I revisit my past (again) and reveal a bit more about me than most people know.

(Continued from Part 4: Killing Time in New Jersey)

Overnight, trains rumbled by the historic Port Jervis Erie Hotel where I may have been the only guest. It only woke me once or twice and each time I was able to get right back to sleep. So when I pulled myself to a vertical position around 6 AM, I felt refreshed and ready for the long drive ahead of me.

I showered, dressed, and pulled together the few things I’d taken out. Then Penny and I made our exit, heading out to stow my bags in the Maserati before taking her for a walk to do her business.

Breakfast First

Town was pretty much dead at that hour of a Monday morning. The restaurant on the lower level of the hotel was closed. All restaurants that might have provided breakfast and coffee were closed on Mondays. No problem. I used Google Maps to find a place to eat and get a dose of caffeine. It directed me to Stewie’s Restaurant in nearby Matamoras, PA. We headed out.

(It wasn’t until much later in the day that I realized I left Penny’s brown fleece blanket behind in the hotel. It was a shame because the $5 blanket perfectly matched the brown of the leather sofa in my bedroom. I usually kept it draped over the back of the sofa to protect the leather from the afternoon sun and give Penny a place to sit and look out the window.)

Stewie’s turned out to be a diner-type place, which was fine with me. There were a few locals there when I came in. I ordered a breakfast special and a glass of iced tea. I don’t drink diner coffee. It’s not because I’m a coffee snob as much as the fact that I simply can’t drink the swill that comes out of commercial coffee makers and sits on a burner for hours. (Okay, so maybe I am a coffee snob.)

While I sat there, I used my iPad and Google Maps to plan my drive. I’d go northeast on Route 209, which would take me near several places that loomed large in my childhood. A few side trips might be nice. I wasn’t in a hurry to get to my destination; I just needed to arrive before dark. I had the whole day ahead of me.

Revisiting My Past

When I was a kid in the early 1970s, before my parents split, we owned a 22-foot Prowler pull trailer. Bought originally for vacationing after my dad caught a very bad cold on a tent camping trip, my parents decided that it might make a good summer home when based at a full hookup campground in the Catskills. (My family lived in northeastern New Jersey at the time.) It wound up at a place called Rondout Valley Campground in Accord, NY.

Those were great times — some of the last great times of a mostly good childhood. We lived up there all summer and made friends with other families who also lived up there every summer. The Murrays were a good Catholic family from Brooklyn with four kids in an even smaller Prowler trailer and the Smalls were a Jewish (I think) family from somewhere in Westchester county (I think) with two kids packed into a tiny Shasta trailer. We’d spend our days fishing in the creek, exploring the woods, and riding on the running boards of the pickup that doubled as a garbage truck as it made its rounds around the campground. We made and said goodbye to new friends that came for a weekend or a week. At night, we’d either play flashlight tag in the huge field studded with a handful of tiny pine trees or we’d retreat to the Rec Hall where there was a jukebox, pool tables, and pinball machines. I can’t tell you how many times we listened and danced to The Hollies’ Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress) and Sly and the Family Stone’s Dance to the Music. One night a week, they’d play a movie in the open sided “Pavilion” — that’s where I saw The Graduate and I clearly remember Mrs. Murray pulling her kids out after the strip club scene. (Oops.)

Two things brought those days to an end. First, after two summers at Rondout Valley my parents found another campground slightly closer to home. It was brand new and cheaper and I think that’s what convinced us all — including the Murrays and Smalls — to make the move. I was excited because our new campsite would be in the woods, rather than on the edge of a big field. I have a clear memory of walking through the deserted campground on an autumn day, past what would be our new site with our big German shepherd.

But the thing that really shut down my childhood was my parents divorce. You see, while we were away and my dad was working, he was also playing. I remember the fights, I remember the screaming and cursing, and I remember the evening my dad came up to the attic room I shared with my sister to tell us he was leaving. I was sitting on the floor next to a low table he’d made for us, carefully pencilling in the irregularly shaped pavers around the courtyard swimming pool of a dream home I’d designed. (I was really into drawing floor plans back then and still like to do it.) I remember my tears hitting the pencil drawing, soaking into the paper, and creating tiny bumps.

Things got bad and then got worse and then got much better when my mom remarried and we moved to Long Island. All that took about three years, which is an eternity when you’re in your very early teens. The trailer got sold to my mother’s cousin (who married a Nazi — really, but that’s another story) and there were no more vacations for quite a while. My dad moved into an apartment with his girlfriend, who he’d later marry, and adopted her daughter from another relationship so I gained a half sister. For a while, I worked two kid jobs: a paper route and a summer job I qualified for because we were so poor. (I was one of a team of four poverty-stricken teens scraping rust off a chain link fence along a railroad track. You don’t know blisters until you’ve done this kind of work.) I got free lunch in junior high school; I’d pick up 65¢ in a small manila envelope in the school office every day and spend only what I had to on lunch in the cafeteria so I could save the change. I also became responsible for watching my brother, who was about five, and my sister, who is 16 months younger than me, while my mother went to work to put food on the table. She’d made the nearly fatal error of dropping out of high school in her senior year to get married and [six and a half months] later give birth to me. Her struggle to get a job without a high school diploma wasn’t lost on 14-year-old me. Actually, none of our struggle was lost on me and it helped make me the strong, independent, financially stable, cynical, and happily childless person I am today.

I don’t mean to play on your heart strings, dear reader. I’m just laying down the facts. Rondout Valley Campground is a sort of touchstone in my life — something I didn’t realize until today as I put down this summary as yet another lengthy backstory for a blog post.

Anyway, part of my drive that overcast Monday morning was along Route 209 that eventually brought me to Wurtsboro, which we’d pass on our way from home to the trailer. Wurtsboro was where we exited Route 17 after coming over some mountains and descending into a valley. It was memorable mostly because the airport there had gliders and we’d often see them flying overhead as we came down the hill. There were no gliders that morning; the ceilings were much too low for anything to fly and thermals that gliders rely on for flight were not possible.

Now I was tracing roads that I’d been on many, many times — more than 40 years before. I remembered numerous signs for a place called Ice Caves Mountain that I think we finally did visit once way back then and looked for them as I drove but came up empty. The place might be part of a state park now. I did pass Custer’s Last Stand, which is a soft-serve ice cream place that still exists (!), although I remember its name being Custard’s Last Stand.

Of course, there wasn’t much else familiar to me. Places change in 40 years. New York State is one of those weird old places that is constantly mixing old and new. There are homes there dating back to before the Revolutionary War near a brand new Starbuck’s or Dollar General. There are ratty old farm buildings tucked away in dense overgrown thickets, seemingly forgotten, near new condos or subdivisions.

I continued along 209 to Ellenville, which was “the big town” near the trailer. I turned right and drove through. It looked depressed and there seemed to be a lot of homeless-looking people around. But I also saw a bakery and, since real bakeries are a treat after so many years out west, I stopped and went in. Cohen’s Bakery, “Home of the Famous Raisin Pumpernickel,” had quite a selection of fresh baked goods. I bought a danish, despite the fact that I had Italian pastries in a cooler in the trunk, and hit the road again.

Google Maps had Rondout Valley RV Campground listed and I used it to home in on Accord and the campground. I admit that I didn’t find much along the way very familiar. I did remember the left hand turn just before the town of Accord. I passed the entrance to the campground, looking for familiar sights beyond: the Rec Hall and the waterfall where the creek that runs through the campground continues its journey east, merging with numerous small creeks along the way. The Rec Hall was gone and apparently had been for some time — there was nothing more than a grassy field in its place. But Mother Nature takes better care of what she builds and the waterfall was still there.

It might not look like much, but when you’re 12 years old, a “waterfall” like this is a big thing.

I circled back and pulled into the driveway for the campground. There was a gate with a little guard house, but the gate opened before I even had time to stop. (I guess I must have looked trustworthy in the Maserati.) There was a big building with an office and shop on the right — the old office had been on the left and was now a lounge. I pulled into a parking spot, put Penny on a leash, and walked up to the entrance. I left Penny out on the porch and went inside.

Soon I was chatting with a woman only a little younger than me about the campground. It had gone through a bunch of changes in the past 40+ years. For while, it was called Jellystone Campground — think Yogi Bear — and I dimly recall driving past with my wasband years and years ago on one of our trips in the Catskills. Now the place was part of a chain and associated with one those “RV resort” time share places. The gimmick is that you pay a fee to join and get “free” camping at member resorts. But I think this campground was also available to non-members. I didn’t ask. I didn’t have any plans to camp there with my camper nearly 3000 away.

After a trip down memory lane with her, she gave me a map and told me to drive through. I told her I’d rather walk since we’d been in the car for a few hours already. Then I went back outside to fetch Penny. Together, we crossed the one-lane bridge and walked into the campground.

The rickety bridge over the creek is the only way in and out of the campground. Once, during a summer flood, the campground had to be evacuated in the middle of the night because they thought they might lose the bridge.

As I walked along the road, I found myself walking the same way as a man about my age. Of course, we got into a conversation. He was traveling with his wife in their fifth wheel from someplace in the south — I can’t remember where. We went our different ways at the intersection where my family’s trailer had been parked that first year. Behind us had been a big, empty field. Now that field had trees and roads and campsites that hadn’t existed. The place had really grown.

This is the corner where we’d camped all those years ago. (At least I think it was on the corner; it may have been one site to the right.) The trees were newly planted back then, the site was in full sun, and there was nothing but an old cow pasture behind the trailer.

I don’t need to revisit all my memories of this place. What you got above was enough. Let’s just say that a lot of the place was the same but a lot was different. There was a playground I didn’t remember. The Pavilion is now enclosed and has a snack bar. There was a new pool in the big field where we used to play flashlight tag. All the trees that had been around our campsites where huge, giving campers the shade I wished we’d had 40+ years before.

The Pavilion, which had been built when we were there, is now enclosed.

As I stood on the corner in front of what had been my summer home back in 1972, I suddenly got tired of my trip down memory lane. Although I’d originally wanted to walk through the wooded area of the campground that had been limited to tent campers back then, I found myself just wanting to get back in the car and continue my drive. This had been one stop on what I’d begun thinking of as my farewell tour of the New York area. I think I suddenly realized that I’d said goodbye a long time ago. I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to see the place as it was today. I wanted to keep my memories pure.

So I turned around and walked back to the car.

Woodstock

It was still early in the day and I had plenty of time to get to my destination in Vermont, so I took a detour up to Woodstock, NY. I had a vague idea of trying to get a local shop to take a few pieces of the jewelry I make on consignment, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m rather shy about trying to work deals like that. In any case, Woodstock was one of the places I used to come with my wasband and friends back in the day and it was definitely appropriate for my farewell tour.

I took back roads, following the guidance of Google Maps. I wound through farmland, most of which looked neglected. There were more decrepit old farm buildings and some silos, which I rarely see out west, and lots of weeds and brambles covering stuff up. There were also lots of creeks and plenty of trees just starting to turn into their autumn colors. It was a pleasant drive with few other cars on the road.

Eventually, I reached the bridge over the huge Ashokan reservoir, crossed it, and turned east on Route 28. Another turn onto 375 took me into the outskirts of Woodstock.

There was road construction in town. They’d torn up one of the lanes of the road and were using pilot cars to shuttle traffic through a stretch of about a half mile. They had us drive on the compressed gravel side, past pavers working on the other side. I drove carefully, mindful of raised manhole covers and the like. The Maserati rides very low and I had already been warned about potholes.

Town wasn’t anything like I remembered. It had more shops and, try as I might, I could not identify the house a friend’s sister had bought and used as a photo gallery years before. (She’s long gone from the area now, supposedly living near Tucson, AZ.) I drove through town, turned around, and drove back. I parked, put Penny on a leash, and got out for a walk.

A young guy immediately tried to hit me up for a dollar. I said I was sorry but I didn’t have anything for him and I kept walking. Panhandlers in Woodstock? Really?

I went into a few shops, always asking permission to take Penny in. I got into a good conversation with a woman in one shop that I really thought would be a good match for my jewelry, but never got up the nerve to talk to her about it. That was probably a good thing, since she turned to talk about retirement and not being able to afford health care and having to keep the business open just to get by. Maybe not such a good match after all.

I left Penny outside when I went into a bookstore. I spent some time browsing and, as I always do when I go into a local bookstore, I bought a book.

We continued down almost to where the construction began, crossed the street, and walked back. I realized that my trip to Woodstock wasn’t doing anything for me. I found myself eager to continue on my way. So we went back to the car, climbed in, and headed back out of town.

The only other place I was hoping to visit was Smoke House of the Catskills, which still exists. I remember stopping there with my wasband a few times on our way home from visiting friends in Elka Park. But just my luck: it was closed.

The Long Drive

I hopped on the New York Thruway and headed north. I really prefer staying off highways on a road trip, but I had a lot of miles to cover before dark and there wasn’t much else I needed to revisit.

So I took the Thruway north, through Albany. It brought to mind the day 1985 or 1986 when my future wasband and I were part of a convoy of brand new cars heading to Montreal for a Mets game. We were in a Nissan Maxima and our companions drove a Nissan 300ZX, a Mazda RX7, and some other sporty Japanese thing. We were flying at 95 miles per hour most of the way and made it from New York City to Albany in less than 2 hours.

I never thought of the Thruway as Memory Lane, but I guess it can be.

I got off at Troy, dealt with traffic, and finally escaped onto Route 7. Although the day had gotten brighter for a while and even a little sunny, it was overcast again and would stay that way for the rest of the drive. It made things kind of dreary and unremarkable, so even though I was off the highway, I didn’t really enjoy the drive as much as I should have.

Before I hit the Vermont border, I stopped for lunch at a place called Man of Kent Tavern. I’d been passing a bunch of what seemed like British themed restaurants and figured I’d give one a try. The place was absolutely packed, but I got a table near the bar and had the most amazing hearty beef stew — perfect for a damp, overcast day of driving.

Once in Vermont, I continued north on Route 7 into the Green Mountain National Forest. My destination was a friend’s house in East Wallingford, at the northeast corner of the forest. I let Google Maps guide me. Things were fine until I reached the last turn to my friend’s house and Google put me on an unpaved road.

Google had done this once before to me, putting me on an extremely rugged road in Colorado when I was driving south with my camper and boat in tow last autumn. Not knowing how bad the road was up ahead, I’d turned around and found another route, adding about an hour to the total time of my drive that day. Although I didn’t have a boat in tow this time, I also wasn’t in a high clearance 4WD pickup. I’d promised my brother I’d be careful in his car and driving three miles on gravel wasn’t something I wanted to do.

But the road was smooth enough, with a fine, nicely graded gravel surface. I continued up the hill, driving very slowly. The road wound into a thick forest with few homes along the way. There was an old cemetery about a mile and half in that I would have stopped to explore if I wasn’t so road weary. (I’d get to it later in the week.) Then there were more houses and lots of clearings and finally my friend’s 160-year-old farm house, sitting at an intersection.

I pulled into the driveway, parked beside some other cars there, and got out, feeling good to be done driving for the day.

(Continued in Part 6: In Vermont.)