My roots

My grandparents didn;t speak English. One grandfather i never met. All of the grandparents were from Russia.  That's what they said. They were Russian. My grandfather was in the Russian army.  The grandfather I knew was a furrier. His brother was a baker.  Grandpa's name was Sam and his brother they called Juice. Because he drank a lot of juice.  One side of the family was from  Bila Tserkva, a town near Kiev. The others were from Volochisk ( aka Woloczysk) , in the West, near the Zbruch River. It is now  all known as the Ukraine.  Volochisk is in the Volhynia province of the  Ukraine. This is Southwest of Kiev.  My father said his family was  richer than my mom's.  He said  "we had wood floors, your mom's family had dirt floors".  I was impressed  , haha.  I really want to go to Russia/ Ukraine and see where my ancestors were from.  I love the food, I grew up on that food. The language would have a familiar  sound.  One  day  I'll make it there.

Summers in the Mountains

When I was a kid my parents took us up to the Catskill Mountains for the summer. They would  rent a bungalow most often at a place called Schreiberville, in Swan Lake. It was a lot of fun. The bungalow colony actually had different  neighborhoods from  poor to rich. We gradually moved up from the apartments to  the Blueberry Hill area,  a  mid range bungalow.  In the day time  during the week we were in camp.  Our scheduled activities were  swimming and swim instruction. It is where I got my Junior Life Saver badge.  Also softball and  paddle ball.  We carved our own wooden paddles at Arnie Naroff's arts and craft workshop. We burnt our names in them with a wood burner and  shellacked the rackets. They were like solid wood racket ball rackets.  Funny that one of the kids , Arnie's son, whom I used to play racket ball with , I now see on  TV as a  major financial guest on CNBC.  Joel Naroff was an excellent  paddle ball player.  But me and  Jeff Hausler   beat him and my cousin Glenn in a 3 game match. Jeff was  chubby but fast.  Paddle ball was an awesome game.   Our unscheduled activities were stealing sodas from the storage room of the  Coffee Shop.  Shooting cows , picking blueberries.  Salamnder hunts were a popular activity too. There used to be a microphone in the office and all day long you would hear announcements like " Mickey Abramson come to the office"  or  "the Butcher is here" " the Fish man is at the parking lot"  etc.  Speaking of cars,  My father had a 195o Chevy..  My brother was  about  3 years old one year we were up at  Schreiberville.  My brother, they used to call Dennis the Menace.  Well , one fine day, my father  had parked the  ugly grey chevy outside our bungalow on top of the hill.  My brother wandered to the car and thought it would be a good idea to climb in.  I have no idea if the keys were in the car, but I do know that it had a  Starter button. In those days  you  pressed the starter button  to start the car.  At the bottom of the hill was first the paddleball courts. There were about 50 kids playing there. Just past the courts were bungalows.
We hear the starter cranking and  all of a sudden, the little driver,  My 3 year old brother, had the  car started and rolling down the hill.  Perhaps he just put it in neutral, i have no idea, and he couldn't reach the brake or the gas pedals. But he was moving   fast and about to kill many kids.  This truck driver guy with a shiny bald  head, Al Stitchel, somehow dove thru the window and  pulled the emergency brake and stopped the car. He scared the daylites out of my brother.  The kid wanted to finish his ride; Oh well, 50 kids were saved. A memorable event.
     One day a friend of my father  was coming up to visit.  The guy's name was  Reese.  Well, I was thinking since my father was such a great baseball player, and a huge Brooklyn Dodger fan, that it was Pee Wee Reese the Capt. of the Brooklyn Dodgers that was  visiting.  I wasted no time, and  went to the office and announced on the microphone that "the great Pee Week Reese is at my bungalow".  Kids started  running  back to their bungalows to grab their baseballs and gloves and  pens to get his autograph. Some had cameras.  I went into  our bungalow and said hi to our visitors.  My parents were wondering what was going on outside. Apparently they didn't hear the announcement.  There were 100 people , kids and adults outside.    I told them " they're here to see Pee Wee".   My father said  " who the heck is Pee Wee" .  I pointed to  Reese.  They were thinking  WTF ,   i'm sure.   Well, my parents looked at each other and  looked at  Reese and looked at me.  They then told me he was not  Pee Week Reese.  He was  Harold Reese.  Now ironically,  Pee Wee's name was  Harold too  Damn, I was sure this guy was Pee Wee Reese and  just didn't want to  sign autographs.. Well this is a heck of a story, because   I forgot what  happened.  Either  he decided to sign autographs anyway, which I think is actually what happened or     He said he wasn't Pee Wee Reese.  Oh well,  it was memorable except for the end.
      Noxema was a household item. Very popular with  people who had fair complexions.  I had many freckles and got sunburnt so easily.  I used to go in the pool and stay in until my lips turned blue.  My skin was  bright red, so sun burnt and blue lips. What a sight.   Quite often I was  covered with noxema, what a smell.  Unforgettable smell.   I would be in the pool wearing my t-shirt,  how embarrassing that was but  my mom was just trying to protect me.  One year i had  such blisters from the sun, they had to soak me in vinegar. That was the cure back then, Noxema and vinegar.
   At night, the  bungalow colony had a  "casino" it was  just a  big room with chairs and a stage. They either had  Jackie Mason or some Nipsy Russell or some  Borscht belt comedian performing,  a live band or a movie. The only movie I remember seeing was  High Noon, a great  cowboy movie.   The band was a  cool small band. It was  older guys. I think the name of the band was  Abby Patner band. It's all coming back to me.  One guy Herbie Shlanger  had lived in Texas for a while, so they called him Tex.  He had a  big  white  standup bass. he was  really good.  Then  a friend of mine, he was only about    12 at the time, was a great electric guitar player. His name was Pete. They were jamming the  boogie boogie. Wow that music was  great. We all had flashlights. There were no street lights outside.  The movie time was a good time to  sneak underneath the casino and steal sodas. They had  Mission soda, really good stuff. That's where the store room for the  coffee shop was , underneath the casino.
     There were a few dogs up there.  One dog gave birth under the casino , and a white pup named snowball was born. What a cute dog.  My friend Sonny had a  sheep dog named Curly what a  friendly fun dog.  Joel Naroff had a dog that was very  friendly too, a Boston Terrier.  Really fun dogs to play with .  The rapist guy down the road , Luther, had a collie.  Scary guy,  he was famous and everyone  stayed away from his house but we knew of him. Richie Brown's family had a guest house down the road.  Richie was  a cool guy and  he also liked catching frogs and shooting sling shots. His older brother  Punchy  had the longest hair for those days.  They were good guys and from Brooklyn, Turned out that 20 years later my friend Debbie Duck who I met in Berkeley, was  a good friend of theirs.
     Anyway,  I know i'm rambling, so  to wrap this up,  It was fun summers. We didn't  know about  going to Europe or on cruises or stuff like that. We went to the mountains.  After being  up there all summer, and then the drive back to the city. We'd always stop at the Red Apple rest on Old Rt 17.  It was packed.  We would finally get to Manhattan and pass this  Yale truck  way up on top of a building, right by the West Side Highway.. It's still there today. Then we'd go through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I loved tunnels.  it was mesmerizing  driving throughout the tunnel. As if you were falling into a deep endless hole. So cool.  Then we get to East new york. You could smell it off the Belt Parkway. The stinky swamps.  The buildings looks so drab and dirty, Such a noticeable difference  between the country and the  city. Hard to explain, but it just hit ya, that you were back in the city . Back in the projects.