“I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind”- Albert Einstein
MONTICELLO – It’s July 4th. I’m at a picnic table out front of my mother in law’s bungalow at the “Town and Country” Bungalow Colony in Monticello, NY.
It is early afternoon. It is cool, sweatshirt weather and I feel real comfortable. The wind is blowing and the leaves of the large maple and oak trees in the colony are rustling and whistling. Down a slight hill to my left, there are three robins slowly hopping in tandem along the newly mowed grass, pecking for worms.
I have nice memories of this place. My aunt Blanche, when she was single and first started her career as a teacher, lived here. The place, both inside the bungalows and out, looks basically the same now as it did then in the mid-1960s. Being here is like being in a time warp-except that the surrounding neighborhood, which was nice when I was a kid, is seedy and decrepit now.
Town and Country is a now a vestige of a better yesterday on the “little mountain” of Monticello.
It is very quiet here. You could not tell it was July 4th but for some American flags that are planted near some of the trees and pasted up in the windows. While there are a number of grills outside the doors of the bungalow, they are covered-there are no hotdogs and hamburgers being cooked today at Town and Country. My mother in law tells me that the snowbirds are all resting up for the big show in the new clubhouse tonight.
There is something about coming home here, no matter how rundown Monticello has become over the years. The Village of Monticello is where I was born and where I made my some of my best friends for life. It is where I grew up and later returned to live, to practice law, and start a newspaper. It is where I met and fell in love with my wife, the probation officer, in the Village Court (I am on now lifetime probation) and where I had the honor of representing its residents as a County Legislator.
I have this illogical, strong attachment to Monticello and despite living in dynamic South Florida for ten years, I can’t shake it.
Monticello was once the epicenter of the famed Borscht Belt. As tourism declined over the last 30 years, the middle class and businesses moved out of the village and it has become very poverty stricken, gang ridden, and blighted.
When I lived here, I always wanted the already decaying Village to rejuvenate, to join the rest of the growth taking place in adjacent counties that linked their existence to commuting to the metropolitan NYC area.
Now that I am a little older, I am glad Monticello did not become yet another suburb-despite the despair and poverty that has encompassed it and the lack of any intelligence and vision of those now in control of its destiny.
While Monticello itself is for the most part a slum, parts of it and the areas surrounding the village are still very beautiful and country. Yesterday, I went with my son on a drive on a country road in the appropriately named Town of Forestburgh. We drove to a secluded waterfall that I had discovered years ago near where the author Stephen Crane lived. We hiked down to the base of it and I sat there on a large flat rock between two trees for about a half an hour, listening to the rushing water that drowned out all other sounds around the river. All my troubles dissipated at that moment. I felt peace.
The Catskill Mountain woods always have had a calming effect on me, but now that I don’t live near them, I relish the short interludes of such tranquility I find in them.
I told my son yesterday that it was important in life to find quiet places where you can go and really think in a deep, reflective manner about life, to try to gain and maintain the proper perspective of your existence. I don’t have that now in hot, crowded South Florida. I have to come here for it.
When I was growing up in the village near several bungalow colonies, I never understood the allure of my country village to city people. At this moment at the old “Town and Country” bungalow colony, surrounded by tall trees and robins feeding, smelling the fresh cut grass, feeling the cool summer breeze, I now understand.
The Catskill Mountains are still as magical as they were in the days of Rip Van Winkle. Sitting here, I find there is still peace and beauty in Monticello. This village will always have a strong attachment to my heart. I will always consider and call Monticello my home.
MONTICELLO – It’s July 4th. I’m at a picnic table out front of my mother in law’s bungalow at the “Town and Country” Bungalow Colony in Monticello, NY.
It is early afternoon. It is cool, sweatshirt weather and I feel real comfortable. The wind is blowing and the leaves of the large maple and oak trees in the colony are rustling and whistling. Down a slight hill to my left, there are three robins slowly hopping in tandem along the newly mowed grass, pecking for worms.
I have nice memories of this place. My aunt Blanche, when she was single and first started her career as a teacher, lived here. The place, both inside the bungalows and out, looks basically the same now as it did then in the mid-1960s. Being here is like being in a time warp-except that the surrounding neighborhood, which was nice when I was a kid, is seedy and decrepit now.
Town and Country is a now a vestige of a better yesterday on the “little mountain” of Monticello.
It is very quiet here. You could not tell it was July 4th but for some American flags that are planted near some of the trees and pasted up in the windows. While there are a number of grills outside the doors of the bungalow, they are covered-there are no hotdogs and hamburgers being cooked today at Town and Country. My mother in law tells me that the snowbirds are all resting up for the big show in the new clubhouse tonight.
There is something about coming home here, no matter how rundown Monticello has become over the years. The Village of Monticello is where I was born and where I made my some of my best friends for life. It is where I grew up and later returned to live, to practice law, and start a newspaper. It is where I met and fell in love with my wife, the probation officer, in the Village Court (I am on now lifetime probation) and where I had the honor of representing its residents as a County Legislator.
I have this illogical, strong attachment to Monticello and despite living in dynamic South Florida for ten years, I can’t shake it.
Monticello was once the epicenter of the famed Borscht Belt. As tourism declined over the last 30 years, the middle class and businesses moved out of the village and it has become very poverty stricken, gang ridden, and blighted.
When I lived here, I always wanted the already decaying Village to rejuvenate, to join the rest of the growth taking place in adjacent counties that linked their existence to commuting to the metropolitan NYC area.
Now that I am a little older, I am glad Monticello did not become yet another suburb-despite the despair and poverty that has encompassed it and the lack of any intelligence and vision of those now in control of its destiny.
While Monticello itself is for the most part a slum, parts of it and the areas surrounding the village are still very beautiful and country. Yesterday, I went with my son on a drive on a country road in the appropriately named Town of Forestburgh. We drove to a secluded waterfall that I had discovered years ago near where the author Stephen Crane lived. We hiked down to the base of it and I sat there on a large flat rock between two trees for about a half an hour, listening to the rushing water that drowned out all other sounds around the river. All my troubles dissipated at that moment. I felt peace.
The Catskill Mountain woods always have had a calming effect on me, but now that I don’t live near them, I relish the short interludes of such tranquility I find in them.
I told my son yesterday that it was important in life to find quiet places where you can go and really think in a deep, reflective manner about life, to try to gain and maintain the proper perspective of your existence. I don’t have that now in hot, crowded South Florida. I have to come here for it.
When I was growing up in the village near several bungalow colonies, I never understood the allure of my country village to city people. At this moment at the old “Town and Country” bungalow colony, surrounded by tall trees and robins feeding, smelling the fresh cut grass, feeling the cool summer breeze, I now understand.
The Catskill Mountains are still as magical as they were in the days of Rip Van Winkle. Sitting here, I find there is still peace and beauty in Monticello. This village will always have a strong attachment to my heart. I will always consider and call Monticello my home.
No comments:
Post a Comment