopher said no no that's just the name of it and he was pulling

[01:04:29] my leg a little bit because uh you know the only doctor that he recognized is it's a medical

[01:04:35] doctor which is interesting because my brother-in-law is a uh a periodontal surgeon but it doesn't

[01:04:40] matter it's not the right kind of surgeon you know because his feet don't the feet don't count

[01:04:45] it's uh and the the license plate was the uh the mb plate was the uh and that was in part because my

[01:04:53] i had two uncles who were doctors my mother's brother and my grandmother's brother and uh

[01:04:59] you know they would just park the car wherever they wanted to park the car well you know the

[01:05:04] rest of the the rest of the world was looking for parking spaces and saying oh well i hope i had

[01:05:09] those days the meters were nickel and dime now this is difficult to work so uh so that that was the

[01:05:16] that that's the story of that so i you you i can i can begin i i can begin in uh

[01:05:24] was born in 1953 and 1950 summer of 1956 we found ourselves in this place in uh on route 42

[01:05:33] not too far from san daken 42 goes 42 is an interesting route yeah two starts at the Delaware

[01:05:41] down by poor jervis and it winds its way all the way up past through 28 and and up from the

[01:05:48] the salomon county borce belt cat skills it touches the well the geographic cat skills because

[01:05:56] we're just on the southern edge of it uh the ellen bill part in the swan gongs that they

[01:06:01] have for the gongs uh so so this little place begin to inwards this little hotel both the elizabeth

[01:06:07] house and it still stands by the way uh only now it's been it's been updated to be you know to

[01:06:14] an air bnb uh and it's interesting because the sidebar is that we went from the jewish farmers

[01:06:21] to the farmhouse that took guests to the bungalows to the ins to the hotels to the resorts to the

[01:06:31] country clubs and then and then that was the end of it so we stayed at this hotel the elizabeth

[01:06:36] house in indian uh owned by uh by german christians uh and it was kind of antithetical that

[01:06:43] and they had been here for a while they they you know you know in that area of the hudson

[01:06:49] valley there was a you had a lot of a lot of dutch a lot of uh german influence irish as you went

[01:06:56] farther up to the irish to the irish cat skills uh so we were there from 1955 until 1959 and uh

[01:07:06] when i do remember i remember a hurricane uh i remember staying up until october because

[01:07:12] the polio shots were were just being offered uh to to the population i remember a big hurricane lamp

[01:07:23] this enormous flashlight that had the battery you know the batteries on those days like this

[01:07:30] and i remember a natural stone swimming pool that my mother speaking of traumatizing

[01:07:35] she had me on a harness and a leash and i just remember being dipped i mean my my my my father

[01:07:42] was a little bit more descriptive as oh your mother was dipping in the pool like this uh so the story

[01:07:48] goes he he ventured down with a friend of his went down route 42 back into sullivan county past

[01:07:56] fiery bill past frost valley uh he kept going and going until he got to the intersection

[01:08:02] of route 42 and route 52 in woodburn and if you if you look at the the cat skills on a map the

[01:08:09] force fell cat skills with most of the hotels and we agreed upon number almost agreed upon

[01:08:16] and that's number that was researched by a friend of mine who's a sullivan county

[01:08:22] story and john conway uh it's 538 it's probably off but uh because there were hotels in but a

[01:08:28] little county stuffed every which where it depended how you define them so if you made the right you

[01:08:33] would go towards and there was a sign you know monticello 13 ellen bill 13 and uh for some reason he

[01:08:41] made a left he went down route 52 past tamarack lodge which is a beautiful hotel that had a golf

[01:08:49] course that he first saw and my father tells the story i'm not interested because i don't play golf

[01:08:55] so he got down to downtown greefield park which consisted of cast corner which is an interesting

[01:09:01] place i'll talk about that in a minute and uh saw a lot of signs grand mountain skyway

[01:09:07] pioneering made a right turn went up mountain dale road and there was grand mountain on the right

[01:09:11] side that looked pretty good there was no golf course so right away he said oh it's a golf course

[01:09:17] and and the sidebar is uh you know my father my father's an american success story he came

[01:09:23] here as uh as a as a camp survivor said hushwoods from age 15 until age 19 and he became successful

[01:09:32] here but you know knowing the value of the buck you also held on to pretty tightly so i used to say

[01:09:38] oh come on pop you took a look at this place well tamarack that had the golf course and you

[01:09:42] right away figured that they're gonna rake you over to coals here so you wanted to

[01:09:46] look for a little schlockhouse so you turned into grand mountain he went to grand now

[01:09:51] and it was very very typical of the the hotels at that time uh you had the stucco buildings that

[01:09:56] that had the uh looked like like like like an english tutor kind of style uh they would call it

[01:10:05] part of that they call cat skill mission style architecture uh and the design was pretty

[01:10:12] prevalent throughout all of the hotels it goes in goes into the lobby the owner the father

[01:10:18] would say were the friend of his uh who was also at the elizabeth house for a short period of time

[01:10:24] and the owner says you know what and she's my father telling me this story because we were

[01:10:28] we were actually still at the indian he had taken this without us um and uh my father says well

[01:10:35] he said look it's lunchtime why don't you come in and have lunch as my guests and then we can

[01:10:39] talk about you know staying here and that sold him on the place because i guess he did drink

[01:10:44] force my father could consume gallons of it he loved it it's very refreshing and uh so we found

[01:10:51] ourselves at grand mountain hotel and day camp because the day camp was a very very big attraction

[01:10:56] because you uh there's seven day a week day camps you get rid of your kid at eight o'clock in the

[01:11:01] morning you come home at 11 30 and wash his face kids would have their own dining room and you

[01:11:07] wouldn't see him again until four o'clock in the afternoon and then at six o'clock they go

[01:11:12] and eat and you wouldn't see them again until so so this was a this was a great deal uh so so the

[01:11:19] smaller hotel is that that well 250 houses and that was roughly how many people they held although

[01:11:26] most of them held it before we found ourselves at grand mountain from 19 a system which was 1959

[01:11:34] until uh it was sold in 1973 and and although my my parents didn't continue their borscht bell saga

[01:11:43] i was still working up here and in fact i was i was one of the last of my generation to work

[01:11:51] up here in various capacities uh kind of at that time i was pretty much in my not chosen

[01:11:58] for real education i just found myself in it and it kind of some of the the higher ups kind of

[01:12:05] indicated that it was time for me to hang up the hang up the that day it was a major b to hang

[01:12:12] up the trade uh and i said gee you know it's interesting you're not talking to to some

[01:12:18] of my colleagues who are principal by day and by summer oh it's uncle milky it's uncle uncle

[01:12:25] Lenny that's okay but for me to you know it's for me to make make a good buck it's not so

[01:12:31] any as we found ourselves at grand mountain uh i i i was pretty pretty uh mature for my age so i

[01:12:39] i had the case destroyed before i you know before i settled in you know and i i wrote a little

[01:12:45] narrative for a book that's coming out with a friend of mine uh that talks about the memories

[01:12:50] and then i said you know i looked at the place and i went into the main house and i saw the

[01:12:54] office and i said you know i didn't know the word at times that this is the this is the control center

[01:12:59] this is the nexus of the place uh so i i i settled into into that that eight week summer that actually

[01:13:08] became a little bit longer in the smaller hotels it was not unusual for the guests a little earlier

[01:13:16] so i settled into it my father settled into it mother settled into it uh he was one he

[01:13:22] was for the longest time the only holocaust that was there most of the young jewish families were

[01:13:27] there with their fathers were where some of them were world war two veterans uh many of them were

[01:13:33] Korean war veterans this was the late shift late 50s or early 60s so the sidebar to this

[01:13:40] is that that was the time post world war two where the hotels up here started uh mammoth

[01:13:48] uh recasting of their entire image to make it more appealing to younger people so you know these were

[01:13:56] resort hotels and country clubs uh tamarack lodge the smart went from tamarack lodge just as the name

[01:14:04] the lodge being well you know it's this this like adirondack style lodge tamarack lodge

[01:14:10] to tamarack lodge the smart country club so you know you went from row singers hotel

[01:14:19] to row singers hotel and country club and then just row singers with with with on the bottom of

[01:14:25] the billboard row singers as everywhere so you went from heavily hotel to the neveling country club

[01:14:34] and in making that transformation what they did was they the original architecture and if you look at

[01:14:41] some of the vintage pictures they all basically looked the same you had the main house that had

[01:14:46] this long expansive porch uh that that was covered but had these arch openings uh and and would sit

[01:14:54] there because that's where you would get the air 24 seven if you like it was raining outside

[01:15:00] sit there you get the air so post world war two they they decided to close in these porches and build

[01:15:07] new air conditioned lobbies but they built lobbies they put carpeting in they they paneled the lobbies

[01:15:14] they they took the the one incandescent light out and they put in the rest of lights were high hats

[01:15:21] they started dropping the ceilings with the tiles which in those days were were were tile on

[01:15:28] the outside but a spes this on the inside and and it took an altogether different look it was a more

[01:15:34] moderate appeal and look they started to build new deluxe rooms that had private tiled vats

[01:15:42] the hotels again and this was true for all of them until the early 60s where they most of them

[01:15:50] got rid of the the convenient bath and shower so the convenient bath and shower meant you had

[01:15:55] a room you had a sink in the room you had a medicine cabinet in the room and if you had to go

[01:16:00] to the bathroom you could walk down the hall if you took a shower you walked out the fall

[01:16:07] then the second room arrangement was the semi private bath and then when you're really up there

[01:16:13] you had the private bath and then when you were really at the top you had the private bath

[01:16:18] in the newer building with the tile bathroom uh air conditioning came later yeah air conditioner

[01:16:25] smaller places uh for the smaller places came came later so so peter how would you

[01:16:31] characterize the the vibe of the time when you were there at the borscheville it was it was paradise

[01:16:38] i mean it was nice it was Disneyland for the kids it was Disneyland for the adults wow uh

[01:16:45] the most part you know these were and i was i was the brat because i lived in the patent which you

[01:16:50] know i lived on the upper west side of the patent a big 12 building over the riverside drive

[01:16:56] and a lot of my the overwhelming majority of the guests and the grand mountain it helps true for

[01:17:03] the bungalow colonies you know they catered to the apartment dwellers you know a lot of

[01:17:07] these people had you know the apartments in flak bush brooklyn which now are you know who you got

[01:17:14] you have the original saint that's great you know when my parents sold their co-op on the upper

[01:17:19] west side they had the original bathtub oh wow what are you talking about look at this old

[01:17:24] piece of junk over here it's cracked uh so so these were people who were living in apartments

[01:17:29] and and they didn't have an air conditioner either so so this was this was their their their

[01:17:34] opportunity to get out of the city for eight weeks uh the parents also uh it was Disneyland

[01:17:42] for the adults and it was an overarching philosophy that that carried carried the owners throughout

[01:17:50] the the two big ages and again and this is a description of historian john conway the silver

[01:17:55] age which which ended around 1925 or so and and the golden age that went from that time over

[01:18:02] to the end uh every man was a king every woman was a queen and all the kids were princes and princesses

[01:18:09] you know you you you know i i remember i remember very very clearly you know all the all the

[01:18:15] men would come up with their bar mitzvah watches and their suits and the women would borrow the

[01:18:20] jewelry from mommy and they wore mink stoles and you know when the temperature dropped below

[01:18:26] 70 they put on a mink stole and even if it didn't this you know that they would put on the big

[01:18:31] stoles and even in the smaller places saturday nights would dress up and you go into the dining room

[01:18:38] you could eat everything and anything and any quantity that that you wanted non-stop and

[01:18:45] and then you would go out and you you you you could play cards play mahjong sit by the pool

[01:18:50] play tennis play uh paddle ball volleyball go into the coffee shop and stuff yourself full

[01:18:57] of chocolate malts and and egg creams and ice creams and then at night you would have entertainment

[01:19:04] of a sort at least in the night uh saturday nights at 2 45 in the morning some poor misbegotten

[01:19:13] woman who was rather well endowed top and bottom you get up on the stage and do a 15 minute show

[01:19:19] culminating in her taking everything off what would you say peter what was that whoa whoa

[01:19:24] what am i hearing here yeah that that and i'll tell you about that so we lean in peter yeah tell us

[01:19:30] about what's going on in the after hours here yeah the after hours were interesting uh grand

[01:19:36] mountain was notorious for uh having to having a stripper at quarter to three water a water

[01:19:45] he's stripper as in take your father didn't play golf but no he didn't play golf but he had a

[01:19:52] front row seat bird's eye view of these poor misbegotten souls and uh you know and i must tell you that

[01:20:03] at the tender age of 11 ish or so in the form of started to percolate uh right yeah we out that

[01:20:11] if we were to scratch some of the paint off the dressing room window we could uh we could

[01:20:18] sneak a peek and see what all the hope was so what i'm what i'm hearing peter is that left turn

[01:20:26] was the right turn it was absolutely there was no question about so so and maybe this is a poor

[01:20:33] segue um into this topic which i think is somewhat of a sensitive topic and i don't want to be

[01:20:38] indelicate about it but you describe the the atmosphere the vibe at these borsch belt

[01:20:44] resorts which later portrayed themselves or named themselves as country clubs but

[01:20:51] in that hedonistic uh fun environment can you compare that to the the holocaust your father

[01:20:59] was a holocaust survivor many of the people maybe not at the place where your family was staying

[01:21:06] but at others were holocaust survivors and what if any role did the holocaust have

[01:21:14] and uh people immigrating to this country that were survivors of the holocaust have

[01:21:20] in terms of just propelling the res the borsch belt resorts from the silver age into the golden

[01:21:30] age if you will yeah the original the original farmers were where the jewish farmers uh who came

[01:21:36] here from eastern europe and surprisingly they were not all farmers uh they came here looking for the

[01:21:41] proverbial better life uh they went to the lower east side and i tell you the story of malta and

[01:21:47] selling grossinger uh he was an ill man uh came up found their way up to ferndale which was later

[01:21:54] named grossing in new york uh and the rest is history uh the borsch belt area that at one point

[01:22:01] was a very very anti-semitic and uh my friend alan frishman who lived in mountain down the

[01:22:08] political actor had some of the signs that said no hebra was no consumptives uh if you google it

[01:22:14] you can see some of the advertisements that cater into a Gentile clientele so that that started

[01:22:20] to change uh in 1899 when flagrower became the person a hotel of its time to to accept jews and then

[01:22:29] by the time you got to 1910 or so the silver age that was well underway and and we started to have

[01:22:40] these jewish farms that had now become jewish jewish hotels and the advertisements that you

[01:22:46] would see in some of the jewish newspapers were in yiddish and you know they have dietary laws observed

[01:22:53] and everything so uh by that time the the overwhelming majority uh not all of them but the

[01:23:00] overwhelming majority were owned by jews who were the digital jewish farmers and around the

[01:23:07] 19 teens or so the second generation of those farmers were the first generation american born

[01:23:13] and again in those days you did what you thought of it with some exception in the case of grand mountain

[01:23:19] uh which was a steinhorn family uh one of the brothers paul he said he left the farm

[01:23:24] he went to medical school pretty much never to return but that was the exception rather than

[01:23:29] the rule so it was a safe place for jews at a time when parts of america and it was not just

[01:23:39] small towns even even the large cities you still had some restriction you had the story of

[01:23:46] of uh and there was a fact check on it uh harther godfrey and some other people in florida who

[01:23:53] had hotels that that were notoriously restricted but but overall that aside the borcebell catskills

[01:24:01] was a it was a haven for jews where jews could be jews uh you could wear the star of day that

[01:24:07] could display your jewishness even though there were no holocaust survivors at grand mountain until

[01:24:13] later uh there were uh you know there were there were they knew about it they were proud to be

[01:24:20] jews and they could really really be jews and mingle and mingle with with other jews up here

[01:24:27] again for my father it my father spoke very readily about about his experiences he

[01:24:34] went back to europe my grandparents uh remained in Brussels they actually came here and then they went

[01:24:39] back the brussels uh after after the war uh and uh you know the last car my father for what was a

[01:24:48] big Mercedes that i still have and somebody said to him uh why'd you do that so well let me tell

[01:24:54] you why when when i was arrested and god i was being led to the camp i fell and and when i fell one

[01:25:05] of the guards hit me on the head with that bottle and i just remember looking at the hub cap on the

[01:25:10] staff car and seeing the start he said here i am many years later i walked into the dealership

[01:25:16] and i said give me that car and before the guy said well how you gonna finance it he said

[01:25:22] just give me the wire transfer information on the quiet this is so i won so and and it's interesting

[01:25:30] because that that was uh you know he didn't have this philosophy of hatred i can't stand him

[01:25:34] he had this philosophy that he won that you know he was one of the lucky ones he also said that

[01:25:39] you know unpass over when we opened the door for shia he said i don't have to do that

[01:25:44] he came from the area i can be here so it was a very safe place it was a very very safe

[01:25:50] place and and and the underlying force was that he and and and american jews also who had been

[01:25:57] subject to anti-semitism many times in the workplace uh many times in housing and even in the big

[01:26:04] cities they came up here and they were safe they didn't have to hide their jewishness they didn't

[01:26:09] have to hide there they didn't they didn't have to hide their love for jewish ethnic

[01:26:14] benzene and and along with all of that it got them out of this city and it made them feel

[01:26:22] important and i i wrote part of my master's dissertation that unfortunately uh it's no

[01:26:29] longer around because the only remaining copies were destroyed at fire uh and and i i thought

[01:26:36] they were i thought that it would be archived but of course you know i talked about microfilm

[01:26:40] and they looked at me like i was off my wheel um so so it was a jewish boys married the brooklyn boys

[01:26:46] married the best girls and then what and it talked about this whole these whole dynamics of of

[01:26:52] of coming up here and and regardless of what you did and i said well whether you were maxed the

[01:26:58] porter at koni island hospital or jack the taxi cab driver it didn't matter you came up and you

[01:27:05] were a king you would go into the dining room and and that was a popularity in small places

[01:27:10] and you would say to the waiter a who was a boss a promised me an end cut of roast me

[01:27:15] so all of a sudden you know this average joe was a king you would go in and locks was a very big

[01:27:24] delicacy it was very expensive delicacy if you wanted to have one portion of 10 portions

[01:27:30] you could have whatever you want you know you would and you would be you would sit down

[01:27:35] at a at a table that had a tablecloth that had table linens that had two forks a knife a soup spoon

[01:27:43] two teaspoons and you would be served your dinner the breakfast for lunch your dinner you would be

[01:27:50] served by a waiter of course we were all nice jewish boys going to going to college with

[01:27:55] doctors but you were being served and and and you know you could play cards you could

[01:28:02] do whatever turned you on you could you could see shows that you know back in the day

[01:28:08] I mean at the smaller houses you know Rodney Dangerfield was was a grand mountain

[01:28:14] Alan Paul from Manhattan transfer was the master of ceremonies and the list goes on and on and on

[01:28:21] and if you had the opportunity and also if your climbing skills and the second story skills were

[01:28:28] good you could climb the fence and get them to see you know big acts at the big hotels so so it was

[01:28:34] it was fantasy land that a lot of the people worked double and double and triple overtime and

[01:28:41] put their monies away all year long so that they could they could afford this so you understand

[01:28:48] that in in in 1973 which was the last year of grand mountains operation under under that

[01:28:57] farm in stylo and family ownership if you stayed in the best room in a place it cost you $1650

[01:29:04] for the summer oh that was that wasn't the wife two children who husband on weekends and a two

[01:29:11] week vacation for eight weeks that actually translated into closer to nine weeks and the

[01:29:17] only thing you have to pay were the tips you pay the tips in the dining room if you're a little

[01:29:21] adept at the card table you know you could improve some of that and and and the the Brooklyn boys

[01:29:28] and I don't mean that in any disrespectful manner it was just to highlight what what

[01:29:35] what these newly married couples and even the older married couples what they had to do

[01:29:42] to make that $1650 to have that summer when they were making you know seven eight nine

[01:29:50] thousand dollars a year yeah wow ever they had to do to make that so that they could come up

[01:29:58] and and the kids were in day camp I mean we did things in day camp we went on we went on trips

[01:30:04] we went on hikes we were swimming we played ball we went to the movies we we made those camp

[01:30:10] year-land year things so so Peter how would this uh I mean I don't know if you've ever

[01:30:17] gone to any other destinations besides the Catskills how would this compare to the the other

[01:30:22] like vacation destinations uh I I've been to to you name it and I've been there my wife

[01:30:30] and I had very avid uh cruisers we enjoyed cruising to me and and here it is way after the heyday

[01:30:38] there there are almost zero resorts left although Grand Mountain was still running under the Russian

[01:30:43] Russian Christian ownership uh the buildings most of the buildings are still there uh

[01:30:48] I do go back there I take my ceremonial swim in the same swimming pool that I took the

[01:30:53] deep water test swimming across nice I actually cheated on that because a word t-shirt

[01:30:58] will have a little vacation device uh you know on my belly so I I mean I could I could have swam it

[01:31:05] but I I I think if this was very creative so I was a little bit of a little bit of an upstart

[01:31:10] when I was a kid uh for me it it was is and forever will be uh paradise I I you know I

[01:31:19] you see updated versions you go on a cruise ship it's all you can eat gee I've been there

[01:31:22] done that you go you go you go to a a fancy resort you go to you go to a ski resort or

[01:31:29] you go here we have we have a billion dollar casino and half a billion dollar water park

[01:31:36] and I go into the half a billion dollar water park I said well it's basically an indoor pool and

[01:31:41] you know I I Grand Mountain didn't have one but I would make my way to the other resorts

[01:31:48] and just a sidebar is that my friend Marissa Scheinfeld who was involved with a project called

[01:31:55] historical market project wrote a wonderful book filled with photographs of the hotels

[01:32:01] you know and it was sad in a sense but there's one picture that's very popular of the spring pool

[01:32:06] of grow centers the indoor pool that in 1963 or so when it was built the grocery and family said

[01:32:12] it cost us a million dollars in the paid cash rate uh you know yeah you look at it I mean

[01:32:17] now it's all demolished you look at it was overthrown and destroyed and I closed my eyes and I say to

[01:32:22] myself holy cow I'm an eight-year-old kid a 10-year-old kid and I went into this thing and I thought I

[01:32:26] was swimming across the Atlantic Ocean I was going to wind up on on you know the shores of England

[01:32:33] oh so the the anything that I've experienced today I look back and I said well you know

[01:32:40] perhaps it wasn't as big and grand uh you know you didn't have rooms with steam showers you

[01:32:46] didn't have different kinds of amenities but but the concept was was the same uh you you let loose when

[01:32:56] you go on vacations and that's what people did and you know to go back to the Jewish thing uh

[01:33:02] particularly important for Jews and particularly important for for not not only for the Holocaust

[01:33:09] survivors but for those people who who didn't have the riches that that were promised to them

[01:33:15] if you if you come to America for whatever the reason may be personally or politically

[01:33:22] so Peter just going back to some of the economic components while you were talking I looked up in

[01:33:27] 1972 the basic trim model of the VW Beetle also known as the bug sold for Stosh you want to

[01:33:40] take a stab at it how much did the 1972 Volkswagen bug sticker for?

[01:33:47] Oh god probably around uh 6,000 oh you're so off you're so off it's uh it was $2,420

[01:33:57] and Peter tells us that the summer for a typical family at the Grand Hill was $1,650

[01:34:07] so so you were about 800 bucks away from buying a brand new Volkswagen bug

[01:34:14] which you couldn't park anywhere in New York City at the time probably because of parking

[01:34:19] constraints where the whole family could go up and spend eight weeks more or less

[01:34:25] and which which brings me to my next question Peter would your father stay the whole eight

[01:34:30] weeks at the Grand Hill? And now no I'll tell you what my father it was interesting I mean my

[01:34:37] father was a was a diamond cutter by trade he had his own business he got into it after after he was

[01:34:45] after he was freed from Auschwitz he came back to Brussels his brother his older brother who

[01:34:50] survived was was eight years older seven years older and he had already graduated from the

[01:34:55] college in Cologne uh so my father was was all of what 19 or 20 years old he didn't have any skills

[01:35:02] so we had an aunt who lived in in New York with the Bronx that said you know German

[01:35:08] she took line and I found that and the amount and policy I can 400 dollars a month and

[01:35:15] send the little one to at work to learn diamond polishing which is diamond cutting

[01:35:20] they'll come to America and make 400 dollars a week which was in 1947 uh man so he found himself

[01:35:26] a diamond as a diamond cutter he became very very good at it uh and he came to America and

[01:35:33] he didn't make the 400 the first week he made it the second week so so so he made that money

[01:35:40] I mean the sidebar is yeah he made it except in fact that it wasn't a 40 hour work week

[01:35:45] so what my father did we would go up at the end of June and uh this was before I worked there

[01:35:50] and that's an interesting interesting marketing concept but that's some of the smaller hotels

[01:35:55] did with regard to who got the jobs and the value of those uh so we'd come up around the end of June

[01:36:02] my father would stay up for a couple of days and he then go back he'd go back Sunday night as

[01:36:07] most of the as most of the fathers did they go back Sunday night and depending upon what they

[01:36:13] would do with their vacations a lot of them instead of taking a week or two would come up Thursday night

[01:36:19] and have three-day weekends throughout the summer so my father would come up Thursday nights and

[01:36:26] and go back and go back Sunday and then come back the following Thursday what happened in the

[01:36:32] interim uh is is another you know adult only story and I'll talk about that in a moment and

[01:36:37] I promise I'll keep it like a family show but also spell some of the myths about it

[01:36:44] so that was and they would come up and and again I go back to my dissertation where I said

[01:36:50] and Jack would take the taxi and he park it in the corner and he put on his quote unquote Sunday

[01:36:57] best and he was a king so the fathers would do that most of the mothers were stay at home moms

[01:37:05] uh you know they had they had the again it was very stereotypical uh you'd have if you if you had

[01:37:14] two kids and one was a boy and one was a girl you would done if you didn't maybe you'd have

[01:37:19] a third or maybe you just ended because it was expensive uh and it was not only expense

[01:37:23] it was the apartment back in in Brooklyn was not large enough to have those large families

[01:37:29] so this was just before uh you had uh the adults who were the family who developed

[01:37:37] canarsie and and itself you know you too can afford a house the nondescript two-family brick houses

[01:37:43] where the tenant in the walk-in would pay basically for your mortgage so you live

[01:37:49] tax you live mortgage free but that was before this was in the earlier parts of the 1960s

[01:37:53] uh so uh that's typically what happened and and these were one-car families so uh and and

[01:38:01] there was no real reason for you to leave the hotel we could walk down the cast corner which

[01:38:07] which had the you know which had the sundry store if you were in fallsburg or liberty

[01:38:13] by the cello you could get to these villages so it's not like you were trapped on the premises

[01:38:19] but most of the most of the the kids were in camp all day except me because I was a camp runaway

[01:38:25] part of it had to do with the fact that I really sucked at baseball and I had no I didn't become

[01:38:30] good at it until it was too old to make a difference uh so you know when they played

[01:38:35] baseball I was you know someplace else uh dancing to my own tune so I was kind of an

[01:38:41] early juvenile eloquent uh but there was no reason for them to leave the premises as such and

[01:38:46] the hotel owners really didn't want you to leave the premises because you know while there were a lot

[01:38:50] of guests there was also a lot of competition so you didn't want you didn't want them to wander

[01:38:55] too far or talk to too many people who would say well gee you know I see what you're getting here

[01:39:00] why don't you come see me at the why don't you come see me at time rack or why don't you come

[01:39:03] see me at beer kill or some of the other hotels and you go so oh wow they got nicer

[01:39:08] that Jewish competition that's exactly what it was uh and and the probably the focal point

[01:39:15] competition was what was on the menu uh you know gee look at this place

[01:39:20] for what I'm paying here I could pay there and instead of having you know 20 choices for lunch

[01:39:25] I could have 26 choices for lunch oh wow you know so you know you had that kind of competition

[01:39:31] so that's basically that's basically what happened so you know the mommies were women of

[01:39:36] leisure they would sleep late you didn't have to do anything other than you know 7 30 say

[01:39:41] you know okay uh kids get up time to go to camp and go back to sleep or or you could you could

[01:39:48] run in have breakfast go out uh and and and as my mother used to say I'm going to work on my

[01:39:54] tan well did they they know that it's working the way into having a complexion like like a

[01:40:00] leather glove uh although they offset it by by smearing this this orange stuff for

[01:40:07] banded sole that that was like you know like actual grace that they would put on

[01:40:13] give you this golden bronze look because the one of the signs of success was you would have this

[01:40:20] you would have perfectly clothed hair something that I no longer have my father had it but he

[01:40:26] took it off at night and put it on the styrofoam thing uh so so you would have this healthy

[01:40:32] look and it didn't matter whether you know you want to use them so I take it this is before the

[01:40:38] popularity of a baseball camp as a casual you know accessory you didn't have that you would have

[01:40:47] the men would be broiling in the sun playing cards but you'd kill two birds with one stone

[01:40:53] you could you could or actually three if you count the winnings in cards hopefully win and

[01:40:59] get a suntan at at the same time so so so you know they would do that that was way before anybody

[01:41:06] knew about sun protection factors and Peter I'm going to ask you this because I know Stosh is really

[01:41:13] chomping at the bit to get to dirty dancing so I'm going to segue us there to asking you

[01:41:22] did you ever work I mean you told us before that you had some jobs um at the hotel and at

[01:41:30] another resort but why don't you tell us about that what what it was like working

[01:41:35] at one of these hotels or resorts in the 60s and early 70s it was interesting because a

[01:41:43] clever marketing concept that I alluded to that before the smaller hotels was when the kids

[01:41:48] became old enough in order to keep the parents there you'd hire a kid so but if you if you wanted

[01:41:54] to still have fun and not make too much money you would be a counselor uh if you wanted to

[01:42:00] have a little less fun and make a whole lot more money you go into the dining room so I of course

[01:42:04] wanted to be a counselor and my father of course had other ideas so I found myself in the dining

[01:42:10] room I was a yeah and Grand Mountain you would graduate you would start off as a newspaper

[01:42:15] soda boy and then you would graduate to being a busboy in the children's dining room

[01:42:21] a waiter in the children's dining room a busboy in the main dining room and a waiter and a waiter

[01:42:27] in the dining room so I actually I actually I was not not that I was big for my age but I was

[01:42:33] mature for my age so uh by the time I was 11 years old I was in my blacks and whites

[01:42:39] which was the standard uniform and the uh and the clip on bow tie and uh and the uncomfortable

[01:42:46] waiter shoes and I found myself as a busboy in the children's dining rooms now I went from sleeping

[01:42:52] in my parents best room in a joint who was sleeping in the chicken coop so that the staff

[01:42:57] houses were interesting yeah they were actual chicken coops and wow you could the chicken

[01:43:05] the smell from the chickens was always there and if you if you looked hard enough and in the

[01:43:09] right place you would actually see the feathers of the chickens in these chicken coops so we were

[01:43:14] we slept in the chicken coops we slept with and when my father was not there my mother had had

[01:43:20] some pity for her little prince and she would let me stay in stay in so so peter I I think

[01:43:26] you're skirting around where we want to go with this so I'm going to draw I'm going to draw

[01:43:31] you into the fire here um you worked in the kids dining room mausoleum you you get your black and

[01:43:40] whites you're in your preteen years you're advancing up the ranks and then you you're in

[01:43:46] your now your teen years and I think you said earlier in the show something about hormones

[01:43:51] if I remember correctly so let's let's talk about those years if you will peter and

[01:43:59] if you can relate to us just how much of a paradise was the grand the grand mountain

[01:44:09] grand mountain hotel and similar hotels let me talk about grand mountain uh at

[01:44:15] at around the tender age of I was born in january was a 12 and a half or so it was prior to my

[01:44:21] bar mitzvah some of the older boys decided that uh I they should open me up to some interesting

[01:44:28] experiences so I made the acquaintance of peter before you go into this you need to close

[01:44:33] the door is your wife in the background oh as a matter of fact it's the only one who's here is my

[01:44:38] okay so let's roll let's roll the film peter yeah she actually she actually knows she actually

[01:44:45] knows the story as does my daughter and uh my my grandson knows knows it because we had that

[01:44:53] you know my my daughter's a single parent so my grandson and I had this conversation at the talk

[01:44:59] yeah we had to talk so I don't around that that time I made the acquaintance of two of the

[01:45:06] uh of the uh friendlier members of the day camp staff uh and from from that from that point on

[01:45:17] ward I would probably well I won't I'll be as delicate as I can this this show's rated explicit

[01:45:24] you can just dive right into this peter all adults here yeah I had initially I until I perfected

[01:45:31] the technique with the uh council of some of the older older guys I had difficulty making a past

[01:45:39] second base so by the time I was uh by the time august rolled around uh you know I was I was smacking

[01:45:48] out home runs so so that added another dimension but the downside of it was you know all the

[01:45:56] carnal adventures ended ended with russia shunna because you roughly ended abruptly and you know I

[01:46:02] would go on winter hiatus uh part of it was I went to an old boys high school which uh

[01:46:08] you know which was difficult and the social interactions we had and and I'm going to get

[01:46:14] really smacked because I'm very politically incorrect uh I wasn't sure whether it was with an

[01:46:19] old girls high school or whether you know we we went into the aspca the one at a kennel

[01:46:24] was by mistake because girls were there there was nothing appealing about them and of course I I you

[01:46:30] know just not about to to do that uh we just lost all of our female listeners I think so we went

[01:46:36] on we went down hiatus uh we went on hiatus and it was interesting because there were a lot of summer

[01:46:42] romances that and I tell you that grandmountain there were half a dozen of them that uh and out

[01:46:48] of the half of a dozen the five of them are still married so you had some of that so so is it true as

[01:46:55] portrayed in dirty dancing that yeah to a degree it was but that's not that's on a different level

[01:47:03] so so what I'm talking about and it was in my age group uh was with with the interactions

[01:47:11] between between age groups that were the same so you know the idea was to get yourself set up with

[01:47:18] you know with with one of the girls early in the summer so this would last the entire summer

[01:47:24] and and I will tell you very honestly you know people just oh well you know it was round

[01:47:28] it was orgy every night no it really wasn't we were tired we were tired so it was and and and

[01:47:37] this it was not just it was not just us macho guys doing the girls want to you know the girls

[01:47:42] wanted to have that they the girl the female hormones were every bit as active yeah but you

[01:47:47] guys worked all day like that's the thing we were we were tired I mean I would tell you that most of

[01:47:52] it there were times when I said you know screw this I go back to my parents room I'm gonna

[01:47:58] go to night sleep because I'm tired uh sure you did Peter but a lot of it was you just

[01:48:03] you know you wanted a warm body next to you you know uh and some was some of the

[01:48:09] reason you're not gonna say it's not uh so Peter is this all in the forthcoming book

[01:48:14] is this what the the forthcoming about that you get it gets past the sensors you know it

[01:48:20] will be uh but the dirty dancing part is something different why don't you

[01:48:25] why don't you get the record straight on that okay so here's the record that's right

[01:48:29] uh initially the the hotels hired hunky looking college boys were like 20 years or so

[01:48:41] and part of it was to keep the young mommies occupied all right we've heard enough now okay

[01:48:48] this is this is going beyond explosive no I gotta hear this I gotta hear this

[01:48:54] the young mommies and and to to a degree dirty dancing I it was the truth of it was

[01:49:00] that that yeah you had you had a hunky looking staff to keep the female guests

[01:49:08] occupied and and and you can you can take that word occupied and presented any number of ways

[01:49:14] and you're not ruling out any particular way that anyone's mind wanders when presenting this

[01:49:20] I'm not at all and I can again and I go back to to the uh to the paper that I wrote

[01:49:27] uh and I'll give you I'll give you for example the one that was conveniently destroyed

[01:49:34] but I remembered pretty big pretty clearly basically you know what happened was when I

[01:49:40] titled it the Brooklyn boys married the best girls the rest of it was and they got married

[01:49:44] and and and instead of making out in the in the backseat of the front seat of the cars

[01:49:49] it was my father said you see now why single men should never buy cars with bucket seats you know

[01:49:54] which was my my my macho misogynistic father and I to which I said to myself so let me get

[01:50:00] this straight you and my mother in the backseat of your buick and oh that's huge though it was

[01:50:07] the only time I saw fire in his eyes and I said I shouldn't kill me even though I'm the only

[01:50:12] son I'm not willing to the road so you know other than that uh and there were a couple of

[01:50:17] man a couple of wedding night pregnancies because you knew this was a guy you're gonna be with

[01:50:22] so the mommies came up the mommies they had their kids they had them by c-section

[01:50:27] and c-sections in those days were butchered job well it doesn't matter because the only

[01:50:31] person going to look if you're new now is your husband and once you settle into into the

[01:50:36] married life you know you're going to be tired from those responsibilities so the concept of all of

[01:50:43] this is that you know the husbands the husband's got a little pointy they weren't these these hunky

[01:50:48] hunky guys that they were in square the women got a little pointy because the female health care

[01:50:57] only said listen what we have to do is get the baby out forget about what happened so you

[01:51:00] can't wear the bikini anymore you'll wear a two-piece bathing suit and you know

[01:51:04] you'll wear a bra and the basic bathing suit that will support you so it was very misogynistic

[01:51:09] but it was true so now here are the mommies who are alone daddies are in the city and you got

[01:51:15] these hunky guys and there's a little flirting going on back and forth so the psychology of it was

[01:51:20] in one sense the women wanted to just they needed a read it's not that they were they were

[01:51:26] they were horny and they wanted to bang these guys and have other experiences they really

[01:51:30] didn't some did and sometimes it culminated in that but in a more saner sense you know they

[01:51:36] needed somebody somebody to find them attractive still attractive two pregnancies later and you

[01:51:43] know and a little tinge of gray and a couple as I understand that Peter I'm the pieces are

[01:51:49] starting to come together for me you're talking about um young mommies hunky staff is this what

[01:51:57] they meant by the saying grossing hers has everything yeah to a degree that's what that's

[01:52:04] what they that's what they meant that was the everything they're talking about yeah that was

[01:52:08] the it was again it was more prevalent at the smaller hotels where you had the seasonal guests

[01:52:14] because at the larger hotels you didn't have the seasonal guests because a that was not what they

[01:52:19] that that was not what they were designed to be they were not designed to be family hotels

[01:52:25] uh they were designed to you go there we know they're not designed to be family hotels from what

[01:52:30] you just told us it depends how you define the family so so you know the reality is yes it did

[01:52:40] exist did it exist to the point where it was this this unbridled Roman orgy no of course not no

[01:52:46] if you if you asked me personally did I participate in it uh yes on two occasions

[01:52:51] you had fun you had fun though that's that's the whole point of being a teen

[01:52:55] so but this was this was this was with two moments so Peter you're telling us you were one of the

[01:53:00] hunky staff members is that is that what I'm hearing now I was I was I was a nice looking Jewish boy

[01:53:07] hell yeah it's Peter 100 percent and Peter you still are you still are a nice looking Jewish boy

[01:53:13] I'm just throwing that out there not that I'm hitting on you but I'm just want that on the

[01:53:17] record you know men with men with full heads of hair and beards like this I've always been attracted

[01:53:23] you know oh ah this uh as we as we say in the state of lawnsman he's got you know

[01:53:29] it's folliculally so much we're we won't go into the um that was good activities the

[01:53:37] activities of the the hunky staff members I know Stosh wants to to move it along but I just

[01:53:43] want to before we move it along I just want to bring up and maybe you can let our listening

[01:53:49] audience know um because there's a lot of talk about this when you talk about the borsch belt

[01:53:55] comedians entertainment comes up and I I know of this but just for the audience I mean could

[01:54:04] just cement the point that this was really the catalyst of comedy in this country it was it was

[01:54:15] more than just comedy but comedy was it was a principal catalyst for comedy and here's why

[01:54:21] and I say this with a good deal of authority and experience even to this day there is no single

[01:54:28] area where where a rising star comedian would have multiple opportunities to test his or her crap

[01:54:36] we everything from from from the the imperial room at the concord we had the big names

[01:54:42] to little bungalow colonies to showcases where after everybody was done doing their show

[01:54:50] they would get together and it was not just the newbies it was the experienced people

[01:54:55] the newbies would go there to see the experienced people so you had these the this proving ground

[01:55:03] that existed on on multiple levels and it was not just for comedians if it was for

[01:55:10] for variety artists of all kinds entertainment oh yeah from from entertainment entertainment

[01:55:16] of all of all of all qualities you know uh very good there was a comedy team years ago

[01:55:23] alto in man tia buddy man tia was uh was a trained lounge singer he was great he's the mc at grand

[01:55:30] mountain and typically what the master of ceremonies would do to further their career

[01:55:35] they would do the mc introduced the show and then they would go out and they would do a show at a

[01:55:40] different hotel open for a bigger act buddy teamed with a a comedian named bobby alto and they

[01:55:48] were both you know fledglings and they put this act together and the only place they could really

[01:55:56] fine tune their craft with the hotels in the borscht belt you started to have the new york

[01:56:01] comedy club scene but that was just one venue here in the borscht belt you know you had 538

[01:56:08] hotels and and and it was in something bungalow colonies so you'd have to live to be 300 years

[01:56:15] old to cover all these places so you had these proving friends and if you were smart you would

[01:56:22] take advantage of easier access to persons with different levels of experience uh and that went

[01:56:29] for a lot of things uh sports as well but but with regard to the comedy you could test your

[01:56:36] acts without restrictions if you had an act that was a little bit off-color you would you

[01:56:43] would book yourself or have the the agent book you in a late show if you did something that was

[01:56:48] mainstream that was more conservative well they they they book you in in in leibowitz pine view or

[01:56:55] zookers blend wild or or the pioneer which were glott kosher real glott kosher like you this is not

[01:57:02] this is no game this isn't the dietary laws but uh but you know sometimes we mix the dishes

[01:57:10] this was the real deal and you had a more conservative audience so if that was your thing

[01:57:15] that was your avenue of comedy go there uh yes it was mostly jewish comedy the original

[01:57:22] comedians did it in a mixture of yiddish and and and english but later on if if that was not your

[01:57:29] thing you could do it you you know alto and mantel were a couple of italian guys who did the

[01:57:34] wizard of oz and italian which is oh wow go to the bathroom first before you see this because this

[01:57:40] is really funny so so you had this incredible proving ground and and it didn't force you

[01:57:47] anything because you were there and you had opportunities that that was just exponential

[01:57:53] in in in number so peter if you could just to give some of our listeners who might not be

[01:57:59] familiar with already big names who you know cut their teeth in the borscht belt want to just throw

[01:58:06] down some names of acts that people would be familiar with so you could go back to the origins

[01:58:13] you had danie k who was a tumblr at the uh young's gap hotel uh you had jen murray who was at

[01:58:20] halls hotel you had rodney dangerfield became the grand mountain and he bombed he was terrible

[01:58:26] couldn't get a laugh was your dad that tough of an audience

[01:58:31] i'd never like driving to jen murray it was either a tough audience or the jokes were so funny or

[01:58:38] that particular entertainer hadn't quite learned how to play the audience that's another thing

[01:58:43] you were able to learn how to learn how to how to play the audience you learn how to adjust your

[01:58:48] act to to play the audience as opposed to well this is what i do if they laugh fine and if

[01:58:53] they don't laugh that's fine also uh you had alan king uh and you had alan king you had gerry

[01:59:00] seinfeld you had gerry lewis at browns and other places bob holt came up here uh the rat pack although

[01:59:08] although they didn't all appear up here they were all separate because this was it it was you

[01:59:14] know it was a destination so you would have lucille wolth didn't appear up here but when

[01:59:19] she was married to gary morton you know you would see them on every so often coming to the

[01:59:24] gold post that was where the big muckings were at the concord so so it was the place to be seen

[01:59:30] but for the entertainers it was a place where any type of comedic act could fine tune their skills

[01:59:39] and and go on to take those skills and and and use them use them when they hit the big time

[01:59:47] so it was a bad way and similarly for for for musicians as well you had kids who who took some

[01:59:55] some piano lessons and drum lessons and sax lessons and trumpet lessons and all of a sudden they were

[02:00:00] hired by a small hotel and and maybe they did some bar mitzvah this stuff and they would have to cut

[02:00:05] a shelf they would have to have some entertainer come in with with musical charts that went

[02:00:11] from one end of the piano to the other and they they have you know an hour or two to rehearse for this

[02:00:17] and and and all of a sudden they went from these nervous little kids to to seasoned musicians

[02:00:24] who could who could play dance music who could who could improvise who could read a chart

[02:00:31] and and and they would they would rub elbows with people in show bands who were more experienced

[02:00:38] and and it was almost like a master class so yes was it the birthplace of american comedy absolutely

[02:00:44] but it was also part of the birthplace of of a generation of musicians who would who would

[02:00:52] try different genres you had you had lounge bands it was a big during the the early 1950s up until

[02:00:58] the end there was an infatuation other than you know the joking for jews always have an

[02:01:02] infatuation with chinese food but they also had an infatuation with latin music so you had

[02:01:07] latin lounge you had tito puente tito puente would come up here with his daughter with orgy puente

[02:01:13] and they would they would be at at groceries you know so you would have you would have latin music

[02:01:18] there were hotels that had three bands they would have a dance band a show band and a latin lounge

[02:01:24] band no so music comedy the arts uh and and just segue back to that if you go back to

[02:01:33] the beginning of the golden age of the 1920s at the flagler you had uh you had morse heart uh you

[02:01:40] had kitty farlile heart is his wife you had you had broadways producers who were part of the

[02:01:48] entertainment staff and they would put on police stage shows in 1962 at grand mountain

[02:01:55] we put on oklahoma a police state version of oklahoma so the arts were a very very

[02:02:02] very big part of it and not just the talent shows although the talent shows uh you would have you

[02:02:08] would have entertainers bet middler bet middler was the house singer at the giver hotel okay which is

[02:02:16] it was it was a one of the one of the few really black kosher hotels she's a house singer

[02:02:22] she's a house singer she told jokes she did this and all of a sudden she found her way she found

[02:02:28] her niche and and the rest and the rest is history yeah so so what i'm hearing it was it wasn't all

[02:02:34] about getting to second base was it no it was it was real it was really not it was uh it was an

[02:02:40] important part but it but it was really not you made money in nineteen in 1969 1968 1968

[02:02:48] I was no 69 I was sixteen and a half years old I made $3,800 of a summer wow cash wow

[02:02:55] to me you understand you're making you're making more money than the people who serve it so did you

[02:03:00] buy a Volkswagen did you go out and buy that $2,400 of you know what happened was what happened was

[02:03:05] stupid peter went to new york university at $121 a credit when his friends went to city college

[02:03:11] and to state universities for for about $500 a year so they were the ones who were driving

[02:03:17] the fancy cars and I was I was driving a fancy car but it wasn't mine it was my father's

[02:03:22] and it was certain restrictions of course that came with so so speaking speaking of cars let's

[02:03:28] let's fast forward I know stash he's got a new topic burning on his mind here what's that

[02:03:37] what's that but the resorts world yeah so the whole new resource world that is built in

[02:03:44] sullivan county what do you think of that excuse me it's interesting because there are a lot

[02:03:50] of people who said if gambling would have come to the worst belt that would have rescued it and

[02:03:54] and it might have it might have prolonged its existence but rescued it rescued it no

[02:04:02] so on the on part of the grounds of the former concourse actually the far end of the golf course

[02:04:09] they built a casino complex that cost $925 million dollars so to put that in in in its

[02:04:17] context back in the day you could have bought every hotel in the Catskills for $925 million so

[02:04:23] so they they built this it it's part of genting which is a Malaysian gambling and gaming corporation

[02:04:32] there's several resorts worlds around resorts world at Aqueduct racetrack downstate which is a

[02:04:39] it's a race seno we had that at Monticello raceway so the race seno didn't have live

[02:04:46] groupies dealing the games you had the you had the video games and then they were quite interesting

[02:04:52] by the way because the video you know you had this this nice looking woman and handsome looking

[02:04:59] guy would be feeling up but they were all you know like uh like that Star Trek or holograms

[02:05:04] of sorts you know it's out the casino it's it the description about a year or so ago is that

[02:05:12] it's hemorrhaging money it was losing a lot of money and that presumably continues to do that

[02:05:17] did it did it save the what's left of the bout is no not at all did it offer people some jobs

[02:05:24] that had career paths yes what did it do anything for for main street USA and Monticello particularly

[02:05:34] no not at all because much like the old philosophy of of some resort hotels that that that said we

[02:05:44] want to keep you here the casino works the same way you get on the bus in Brooklyn Queens you get

[02:05:51] on the bus you drive up you go into the bus depot in the casino you get out they give you the

[02:05:56] coupon they give you the chips they give you they give you the food voucher and you're there

[02:06:01] for eight hours ten hours you get on the bus so has it done anything to revitalize the downtown

[02:06:09] areas no has it brought uh new tourists to the area yes but the tourists are are contained using

[02:06:16] what used to be called the fortress model keep them all in one place next to it is a smaller

[02:06:22] boutique hotel called the older same idea because it feeds in for those who don't want to

[02:06:28] stay in this this monolith it's magnificent magnificent complex they can stay at a smaller

[02:06:35] place and then if you're not interested in gaming a mile or so down the road at the cart right which

[02:06:40] is a water park so we're all of these things the savior of the borosco the Catskills no not at all

[02:06:47] and people who will dispute it but but the reality is the visitors to these resorts

[02:06:53] are not not they're not going they're not going to the local businesses to buy buy their things the way

[02:06:59] we uh the old borosco resorts we do so you know if if you needed if you came up here and went to a

[02:07:07] hotel and I remember this from my father you know Saturday mornings he would get in the car and

[02:07:12] drive six miles to ellendoll and he would take my mother to brotsky's which was a a women's

[02:07:18] clothing store and and they would buy something and that was it or I would go with them and I would

[02:07:24] go to uh to eddie's country fair which was the little department store and I would buy something

[02:07:29] so the people are going to the casino and it's a very simple concept

[02:07:34] casinos want you to gamble you know they have all the shops and that's that's fine

[02:07:39] but they want you to gamble so they're they're gonna do what they can to keep you on the

[02:07:45] premises at least the phone the hotel is proper the premises so you know you're not going to say oh

[02:07:51] well you know for those of you who are interested in going to to monticello we have a bus that's

[02:07:56] going out they don't have that what I think people were referring to when they say that

[02:08:03] casino gambling would have would have saved borosco is that if every hotel or a large number

[02:08:10] of hotels were given gaming licenses and and they would have their they would have their quote

[02:08:17] unquote casinos and the sidebar to this is that way back in the day when uh when some of the

[02:08:24] jewish gangsters of murder incorporated would would vacation up here uh they were involved

[02:08:30] with everything from uh cigarette bending machines jukeboxes the pinball machines uh the

[02:08:36] slot machines uh so you had gambling as such up here we had card games that were very very high

[02:08:44] stakes poker games at at grand mountain and at most of the hotels not just you know not just

[02:08:50] nickel and dime poker games you know dollar and five dollar games at a time when this was a lot of

[02:08:54] money so we had gambling up here and and yeah well at the people would say well that's not the

[02:09:00] same as a casino well but what are you doing in a casino you're gonna go into you know

[02:09:05] you're gonna go in and you're gonna play poker if if you want to play it on a machine you can

[02:09:09] play it on a machine at a resort's world if you want to play at a table you've got several different

[02:09:14] levels where their maximums and if you're real high roller there's a room upstairs with high

[02:09:19] rollers well at grand mountain you had the card room and in this section of the card room

[02:09:25] you had you know you had some friendly games of gin rummy and in that section of card room

[02:09:31] you had blackjack and in that corner of the card room away from everything else you had the poker

[02:09:37] games where people were glued and men as well as women were glued to the card table from from

[02:09:43] from sun up to sundown particularly on weekends breaking only in in in some cases not in in

[02:09:50] most cases but not in all cases for the show the only time they broke in all cases was when

[02:09:55] you know quarter to three in the morning when the young lady got up and showed her wears

[02:09:59] so i think it would have prolonged it but it would have prolonged it only until only

[02:10:06] only if it were at the other hotels and even then most of these hotels and even the larger ones

[02:10:12] were mom and pops yeah so all of a sudden you know think about this for a moment here mom and

[02:10:18] pop and i'll we'll talk about a biggie we'll talk about kitchens which was a mom and pop hotel

[02:10:22] through its entire in its entire existence as we're mostly so now you have a mom and pop hotel

[02:10:30] and you now have casino gaming that's regulated by a state gaming commission where where you're

[02:10:38] going to have inspectors in every monday and tuesday and people coming in monday and tuesday

[02:10:42] and all of a sudden mom and pops say oh shit i have part of my income comes from the cash

[02:10:49] that i get every day from the coffee shop but what happens if one of the inspectors says hey wait a

[02:10:56] minute this guy's got all his cash from the coffee shop so all of a sudden it was another set of eyes

[02:11:03] that was closing in so they would have to change their way of doing business and i'm jumping all around

[02:11:09] in the day there was something that was called sultan county economy and it was an economy

[02:11:14] based upon the money flow through the borstfeld hotels so there was an extension of credit based on

[02:11:21] handshakes and at the end of the season everybody got paid and nobody said well you know you're late 30

[02:11:28] and you're only 2 percent to 5 percent that started to change in the mid 60s when credit cards came

[02:11:36] to came into into being now all of a sudden hotel owners were faced with with a dilemma

[02:11:43] if i don't take this guy's credit card then he and his family can't come here but if i take his credit

[02:11:50] card then all of a sudden the income becomes reportable and i'm not saying that that yeah well

[02:11:56] gee every every operator up here was cheating the government but there was an economy that

[02:12:02] was based upon cash transactions and handshake so why why the gaming would not be would not have

[02:12:10] been the savior even if it were a lot of the hotels is because it's another it's another you know

[02:12:18] big daddy is watching from the outside it's it's another set of eyes and that set of eyes

[02:12:24] and variably doesn't understand how things operate here and what kept the borstfeld as as as a viable

[02:12:36] and more than viable destination but for the zillions of people from from from one end of the

[02:12:44] the 20th century almost till the other so you're talking about you're talking about

[02:12:51] almost a hundred years of this working so when did it's when did it fail to work or when did it start

[02:12:59] to decline people said well the decline is the decline was due to to air travel and exotic vacations

[02:13:08] and all of this crap yeah except that's only part of it the other part of it was generation

[02:13:13] number three didn't want any part of it with some exceptions the overwhelming majority of the mom

[02:13:18] and pops the third generation my generation wanted no part of it I did and and my family didn't own a

[02:13:24] hotel and to this day the only thing I ever wanted to do with my life was own a resort hotel I just

[02:13:29] like that kind of existence where you know I could be the major d in the dining room and all of a

[02:13:34] sudden you know there's a problem with the master tv antenna and out of the pocket of my tuxedo

[02:13:40] I have a screwdriver and a dress plus something for the trim which would get a clearer picture

[02:13:45] but but you had that and then you had a whole way in which the world did business started to change

[02:13:53] when you know in the smaller places the waiters would routinely you know the owner was a big take

[02:13:58] the house car and go to do so which was a wholesale distributor give me a case of great

[02:14:02] things it's like going to do so with the house car and I said you know eight needs a case of

[02:14:07] great food take it by 1970 ish or so 68 70 ish all right let me sign for you gotta do you

[02:14:16] start it to have automated things and you'd you have all this was pre-computer but it was still

[02:14:22] different than just take it now write it down on a piece of paper someplace because that's how

[02:14:27] they did that's how they do business so so that changed and then finally you had you had an

[02:14:34] over-enforcement of a lot of laws the fire laws needed to be over enforced because when when the

[02:14:42] hotel owners redid the hotels in the 50s they put old they put new into old so if you had two old

[02:14:49] wires that were that were 70 years old well all right you know what we'll wrap some tape around

[02:14:54] them and connect them for the two new wires an example of that was the old browns hotel

[02:14:59] that that was bought at a tax sale and the person we habilitated it made it into a condominium

[02:15:06] complex except for the fact that it was example of a phrase clean shirt on the dirty body

[02:15:12] everything that you couldn't see was old and everything that you could see was new and

[02:15:17] after a while you know the old was old and it started to it started to decay to the point

[02:15:22] where you had we had a fire so that part of it was fine but when when you have food inspectors

[02:15:28] who would come in and enforce the law laws that were so ridiculous that you just couldn't get

[02:15:37] out the 400 meals that you needed to get out for a lunch you know you started to tie the hands

[02:15:46] of people who said wait a minute nobody is died people died in the borsch belt because they

[02:15:51] ate too much of things they shouldn't they ate it too fast soup got it like the borscht soup so

[02:15:58] somebody who's on a fat restricted diet yes you can have the borsch but you can't put

[02:16:04] you can't put two tablespoons of sour cream in it somebody who's on a salt-free diet can't eat

[02:16:11] herring okay so people died because of that yeah some people died because when they're putting

[02:16:18] the elevator shafts you had fires yes some people did the overwhelming majority died because of what

[02:16:25] I had just said so to scroll back to the original question there was nothing that could have saved

[02:16:31] it because it was it was the perfect storm it was an attack and not intentional it was just

[02:16:40] circumstances it was an attack on all fronts so you know what's what's the final statement

[02:16:49] you scroll and segue into this this myth called Jewish lightning that and and and the

[02:16:55] the other week one of the oldest buildings at the neveling caught fire and burned down and of

[02:17:01] course Jewish lightning no there's no Jewish lightning and I'll tell you why one because

[02:17:06] the the owner of that property is the person who we bought the the museum building from in Elendale

[02:17:14] and two there would have been nothing to be gained by doing this this was an old decaying building

[02:17:19] that was a hundred years old that had been retrofitted four or five times so you know if you if

[02:17:26] you if you close a hotel down for the winter if you close a house down for the winter

[02:17:31] and you don't do it the right way it's a recipe for disaster if you have people in the hotel

[02:17:38] and it's a cold day and you've got you've got circuit breakers and fuse boxes and all of a

[02:17:44] sudden everybody plugs in their electric heater at one time the wires are going to heat up and

[02:17:50] hopefully the fuses or the breakers are going to pop and if they don't you have a fire

[02:17:56] were there some fires that that that were purposely said yes and I'm not going to mention the names I

[02:18:01] know which one your purpose so and and Peter I think this is a good point because I feel your

[02:18:07] trending towards revealing where Jimmy Hoffa is buried and we don't want to go there tonight

[02:18:14] I know Stosh wants to wrap things up we're going to have to bring you back maybe to tell us

[02:18:20] where Hoffa is buried and the facts and circumstances that brought him there but I know I've really

[02:18:26] enjoyed tonight's episode I do notice that you're wearing the borscht belt museum shirt which is

[02:18:32] make my play for that uh the vision of having this went back to 2010 when a friend of mine

[02:18:39] colleague Jack Godfrey had what everybody said was an insane idea it's been tried

[02:18:43] for a long time my my friend and that board president Andrew Jacobs came on board we

[02:18:48] restructured the board and last April 11th we closed on 90 canal street which was the home

[02:18:55] savings bank which was one of the few banks up here that lent money to uh to Jews back in the day

[02:19:01] and we set it up as a pop-up uh we're in the midst of a capital campaign to renovate the building

[02:19:08] we're reopening this Thursday we've got borscht belt fest which this year is going to be a whole

[02:19:13] weekend uh there in ellendoll if you go to the site uh borschtbeltmuseum.org we've got everything

[02:19:20] from lectures and as a hotel would say to scroll back row singers has everything the borscht belt

[02:19:26] museum has everything and it's a it's a historical experience because the final comment and you

[02:19:34] can book me because I can go on forever because it's quite bad and this is more than just a

[02:19:40] Jewish thing or in the case of green county the irish or the italian alps this whole thing is a

[02:19:46] slice of americana in in the broadest sense possible we had black health that was unemployable

[02:19:53] they came up here and they found employment we had we had asian chefs who had no formal experience

[02:20:00] but they could cook well they they found employment up here you had you had entertainers you had

[02:20:07] nice jewish boys who wanted to earn a buck and get out of the city you had families who

[02:20:13] finally found the place where they could you know they could they could just lay back and say wow for

[02:20:18] eight weeks out in disneyland without without the lines so it's just an amazing time in katsuka

[02:20:27] history let alone american history uh just it just blows my mind so once again uh peter we

[02:20:34] thank you for joining us tonight and uh your pleasure thank you so much for having me and letting

[02:20:41] me ramble on yeah your knowledge we're gonna send you a bill peter yeah you thought this you thought

[02:20:46] this was free you didn't read the fine print in the contract high five i did it's like the

[02:20:52] suggested tip uh cards that we have you gotta wait until it's just calm sunday and put a little

[02:20:59] vanilla envelope you know just venmo us the money peter high five big high five so once again thank

[02:21:06] you to the monthly supporters and the monthly sponsors i really appreciate it you guys are

[02:21:10] really helping out the show uh once again thank you of everyone who is listening to the show

[02:21:16] really appreciate you guys kicking it into 118 episodes once again we have peter here

[02:21:22] joining us talking about the borscht belt once again one of the greatest times in

[02:21:26] katskilda mountain history uh and let alone american history that we've had here in uh

[02:21:33] our times and uh to hear his stuff was absolutely phenomenal so uh peter once again thank you for

[02:21:38] joining us tonight very very much and happy hiking and the snow will melt very quickly

[02:21:45] it will it will definitely so have a good night guys uh enjoy everything and uh thank you peter

[02:21:51] once again for joining us thank you my pleasure thank you for having me all right have a good night

[02:21:55] guys you all too thank you bye

[02:22:03] hey everyone i just want to thank you for listening to the show if you enjoyed the show

[02:22:08] subscribe and throw down a smooth review on spotify apple podcast or any podcast platform

[02:22:16] you can also check daily updates of the podcast hikes hiking news and local news on facebook

[02:22:25] instagram twitter and the official website of the show remember this you gotta just keep on

[02:22:33] living the katskills man

[02:22:36] and i'd be i'm

[02:22:40] wicked wicked wicked wicked