Harry Gersh here continues his very informal sociological explorations of some of the basic institutions of Jewish living. Our readers will remember his studies of “The Jewish Paintner” (January 1948) and “Mama’s Cooking: Minority Report” (October 1947). Now Mr. Gersh turns his attention to that unique phenomenon of the Catskills, the “kochalein.”
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In the good old days when my great-uncle Zissel came to America (circa 1904) the word “fix” had two distinct meanings. If you “fixed” a house or an umbrella, you built it up. But if you “fixed” a person, then it was just the opposite—you tore him down. Is it any wonder that my great-uncle Zissel had trouble with English?
But Fetter Zissel and his generation bided their time. As soon as they had settled down a bit in America, they gave “fix” another meaning. In a way they fixed “fix.” They built it up, so that the verb was no longer a threat to living persons. As in: “She went to the country to fix herself.”
I have always felt that their deep faith in the healing power of the country was in some way connected with our mothers’ passionate worry about eggs. In our house (in yours, too) an eating egg—very, very different from a baking or cooking egg—had to be rushed into the icebox within twenty-four hours after it was laid or you could get poisoned. Nature’s foolproof packaging miracle, and it wasn’t good enough for mama. (That it remained in the icebox for four or five days didn’t matter.) Mama had a conviction about color, too. Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks, Barred Rocks—whole families, divisions, generations of chickens lived to no purpose—they laid brown eggs. Definitely not for human consumption. But in the country you got fresh, white eggs. You could eat them before the cackle died out. A little smelly and dirty, but in the country that’s healthy.
And milk. To a growing boy nothing tastes worse than warm, bubbly milk fresh from the teat. But it’s healthy—Pasteur to the contrary notwithstanding.
Air. In the city every vagrant breath of air is evil. Any air in motion is a draft—an immediate threat of pneumonia, influenza, pleurisy, and lung-untsindenish. In the country you go outside in a half-gale, with the dew thick as sour cream, half-naked, to enjoy fresh air . . . fresh from the North Pole. That’s healthy. A meshugas.
Yes, a lunacy indeed, but in the old days reserved strictly for rich people. It cost money to go to the country and who had money? But the yearning for the unattainable therapeutic Mountains remained in the Jewish breast, and in due course from the womb of time came the kochalein, the poor man’s Shangri-La, where he, too, could “fix” himself, like any millionaire, almost. . . .
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Scattered through the Mountains since my great-uncle Zissel’s time, it was not until the 30’s that the kochalein flowered into the big business it is today. Child from its beginnings of the shrunken pocketbook, the decade of the Depression was its opportunity. Suppose stocks plunged downward and the dresses hung customerless on the racks, a man must still fix himself—indeed all the more reason. . . .
Today the kochalein population exceeds that of summer camps and hotels combined.
I know this fact because I recently overheard a well-known hotel owner admit it, in an argument with a kochalein entrepreneur.
The hotel man had been citing a long list of illustrious inns and equally sumptuous summer camps, their history and loyal following.
“Hotel people are hotel people,” the hotel man contended. “Your kochaleiniks are just people who can’t afford a hotel. Give them a few dollars and a taste of a hotel and they’ll never go back to you.”
The kochalein owner was wily. “How many rooms you think in all the hotels and camps in the Mountains?” The hotel owner deliberated. “Forty thousand.”
“Nu, and how many kochalein rooms you think?”
The hotel owner bit. “Twenty, twenty-five thousand.”
“All right, so I’ll agree with you,” the kochalein landlord said. “Forty thousand hotel rooms and twenty-five thousand kochalein rooms. Now tell me, how many people live in a hotel room and how many in a kochalein shtall?”
That was the end of the argument. It takes a shrewd man to run a Catskill hotel. He had established the figures, now he had to accept the conclusion. Anyone knew that in kochaleins, as compared to hotels, you have twice as many people in one-half as many rooms.
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To those who know it best, the word “kochalein” means “crowded.” “Cook by yourself”—but live together. And what a together!
The price of a hotel room is determined by the number of people using it. But once a kochalein is rented—it is the same money if mamma and the kids come up alone, and it is the same money if the whole family comes along. So one can afford to be a sport. For the Fourth of July week one has brother Jake and his family as guests and two weeks after that Joe and his kids. It sounds very nice, “Come up for a couple weeks to my summer place.”
So kochaleins are crowded. That holds for deluxe accommodations, semi-deluxe, ordinary, and sub-ordinary. The differences in classification have to do with how many people use the same bathroom and whether there are private or community facilities for cooking. (It’s more trouble, but a lot more fun, if everybody uses the same kitchen.) These classifications, it should be noted, are for researchers only. By common consent of rentiers and renters alike, no kochalein is ever spoken of except as “strictly deluxe.”
There are all kinds of sub-classifications, too. But kochaleiniks are not interested in words. They come to fix themselves.
Towards the end of winter, any winter, ads appear in the metropolitan dailies. Something like this:
“BUNGalows, hskpg apts, all impvmts, all spts, 75m N. Y., reasonable.”
It’s all abbreviated except the reasonable. Uninitiated kochaleiniks sometimes argue about those abbreviations. But it doesn’t do any good. If the landlord couldn’t win arguments he couldn’t stay in business. Not that business, anyway.
I heard one such argument last summer. The potential renter was being a bit critical of the housekeeping potential. The landlord was not amused.
“My own wife keeps house like this,” he said. “How many maids you’re expecting to bring up?”
How about the “all spts”?
The landlord had a ready answer. “Sure, we’re all sports here.” When the customers still insisted on specifications, the landlord was not embarrassed. “So what’s missing? Polo and horse racing? Such sports we aren’t.”
That renter must have been an outlander of some sort. He should have known that the sports list at a kochalein is standard— pinochle, mah-jongg, gin rummy, and backbiting. The 75 miles from New York is not too inaccurate. So it’s 91 miles from George Washington Bridge. Which means that during the season, in a good, fast car, with a hungry New York City taxi driver at the wheel, you can make it in six hours and twenty minutes.
“Reasonable”? Well, really, what’s reasonable these days?
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As soon as the ads appear the customers come up to look. They may have spent the last ten summers at the same place and still they come to look. That’s a funny thing about kochaleiniks. Some things they never learn. Each year, when they leave, the landlord tells them of next season’s wonders. The new swimming pool, the new refrigerators, the new sinks and stoves. And each year the same overflowing brook, the same overflowing refrigerators, sinks, and stoves. But each year they come to look.
First to come up are the cautious souls. They come early, sometimes before the ads appear. They come because they know that the good places go early. And maybe the owner hasn’t figured out what kind of a season it will be and will let the first one go cheaply. They’re silly.
In April and May the second group appears. They just happen to be passing by on a picnic and so they stopped in to take a look. No one is fooled. These middle-of-the-roaders hope that the landlord is getting worried about the lateness of the season, or maybe he’s getting soft-hearted, or maybe he has only one left and wants to close his books. They’re silly, too.
The gamblers come in June and even early July. They figure that if there is anything unrented this late in the season, they’ll pick it up for peanuts. They’re just as silly as the rest.
After renting, the next step is moving. There are three groups here too. These groups divide up according to children. One week before school closes half the renters arrive. Their kids are smart—so what if they’ll miss a week? And anyway, what can they learn in the last week?
The day after school closes the other two groups come up. The families of the really smart kids—you have to work at being smart —and the households of the not-so-smart ones. Why should you take a chance just for five days?
As for transportation, there are cars, trucks, taxis, station wagons, limousines and a peculiar vehicle known as a hack. Hacks are 1928 model Cadillacs, Lincolns, or Packards, the biggest sizes made. They appear only during kochalein season. The rest of the year their owners spend in Florida. They can afford it.
The luggage compartments of all bulge with trunks, suitcases, handbags, satchels, Gladstone bags, and old-country wicker kezinehs. Strapped on the roofs are baby carriages, playpens, cribs, mattresses, and high chairs. Crushed into the front seat with the driver are the adults—the children ride precariously on a mound of bedding, dishes, coats, food, and toys in the rear.
Police in the back country roads used to do all right with such charges as overloading, freighting without a license, obscuring the driver’s vision, and other assorted infractions. But even the police can stand only so much. In one town on Route 17 the officers admit they hide during the first two weeks of September and the last two of June. It isn’t worth it, they say.
Arriving at their home-away-from-home, the kochaleiniks unpack while the landlord stands by. He is there to forestall complaints. The newly arrived householders now see that the new bed (guaranteed) was not moved in; that the mattress (absolutely) is the same one they rebelled against last summer; and that the sink (I give you my word) is still rusty. If the landlord waited until mamma had the whole list in her head and came looking for him, he’d have trouble. This way, as she calls out her complaints one by one, he escapes trouble with the same answer.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it as soon as you’re settled.”
In a kochalein the settling process takes until August 1. After that you’re thinking about going home. Obviously, then it’s too late to do any major repairs or changes. As for next season, he’ll have it all fixed up by then.
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To fix yourself and the kids (that’s the reason for all this, remember?) you need food, air, and loose clothing. The air is already there and the clothing you start loosening on the way up. So food becomes important.
The first days’ meals are no problem. In the load of furniture, clothing, and kids there was a long paper bag. The poundages vary from kochaleinik to kochaleinik, but the ingredients are standard: a dozen large rolls, a pumpernickel, a pound of corned beef, a half pound of pastrami, pickles, mustard, sauerkraut, sour tomatoes, bagel, lox, cheese, and a large smoked white fish. It’s quite satisfactory. When this is gone, about the time the husband leaves to go back to work, the real struggle to keep alive begins.
This struggle with the elements takes a good part of the time and thought of the female kochaleinik. (In kochalein country the local farmers and food purveyors are part of the elements.)
Milk is easy to come by. For not a penny a quart more than you pay in the city you can get fresh, whole, country milk. But healthy.
Eggs and chickens are no problem. The landlord or the farmer next door has a few chickens. The eggs are so fresh they’re still stuck with feathers and dirt. Once a week, on Thursday or Friday, the local schochet comes to koileh the chickens. And who needs chicken except on Friday night?
Vegetables, home grown, and staples, city imported, are available from the landlord’s own store. It’s not really a store. The landlord is the first to admit it. It’s a service to the renters run—almost—without profit. The vegetables are good, vine-ripened. They come from the farm down the road. By some peculiarity of capitalist economics they cost just a little more than the same vegetables— picked, packed, and shipped to New York—bought at a high-rent greengrocers.
The landlord explains it this way, “But this is fresh picked. All the vitamins. It’s not worth a penny more?”
Sure it is.
Meats are a bit more complicated. To get kosher meat the women have to go to the Village. (In the Mountains it might be a bustling city of twenty-five thousand with six five-and-ten-cent stores and two movies. But to the kochaleiniks it’s always the Village.) The butcher will deliver a phone order but what kind of a berieh will buy a piece of meat without seeing it cut and weighed? Who can trust those butchers?
Twice a week the women go to the Village to shop. Probably they need only two lamb chops for the baby, but they go to shop. In the butcher shop they meet all the other women from all the other kochaleins, all in to see a piece meat. While they’re there they step into the ten-cent store, the department store, and the specialty shoppe to price that shorts and halter set.
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Preparing the food involves the real heartbreak. The facilities are limited, the children are underfoot when they should be outside, and four miles away when they should be eating. And there are too many women anyway. The competition is terrific.
This kitchen in one kochalein is in a great, overbuilt farmhouse. The place is big enough to feed a large hotel. But it has more cooks. It serves fifteen families. Against opposite walls are two rows of stoves, seven on one side, eight on the other. Over each stove is a cupboard. The third wall has five sinks and against the fourth are food closets from floor to ceiling. Each food closet door has large staples with burglar-proof locks. Down the center of the room runs a large worktable. The layout, with some minor differences, is fairly standard.
At breakfast the kitchen is almost seemly. Breakfast depends on so many factors—the age of the children, the weight of the mother, how simply exhausted she is, and what did she do last night. Lunchtime varies too. And anyway, did anyone come up to the country to spend the day in the kitchen? The kids won’t sit still long enough to eat a hot meal. The store carries several well-known brands of salami, baloney, and wurst.
Suppers follow a weekly pattern. Monday isn’t so bad. The mothers are tired from the weekend and there’s always something left over from Sunday. It doesn’t spoil in one day. Tuesday, some energy returns and hot meals appear. Wednesday is movie night in the Village. And when it’s hot what can be better than sour cream and farmer cheese? Thursday you eat lightly because tomorrow is Friday. On Friday—the men are coming— all week they ate in restaurants, you don’t know what chazerei —and there’s only two days to fix them up.
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On friday it starts after a hurried lunch. Fifteen women assisted by assorted older daughters and female relatives working over fifteen stoves and five sinks. Plus a recapitulation of the week’s events, mamma’s favorite recipe, and that Mrs. Field down the road. As an overtone, each cook deprecates her own meichel while all tied up inside trying to outdo her neighbors.
The job is harder than it appears at first. The competition. Friday night these women all have chicken because the schochet comes only once a week—and once a week you need chicken, no? Fifteen different ways of preparing chicken, each way better than the other fourteen. It’s impossible in the city— in the country, in a kochalein kitchen, it happens.
There are other niceties and excitements on Friday in the kitchen. That’s the day for healing old wounds, ending established feuds—and starting new ones. Fifteen female cooks and at least fifteen female helpers—it’s impossible.
Mrs. Miller has just pulled the innards out of a chicken and she runs to the sink with her hands held far out in front of her. She wants wash water and she wants it fast. (The only drawback to killed-on-the-farm chicken is that it comes complete.) The first sink she gets to, they’re all taken, is the one where Mrs. Berg is carefully running cold water through a sieve filled with luckschen for kugel. Mrs. Berg cannot stop this process because if she does the kugel won’t have the proper crispness on the outside and the proper softness on the inside. Mrs. Miller, however, can’t wait because her hands are so dirty and smelly she’ll get sick. That’s enough to start this week’s feud.
The words that start the imbroglio are unimportant. They depend on the chronological age of the participants, their ages relative to each other, and their respective social stratum both at home and in the kochalein.
(Mostly the kochalein is a sound democratic force, a leveler, with divergent social and educational groups meeting on an even plane. Mr. Berg is a cloaks’ operator, Mr. Miller is a candy-store owner, Mr. Levine owns a dress factory, and Mr. Goldquist is a doctor of medicine.)
The Miller-Berg feud is on. When Mr. Miller and Mr. Berg arrive that Friday evening they are at a loss. All last weekend they had played pinochile and all the way up on the train they had discussed pinochle. Now their wives get mad if the men as much as look at each other.
On Mrs. Berg’s left is Mrs. Blatt. Two Fridays ago they had a misunderstanding about accidentally spilling some hot chicken fat over some cold tomatoes. Since then there had been a cold, voiceless haughtiness between them. But tomatoes are tomatoes and a kugel is a kugel —right is right. So Mrs. Berg explains the whole thing to Mrs. Blatt. Mrs. Blatt is properly sympathetic. She remembers a ruined kugel herself.
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For all that the dinners get cooked—and T well cooked. At seven they are simmering redolently on fifteen stoves awaiting fifteen work-weary and restaurant-starved husbands.
Men going to the country for a weekend pack according to a peculiar pattern. Their clothes they carry in packages, while their suitcases bulge with treasure from the delicatessens and appetizing stores. Blame the landlord—he doesn’t hold with food from the city. It’s not that he minds losing the business, but bringing food from the city is a personal reflection on his prices and quality. City food brings mice, too. The landlord’s displeasure is important when it comes to small repairs—the rent is already paid. So the lox and corned beef ride in the suitcase.
When the men have paid their three dollars a head for a three-mile ride from the station they look for their wives in the line of women on the porch. It’s not always easy to find your own wife right away. The clothes always differ from last week’s ensemble, and are unfamiliar anyway.
The men wash and change into slacks and sport shirts, the dining room fills up, and the festivities begin. (Mr. Green doesn’t change into a sport shirt. He wears a white shirt and tie all weekend. There’s a Mr. Green at every kochalein.)
It’s a close fit in the dining room on Friday night. The old customers are near the windows and near the kitchen. The new Mrs. Litwin, it’s her first year, is over in the corner. Mr. Litwin is inconsiderate. First he complains that by the time his wife brings the soup it might as well be cold borscht. Then he complains that it’s so hot in his corner that everything tastes fried.
The decibel level in the room is high. Fifty per cent adult women noise. Forty-nine per cent piping children noise and one per cent “yes,” “hum,” and “uhhuh” from the men.
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After supper the men drift outside and lower themselves onto the porch rockers. In the dark they surreptitiously loosen their belts. If their wives have really outdone themselves, they open the top pants button. The women and children—that is, those children whose parents believe in the potch and frosk method of raising children—clear and wash the dishes. A half hour of the clean piney air and the men are ready for the evening’s entertainment.
At an unspoken signal they drift back inside to the dining room. In a few moments the tables have been rearranged and two large poker games, six pinochle sets, three gin groups, and one persistent mah-jongg game are going. One foursome plays bridge. They don’t really belong.
Shortly after the games are started the windows are closed against drafts. As the night progresses the cigarette, pipe, and cigar smoke solidifies. At twelve there is a break for coffee, tea, and cake. Of course, there’s always some balagoleh who demands a thick sandwich. The refreshments do not interrupt the important business of cards. But eventually they all go to bed; you sleep well after a day in the country.
Saturday night’s entertainment is different. It’s a peculiar fact, but with all the space in the Mountains ninety-three per cent of all kochaleins are within walking distance of a hotel or summer camp that has professional entertainment and a dance band. One explanation is that the rent of kochaleins is determined in part by the quality of this nearby—and free—entertainment. One enterprising entrepreneur even used it in his advertising. But that’s misrepresentation. He couldn’t guarantee entrance.
In the old days-at least eight years ago— hotel owners didn’t mind the Saturday evening visitors. True, they took all the front seats at the show, they filled the bar with beer drinkers and discouraged the scotch drinkers, but it helped to have some men around. It looks bad when most of the couples on the dance floor are women. But like all good things, it was overdone. This explains why high-priced, high-entertainment- level summer places are more closely guarded than Fort Knox. It doesn’t help, though. Kochaleiniks are smarter than guards.
This perennial struggle has been known to precipitate serious diplomatic incidents. There are two fine camps up in the Mountains within a mile of each other. One belongs to an international union, the other to a school. The school camp, open to anyone with the steep price, is known for its shows. It is, therefore, surrounded by a stout wire fence and patrolled by private guards.
One summer Saturday night the union president, a frequent visitor to the White House, walked over to the neighboring camp. His union and the school were quite friendly, and he knew the manager of the camp personally. A private policeman, complete with Sam Browne belt and large pistol, stopped him at the gate and asked for his registration card.
“I’m the president of the union over there,” the labor leader explained.
“Can’t get in unless you’re registered,” the cop answered brusquely. He knew all, or almost all, the dodges of kochaleiniks.
“But I’m Phillip Philipson, president of the union,” the visitor cried angrily.
“I don’t care if you’re the President of the United States. You can’t see our show for nothing.” The cop was a Republican
They say that Mr. Philipson hasn’t visited his friends since.
Too bad the union president didn’t succeed in getting in. He would have found most of the adult population of the dozen kochaleins in the neighborhood calmly watching the show—many of them members of his own union.
How they get in is a secret. Some know the right combination of dress and manner to awe the cop. Some have boats cached away and know of secret landing places. There are even claims that kochaleiniks train their children to open secret holes in the steel barricades. But mostly it’s a secret. And when the camp owners discover the latest loophole, the visitors invent a new one. For every new defense there is always a new, more powerful offense.
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Although the kochalein comes alive to the husband only on weekends, it still goes on during the week. In his absence, it fixes his wives and children. Most important are the wives, in kochaleins, as elsewhere.
Some wives take the whole-summer-in-the-country idea seriously. They shepherd the kids through planned activities, play games with them, sit in the sun, and go swimming. The first year they even bring their tennis rackets along. This kind of progressivism is accepted by the other women with knowing smiles. They were young once themselves. But can you live and bring up children with books?
As for older and wiser women, either they play mah-jongg when they should be taking care of their children, or they play the latest variation of gin rummy until long-after- they-should-have-been-in-bed-already. For casual dress, bathing suits are worn. But the bathing suits cannot be of knitted cloth. They must be of woven material. I think they’re called dressmaker suits. For more formal occasions they wear shorts and halters or slacks and halters. Usually the ones who wear slacks should wear shorts and the ones who wear shorts should stay home.
The conversation is pretty stylized, too. “Did the baby go from baby foods to junior foods and why doesn’t my Leslie eat like your kids.” “David got the same spots after eating tomatoes as your Philip got from peaches.” “I could never use Birdseye diapers on my babies. They have such tender skins.”
In between there’s always a youngster who comes crying because he lost his toy or because he didn’t lose his toy.
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Saddest denizen of the kochalein is the husband on vacation. Two weeks of ease and comfort and not another human being around who even cares how the Dodgers are making out, or who can intelligently meld a pinochle hand. He gets up early because the kids are in the next room and the walls are paper thin. Fourteen days in the whole year when he can honestly sleep late, and he has to spend them at a kochalein.
During the day he wanders about looking, he doesn’t know for what. Nothing is as it should be. In the evening you can’t get a News or Mirror for a dollar and in the morning there’s some kind of skinny paper with a strange name. He plays with the kids for a while but there are too many of them, and you can’t slap someone else’s kids. So he goes and talks to the landlord about the price of new sinks. As if he cares.
In the afternoon he tries to take a nap. It’s easier to sleep in the zoo. Later he wanders into the kitchen for a glass of tea to pass the time away. Once inside the door, once he hears the noises of thirty women preparing dinner, he rushes out. It’s a long time till Friday when the rest of the men come out.
Lately some of the progressive mothers have introduced new “improvements.” In one community they now have weekly “cookouts.” It’s for the kids. And the kids weren’t happy before they invented “cookouts”?
First they badgered the landlord into building an outdoor grill. Now he has the job of providing charcoal for the fire. In mid-morning of cookout day the women start gathering before the grill. As soon as they are all gathered they break away to bring half their belongings to the cookout. They bring most of what is in the icebox, also tables, chairs, silverware, and dishes, plus things to keep the children quiet.
For years these same women sterilized bottles, toys, and everything that went in or near their kids. Now they drag them through the cinders to the cookout.
No one knows how to build a fire, so either there’s a roaring furnace that engulfs everything on the grill or a puny little flame that won’t even warm your hands. And while the fire is abuilding the kids are underfoot and half inside the firebox. Why don’t women ever get ulcers?
Main cookout dish is hamburgers. Very healthy when cooked on an outdoor grill. These hamburgers, we would have you know, are made of the finest beefsteak chopped.
Unhappily, they are charred black on the outside and dripping raw on the inside. But in the country it’s healthy.
From all this you guess that the march of progressive education and scientific child upbringing is beginning to be felt by the world of the kochalein. The cookout is only a harbinger of aberrations to come, novelties that if continued will wipe out the whole geshmak of kochalein living. For either you have kochaleins or you have Dr. Gesell. You can’t have both.
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