"Pre-Cruise" Cruise History

[DaCruzNut]

(A while back, on the “old board,†I posted “A Sea of Memories.†One of the chapters covered the pre-history of cruising, in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Since Wayne and Cheryl met there, I thought it would be nice to reprint part of that chapter…..â€Â

The Concord-Lake Kiamesha, NY

:wink:

HOW IT REALLY BEGAN….

There are countless histories of cruising, found in numerous sources. Yet none, that I am aware of, truly tells the history of cruising as it in actual fact occurred. Cruising has its true roots of the Catskill Mountains, of New York State, in the late 1930’s. Just a few hours north of New York City, in one of those new motor cars that just about everyone was buying, this area offered a cool, quiet, country respite from the hot, noisy, summer city.

The area spawned its own breed of hotels, the ‘all-inclusive resort.†Scores of city-weary families would drive, up on a Friday night, to spend a week, or two.

These resorts were very different from hotels anywhere else.

The basic rate included your accommodations, and three meals a day. Meals were served at scheduled times, at assigned tables, with the same waiter and bus boy. What meals they were! The breakfast menu looked like that of a local Diner; with no prices! Order as much as you wanted; it was all included. Lunch was a multi-course repast, but, it was dinner that was the feast. Appetizer, soup, salad entrée, dessert, a cheese tray, fresh fruit. Try the lamb, or the steak, or both, or…

It also included the use of all of the amenities, the pool and nightly entertainment.

There were several ‘common rooms,’ such as as card rooms, a library, and a very large room called the “Casino.†I have never figured out why they called it that, since there was no gambling at the hotels, but the “Casino†it was.

The Casino was used as a show lounge, at night, and for bingo, and other entertainment, during the day.

The big attraction was always the pool. And, a common sight around the pool, all day, was the Social Director. In a large hotel, he would have one, or two, assistants. He would hang out at the pool area, talking to, and entertaining, the guests. In the afternoon, he would organize pool games. A good Social Director could run a mean Simon-Says!

At night, during the week, he would host various shows; none all that good. On rainy days, it was Bingo, in the Casino, and other activities.

The big shows were on the week-end, and Saturday brought same real, big name, talent.

Then after the Saturday night show was the big, complimentary, Midnight Buffet…

The similarities go on, and on, but you get the idea. So did a young man, named Aronson, who thought that if you put the pool on the hotel roof, and got the whole thing to float from island-to-island, you just might have something…..

These hotels were the origins of Carnival Cruise Lines, and, soon thereafter, NCL (which was then Norwegian Caribbean Lines); the floating Grossinger’s.

In the early seventies, when this occurred, the basic formula for cruising was very simple. Give your guests a chance to get away from it all. No telephones, television, newspapers, or any contact with the “real world.†Provide lots of entertainment, with a fantasy approach. And, feed them, feed them, feed them.

[Guest]

Hi I used to go to the Concord with my parents and great memories of seeing the talents of Alan King, Jackie Mason,Jackie Leonard, Steve and Edie, and Totie Fields. Also at one time the head of the Water activities was Buster Crabbe-- AKA-- Flash Gordon. It was such great memories and the same kind of ambiance as in Dirty Dancing. Thanks for remembering Alice Underground Enchantment of the Seas 1/04 PS The food was awesome!!!!!!!

[Slainte]

That's was great!

I have such fond memories of the Catskill Mountains....When I was just a young child living in NYC my family started vacationing up there in a very small town called Leeds. We would leave the city as soon as school was out for the summer and not come back til school started again. Dad would spend his 3 weeks off there, but Mom and us kids had the whole summer!! We continued to vacation in the Catskills every year....We rented a bungalow behind one of those big hotels, which like you say,was "its own breed of hotels" with all meals included and entertainment, there were many in the area..."Green Acres", "Pleasant Acres", "Madison Hotel". My sister met her husband there, and I met my husband while working at the "Catskill Game Farm"one summer. Most of my families long time friends are the people we met in that great part of upstate NY! We often comment on how different our lives might be if we never went to the Mountains!! And now to realize how the Catskills are linked to cruising it's no wonder I'm a CruiseCrazies!! LOL :grin:

Thanks Jeff!

[GottaCruz]

Dear Dear Jeff, :kiss: :kiss: :kiss:

Thank you so much for this- you really know how to put a smile on our faces.

Your post evokes wonderful memories. When I was growing up , my parents took me to the Concord. Actually, we changed off between the Fountainbleau in Miami and the Concord Hotel. I loved my time at both. Then, when I was in my mid and upper twenties, I would drive myself to the Concord for the singles weekends. However, on the weekend Wayne and I met , it was just a regular weekend. Wayne had planned to go on his first cruise with 2 of his friends but they canceled so he decided to go to the Concord himself that weekend. I was there myself to lift my spirits after having some cysts removed from my ovaries a few weeks prior. Well, do you remember the round robin seating in the dining room? Even though it wasn't a singles weekend , there were plenty of singles and they seated Wayne next to me. We talked through dinner and after we were finished, he asked me if I wanted to do some dancing. It was pretty funny when we both stood up. He wasn't expecting me to be so short, five feet and a couple of inches more with my heels on. I wasn't expecting to have to look so high up to see his eyes. He is 6 feet, 2 and a half inches tall. Yes, Mutt and Jeff we were. Anyway, to make a long story short, we danced the night away, went to see the show with Ben Vereen the next night. Do you remember the noise makers they would put on the tables for the show and you'd just bang on the tables with them? Anyway , we went in the rowboats on the beautiful lake, went to the pool and discovered that our favorite things at the Concord were exactly the same- the food and dancing. Six months later, the boy from Brooklyn and the girl from Yonkers/New Rochelle became engaged and then six months later we married. My parents were avid cruisers for years and knew that Wayne and I would love it, it had all the amenities of the Concord plus so much more. As soon as our kids were manageable, in 1995, one was 3 , the other 9, we started cruising and became addicted. In fact , the older one was just so thrilled and so amazed with the entire subject of cruising that years later, when he was about 15, he started building the most amazing models to cruise ships, down to the last detail, with lighting on the decks, lifeboats and more, all out of wood. Soon after that , he started a cruise board. That little cruise board now has 840 members. Oh, wow, that sounds like us. :grin:

Jeff, your "Sea of Memories" is wonderful and I sincerely thank you for sharing this part of it with us. :kiss: :kiss: :kiss: Hugs too, Cheryl and Wayne

[KeithnRita]

Jeff,

Great story on perhaps how today's cruising got it's roots. We missed it on the Cruisecrazies old board as it was prior to us joining. The old cruise forums we belonged to have since went by the wayside, CompuServe and CruiseEnvy. We are so glad to be members of this one!

Cheryl and Wayne,

What a great love story! Rita will enjoy reading the post. She loves LOVE stories! We are so happy to be a part of your cruise family!

[GottaCruz]

And we are so thankful to have you as members of our CruiseCrazies family. :kiss:

[DaCruzNut]

Cheryl=

Great story about how you and Wayne met. Loved it all, except the part where a "Brooklyn Boy" married "out of the City." I was always told that those mixed-marriages don't work! :grin: :grin: :grin:

As many of you know, I spent my youth living at the seashore, so a trip to the mountains was a real treat.

My grandparents usually spent a month at one of the hotels, during the summer, and they would have me join them, for a week. My parents used to go upstate for long holiday week-ends, such as Lincoln's & Washington's Birthday, then celebrated separately, or during school Christmas break.

We didn't have any particular loyalty to one hotel, so I got to go to the Concord, the Nevele, Grossinger's, Brown's, Kutsher's, etc;

For those of you too young, or too far away, who don't know about the Borscht Belt, it WAS just like it was played in "Dirty Dancing." Only, think BIGGER, and multiply it by dozens...

[teacp]

We were not so fortunate to be able to go to those nice hotels although we passed many of them on our way upstate to spend our summers in bungalows. My husband would take us up on the weekend and then he would go home and come back every Friday night and sometimes surprise us on Wednesday nights as it was only a two hour drive from Staten Island.

I don't know how we got our nickname "Bungalow Bunnies but there were lots of us.

That is a great love story Cheryl and brings back lots of good memories of the Poconos and upstate New York..........

[DaCruzNut]

JEWISH WOMEN IN THE CATSKILLS

by Ruth Lehrer

Summer in the Catskills, circa 1935. In a crowded bus, a hired hack, or Uncle Benny’s new DeSoto, my family escaped from our hot apartment in the Bronx to the healing luft (air) of “The Mountains.†We trekked up Old Route 17, stopping when any of us kids became carsick, or for lunch at the Red Apple Rest. For over 70 years, small shtetl-like villages in Sullivan and Ulster Counties such as Monticello, Loch Sheldrake, Ellenville and Liberty were summer homes to Jewish vacationers.

Mama first sampled a kokhaleyn (an “Ameridish,†i.e., American Yiddish word for a rooming house with communal cooking facilities) in Fleischmanns, high in the mountains, where she shared a huge kitchen with more than a dozen other women.

Sign found by April Silver and Neil Cohen

in a Los Angeles flea market.

“It wasn’t easy, each of us scrambling for a gas burner or a place at the sink,†she repeated over the years, “but the luft was better up there. It was during the Great Depression, and inexpensive, maybe $25 or $50 for the whole summer. After that, I found a small hotel in South Fallsburg, the same money for a two-week stay. We dressed up every night, our meals were served to us, it was luxury. But I wanted to get out of the city for the whole summer, so we ended up in a bungalow colony.â€Â

Our small family, along with aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins, spent eight glorious summers in one- and two-bedroom white clapboard bungalows, set on a forest-rimmed clearing in Woodbourne, each with a large, screened-in porch. It was women and children only, those weekdays in the summer Catskills  except for my grandfather, afflicted with polio and confined to his armchair on the porch. Only during a week-long vacation stay were husbands and fathers to be seen midweek on our campus.

I suspect it was not only the luft that brought the women to the mountains. They appeared to enjoy their brief escape from traditional housewife roles. They read, had intimate discussions, skinny-dipped in the Neversink River, and played cards. Rarely had I seen my mother laugh before, or with free time on her hands. Meals were simple: vegetarian dishes like noodles with cheese and bowls of huckleberries with sour cream. Mothers and children went berry-picking most days and took long walks on country roads into the nearby villages to shop. Sometimes we even dared to hitch-hike.

Yet my warmest memories center around preparing for the weekend: cleaning the bungalow, helping my mother shell peas and chop onions, washing my hair and putting on my best clothes. It was Friday, and the Daddies were coming up from the city, bearing bialys, challah and an assortment of tchotchkes. The aroma of mandel bread and blueberry pies baking in the oven filled the air. The early 1940s were much the same, overshadowed by the absence of our male cousins gone off to war  and the emerging news about family left behind in Russia and Poland slowly entering our consciousness.

I never saw the elegant, resort side of the Catskills  the Nevele, the Concord, Grossingers, Kutshers, Brown’s, with their indoor-outdoor swimming pools, golf courses, tennis courts, ice-skating rinks, and nightclubs  until after I was married in 1948. For our honeymoon, or a week’s vacation or a weekend getaway, we’d pull out the dressy clothes that we wore at our friends’ weddings and head up to a Catskill hotel. In the ’50s and ’60s, when our children were growing up, we introduced them to our vacation destination. Around the same time, a triple whammy  air conditioning, women going back to work, and cheap air fares  began to have an impact on the Catskills. We and many of our friends and relatives abandoned the mountains. By the time my children were teenagers, they went off to summer camp in the Berkshires and we flew off to Europe for sightseeing vacations.

Thriving villages became ghosts of their former selves, depressed and depressing. In its heydey, the area was blanketed by six hundred hotels. Today, they number fewer than twenty. By the 1990s, most had succumbed to lightning fires, bankruptcy and the real-estate market. A few still stand as empty shells awaiting redevelopment.

More than five hundred bungalow colonies existed in the 1950s and ’60s. Now about two hundred remain, some converted to co-ops. Seniors from Florida come for the summer, and some bungalows are occupied by singles seeking less expensive alternatives to the Hamptons or Fire Island. Most have been bought by Brooklyn’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) communities; the town of Woodbourne, my old stomping grounds, has particularly been revitalized by their presence during the summer and early autumn season. During the week, Hasidic women in long sleeves and opaque stockings can be seen strolling the hot country roads with their children. I imagine them enjoying their midweek summer break, much as my mother did, with husbands and fathers back in the city.

(Ruth Lehrer is a coordinator with Sullivan County Community College Elderhostel. A retired New York City elementary school teacher, she has had personal essays published in the New York Times, Hadassah, Newsday, and numerous other publications)

:wink:

[Guest]

Thanks Jeff------------------- That was really how it was and those memories any way you spent the time at the Borscht Belt (as it was called) it was wonderful!!!!!!! I try to get up there once a year as I have friends who have a house in Lake Sheldrake and I think of those days and the good times but the thing that is left are the trees and lakes still unspoiled but that time of and people who are not around us anymore made it the best time of our lives. Alice Underground Enchantment of the Seas 1/04