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2005-07-01 - 6:56 p.m.

In response to her entry:

Wow! That entry was so interesting to me because we too would send our summers in a bungalow upstate (near New Paltz actually, in the lil town of Accord). We rented ours though. It was part of a bungalow colony where my Mom's gal pals also spent their summers, tykes in tow.

Us women and children spent the whole of July and August up there while the husbands and fathers toiled in the hot city. They would come up on the weekends and for two weeks in August.

Friday night was my favorite time of all, when I would stand by the fence watching for my father's van to pull up. All bare footed and dirty faced with a kool-aid smile for daddy. He would pull up with his cowboy hat on and sweep me up in his arms and put me on his shoulders. Then Sunday night I would weep inconsolately when he left again. Of course, I'd be over it by Monday morning. Who could stay upset long when there was friends and swimming holes and frogs to catch and trees to climb. There were even ponies to ride (for $1).

There was only one telephone, a pay phone, up at the office and so if you got a phone call, the owners would call it out over the loud speaker (in a heavy Italian accent) "Bungalow 7, Telephone!"

We did have a TV but only one station, WTZA, which played an odd assortment of old shows. I used to watch Mr. Ed, Dark Shadows and General Hospital during rainy days or illnesses. Other rainy day activities included a wide variety of board games. Payday, anyone? No? How about Life, Monopoly, Othello, Parchesi, Checkers, Trivial Pursuit, Backgammon, Hungry Hippos, or Trouble - with the pop-o-matic bubble. Card games such as crazy eights, knuckles, steal the old man's pack, rummy 500, and Uno eventually gave way to Canasta, Hearts and Bullsh*t.

In our younger days, we also colored a lot. Once we started a business coloring rocks to sell as paper weights to all the parents for 25 to 50 cents, but that eventually went bust because well, how many paper weights does one need?

Then we turned our money-making minds to entertainment. We would put on shows and concerts just so we could charge admission. The boys once put on a KISS "concert" in full makeup and tin foil regalia. We'd put on a circus where we played the animals, or perform a medley of show tunes from Annie and Grease. We lip-synched and danced to the Go-Gos and Blondie. Our poor mothers endured it all.

They had help though from the seemingly endless Happy Hour. This was back in the days when drinking and driving wasn't yet a crime and cigarettes were still smoked in offices and airplanes (maybe even hospitals). There was nothing odd about our mothers having whiskey sours and pina coladas while we splashed around in the pool. No one got seriously hurt (seriously being the operative word) and nobody died.

Being an accident prone and persistent tomboy I spent many hours in the Emergency Room at New Paltz hospital, between the barbed wire, bees and broken bottles. I got so many tetanus shots that I'm probably still protected to this day. We also broke my cousin's ankle in rousing game of bocci ball (a modified version where we threw the balls at each other).

Far more dangerous though were the awakening hormone driven kissing games. We spun the bottle till it broke and spent many minutes in heaven before we concocted our own violent version called Gorilla kiss which was similar to running bases except that instead of tagging each other we would basically tackle each other and kiss. Our blissfully unaware parents (cocktails anyone) thought we were simply playing our usual fare of outdoor fun: Cork cork Cleevio (Manhunt), running bases, tag, kick the can, poison bottles, soccer, etc. We'd play till it was too dark to see, and yes, we too, collected fireflies in jars and used them as flashlights until 11:00 curfew at night (midnight for the boys in our sexist society).

Ah! Good times. I feel so nostalgic. Perhaps I'll get to relive a little of it this weekend when we go to PA with E and P.

Thanks for the memories.


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