Wedged like a rolled carpet in the back seat of the Dodge, Appleman watches as the first moon of summer rises dumpling-like above the trees along the perimeter of the hotel parking field, a matzahball moon, plumply gold, softly pocked, adrift in the soup of an Appalachian night. In Appleman’s opinion you could eat a moon like this, you could catch it in a spoon. Your eyes might take in woodlands but the air smells of cafeteria, of cabbage rolls braised in raisin sauce, of pearled barley smothered with mushrooms and onions. Roasted chickens roost here in the trees. The streams leap with sweet-and-sour fish. Where are we, Ladies and Gentlemen? Of this there can be no doubt.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Borscht Belt, the Catskills, that promised land of all promised lands between the Hudson and the Delaware. Before Prozac, before Miltown, here angst once took its vacations. In these gently rolling hills God Himself seemed to take things more easily, a forgiving divinity lolling among the tamaracks. All men were rich here, all women were pretty, all boys were men, and all women were girls. You got lucky in the Borsht Belt. One imagined it similar to that relieved exhilaration of those funded colonies in the Argentine where there was no such thing as a Jewish occupation. You didn’t have to be pre-med and bookish. You could be a gaucho, a conquistador. You could strain the earth for its hidden riches. This last of course is Appleman’s...
Subscribe now to keep reading
Please enter your email to log in or create a new account.