Where Did Summer Go?

 RHYS BOWEN:  Clare and I are working on our next Molly Murphy book. It’s going to be set in the Catskills in a fledgling bungalow colony and we are now deep into our research. At the time we write about, 1907, there were no big resorts in the Catskills and it was just beginning to emerge as a place where Jewish families spent their summers. Jewish farmers who had settled in the area outside New York and were growing fruits and vegetables for the city took in guests for the steamy summer months where city living with the risk of disease became unbearable. Then they built primitive cottages (bungalows) for guests to rent. The bungalows had their own small kitchen (hence the name Kochalayn in Yiddish–cook for yourself).  Families came up for the whole summer. Wives and children stayed. Fathers worked during the week and came up by train at weekends. It was a perfect arrangement. Children had a carefree exposure to country living. They helped collect eggs and pick berries while their mothers played cards (and later mahjong).

Gradually hotels were built, and then resorts until the heyday of Grossingers and the magnificent resorts that attracted the comedians and crooners of the day. All of this fell into decline when plane travel made vacations abroad easier and presumably when women had to enter the workforce and thus did not have summers free. 

And why only Jewish families, may you ask? The horrible truth is that Jews were not welcome elsewhere, so they created their own summer escape.

Older people I know had similar childhoods growing up in San Francisco, where it’s foggy and cold all summer. San Francisco families had cabins on the Russian River or at Clearlake and came up for the summer, leaving the husbands to work all week. It sounded ideal, especially today when we read that most people do not take the vacation days they are owed. A week on a beach is not enough to recharge!

I remember my own summers–we lived in a rambling old house in the country with an acre of orchard. I remember building tree houses, a trapeze, playing with feral kittens in the old shed (occasionally trying to smuggle one into the house), or going off on my bike, only to return when it got dark. It seemed that summers were endless and carefree.   Now I look up and it’s September!

So Reds, do you have fond summer memories? Did your family have a cabin somewhere? Do you make the most of summer now?

JENN McKINLAY: Growing up, we always camped or traveled for weeks during the summer and then my mom bought a cottage on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and that’s where my Hooligans learned to run wild. Mom was a teacher so she made sure we milked every drop of summer freedom for what it was worth. After she bought the cottage, she  left for Canada the day after graduation and came back the day before school started. Now the Hooligans are in college and not free to take off to Canada with me, so it’ll be me and mom and my sis-in-law, which is its own kind of lovely summer break. 

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh yes I have great summer memories too. Early on, my parents rented a really tiny house at the Jersey shore. We’d all jam in there with my mother’s sisters and their kids, and my father would take the train down on weekends. Later on, the whole family group moved to Hatteras Island, and stayed in a giant Coast Guard house that fit everyone. We played lots of board games and spent hours and hours roasting in the sun. Nobody had anywhere to be or anything else to do, so we enjoyed the beach and the family! When we got a little older, we put a surfboard in my cousin's convertible and drove around acting cool and trying to attract boys. That’s where I got my famous  sex education tip: “never lie down on a blanket with a boy.“

HANK PHILLIPI RYAN: Ahhh….we didn’t have a routine summer thing.  We had ponies, so mostly we went to the local pool and listened to transistor radios, or rode along the trails and fields.  LOTS of reading. One summer, all five kids and two parents and another family of four took a tour of the west on Frontier AiIrlines–they had a deal where you could go on however many flights you wanted in three weeks for a flat rate. (CAN YOU IMAGINE??) No reservations, you just showed up and crossed your fingers.  We hopped on and off–in Denver, Colorado Springs, Jackson Hole, Helena, Sun Valley, Phoenix,  Tucson, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City Durango, on and on. It was incredible, and I think we bankrupted the airline company.

HALLIE EPHRON: My parents sent us to camp, pretty much all summer. Day camp (I loved being a junior counselor) and a month of overnight camp (in Arizona) which I also loved. 

I do not remember a single family “trip.” Not one! Though we did rent a house for a week on Malibu beach a couple of seasons running. A rambling house with hundreds of feet of sandy beach between it and the water. Spectacular. 

Tracking the house, Dick Van Dyke ended up owning it years later.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We traveled every summer. My parents loved to pile in the car and go and we covered a lot of territory over the years. There were many trips to Mexico, including terrifying drives on the old Pan American Highway to Mexico City. Lots of trips in the US, too, including one that took us from Dallas to LA to Vancouver, and back down through the Rockies. Otherwise, I ran wild in the summers, playing outside and roaming the neighborhood, swimming at the rec center pool, and hanging out at the country club pool while my parents played golf. Fun times.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My teen summers in the Finger Lakes were wonderful, in a kind of 1970's retro movie way. Crammed into a car with friends to see movies at the Lakeshore Drive- In (my friend Shaun always hid in the trunk to keep the cost down.) My bff Tracy and I would take the bus into Syracuse, which was then a thriving, successful city with glamorous department stores, cute places to eat, and a magnificent Carnegie library right next to where my boyfriend worked as a lifeguard at the YMCA. (See what I mean about a retro movie?)

My folks sailed on Lake Onondaga every weekend on The Tailwind, and we would take dad’s vacation on the same 38-foot boat, dropping mast to go through the lock system of New York’s canals and then out onto Lake Ontario.

Today, Lake Onondaga is considerably cleaner and safer, but everything else is gone - the Drive In flattened, the library renovated beyond recognition, and the city hollowed out when its major industries moved out of the US. Good thing I checked out À la recherche du temps perdu when I had the chance.

RHYS: Ah, the good old days!  Next week we're going down to San Diego where I have rented a house on the beach for a week with the whole family. I'm really looking forward to it, but a week is too short. A month would have been perfect but everyone is too busy to stay longer.

So what are your favorite childhood memories and do you still take long vacations?