My Aunt Rita, and Uncle Ben, had a little summer cottage in Monticello, New York, just off Sackett Lake Road. Every summer, as long as I could remember, they would take about two months of summer and go there. It was only 90 minutes from the City, but its dominant bucolic environment, trees, dirt roads, the lake, farmland was a stark contrast to the dominant concrete and tar of the Bronx, punctuated by anemic trees planted into some sidewalks.
On many of those summers--I actually can no longer remember which ones, my mother would allow me to spend several weeks with them. Though I tended toward homesickness, the freedom granted to me by my Aunt, who didn't expect me to behave more as an adult than the child that I was-- as did my mother--more than compensated for it. It's not that I couldn't run and play in the apartment courtyard and sidewalk but that my mother preferred me to be neat and intellectual. My hair, tortured into perfect curls (actually not unlike Nellie in Little House on The Prairie, it occurs to me as I write), each bobby pinned precariously such that too much movement would dislodge them didn't allow for unbridled running. And I had perfect white sneakers that would get scuffed, requiring a paint job with some white polish. Being careful was always the guidepost. I wasn't always, even in the Bronx, but in Monticello, I could run to my heart's delight, jump, be messy, without even the hint of a recrimination. My Aunt once found me polishing my scuffed sneakers, and grabbed them and said, "You don't have to do that. We'll put them in the washer!" Liberation! And my hair? It was either pulled back into a pony tail or in pig tails. My mother would never have considered pig tails.
There were several houses in the line off Sackett Lake road, that led to a complete dirt road, that itself led up to the imposing house on the hill. There was the green house of Dottie and Jack, mid sixty-ish retirees, and then the Bernsteins, and then the Oppenheims. The Oppenheims just happened to have three kids the right age for me, my cousin Barbara, and my cousin Carol. James, Anthony and Stephanie. They had the best "stuff" I guess we'd call it today. There was a fort, yes, it was a fort, big enough for several of us to be inside of and to jump off of. There was the brake-less Surrey, that fit four of us, which each of us would drive in turn down the hill, filled with holes. Dangerous? Sure was. But boy was it living. It was in Monticello that I finally learned to ride a bike. It was low enough for me to keep my feet on either side, but it had no chain, and somehow, going down Hemlock Lane and back up Sunset Drive, I found myself balancing perfectly. I was a little older than the others. I had to keep up.
I was never a morning person, even at the tender age of say 10, but my cousin Barbara would insist that I get up at the crack of dawn and go to the porch--always chilly at that time of morning--and watch the sun come up while she did her puzzles or did her coloring. She was very meticulous at both, while I was impatient and ready to go back to bed.
All these memories flow again because the gift was of photos posted by James recently. Oh, yes, I remember that day in 1964!
It was Anthony's birthday. There's the triangular monkey bars. I can see the hill that we took the Surrey down. It doesn't look quite as imposing. The monkey bars were an orange brick wood color, and wood. I loved climbing on them. Once when I was alone, I got my leg caught at the top and was hanging down for a while, spraining my leg. I somehow managed to right myself, but I never told anyone about the pain in my leg. I was afraid that if my mother heard, she'd be angry at me for being so foolish. And I didn't want to be any trouble because of my own mistake. Oh, and that day, Anthony's birthday, there were ponies. I had ridden ponies before, in the zoo, or some commercial location, but never at someone's house. There we are, Barbara, Anthony and me. I must have been vain, even then, because I was horribly nearsighted, and I didn't have on my glasses for the shot, which may account for the vacant look. I couldn't see anything.
That sweater. I hadn't thought of that sweater in over 50 years. Red and white stripes. It was a favorite. Anthony is wearing one of a couple of outfits I particularly remember. The other was that of a ringmaster, you know, as in the circus. He would often come down with his sweet black lab Buffy, wearing that outfit, to our little place. Buffy would happily sit on any available foot.
I was impressed by James, perhaps a year or a few months younger than me, who had his own photographic dark room and was learning to play the guitar as we all got older. But I was a little intimidated by him. As we wended into the late sixties, and the days of Woodstock (which was very near our summer haven), James was cool, and I was, well, what I suppose I still am, a little square. And clueless when it came to boys. (I went to an all girls Catholic School, and the only kid close to my age on our block was a juvenile delinquent; whom truth be told I fancied). James made an uncharacteristic visit down to my Aunt's place and asked me if I wanted to see "MASH". Not realizing he was actually asking me out (my dating radar never did improve) I declined. I was swimming in the Oppenheim pool when his mother said something like, "James likes older women."
Oh, there are stories galore I could write. Spending a day, alone, at the Concord Hotel, with Barbara, Carol and a friend named, Alyse, I think, whose mother owned a store at the hotel and whose grandmother had an imposing edifice across a field from us. Being allowed to steer Mr. Oppenheim's motor boat on White Lake. Spending many a day at the 125 acre land of Richard Jansen, the land on which he was born, with several man made lakes and log cabins, and fresh vegetables. Picking blueberries. And blackberries. Playing GHOST with Dottie and my Uncle as the sun went down and the mosquitoes attacked, Dottie chain smoking with her leg swung over the arm of the Adirondack chair. She was a lot like Katherine Hepburn in her manner. A New England Yankee.
What did Dean Martin sing? Probably no one of this generation remembers. Memories are Made of This.
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