November 7, 2002

Fellow named Wayne Greenstone from Newark, New Jersey, made a good suggestion for a side trip last month in New York state that brought the Catskill Mountains into full autumn focus.

I called him at his law office and asked where to see the Catskills without doing a lot of driving. Modern traffic codes nationwide turn the driver's side on automobiles into cellular telephone booths. Once I leave the dirt road leading to the ranch, at any second a busy signal or a wrong number is apt to send the oncoming traffic off the road.

He recommended the Mohonk Mountain Guest House close to New Paltz, New York, some 65 miles from New York City. A "mountain guest house" turned out to be 300 rooms cornered by castle-like rock spires on 2600 acres of forest land by a private lake. Grounds blossoming in a flush of red and yellow fall flowers blended into a setting of purple vine arbors tended by 10 gardeners. At summer high season, the guest house employs 600 people, or enough staff to make a ratio of one employee to one guest.

The last addition to the lodge was a maple wood paneled dining room in 1907. Rates include meals, valet parking, porter services, guided nature walks, lectures, and a room looking at either the lake or the mountains. Fifteen percent gratuity plus seven per cent state tax is added at a checkout so informal that the feeling is of having been a guest.

When Alfred and Albert Smiley, twin brothers, bought the land in 1869, they gradually turned it in to a commercial establishment. The reason the brothers had the money to buy property after the Civil War is that the North won and also that they were Quakers. From what the books said in the library, Quakers don't crouch in trenches or return from battles dragging a hind leg from deflecting a barrage of grapeshot.

In 1869, the year the Smileys raised $28,000 to buy lands, citizens in war-shattered Texas tried to rustle enough maverick cattle from the dense thickets of East Texas and the cow jungle of South Texas to buy flour and beans. The only chance of raising 28,000 bucks down here in 1869 would have been finding the Bowie mine, or maybe a sunken Spanish ship off the Gulf Coast.

But back to nowadays ... early in the mornings hot tea and black coffee are served on the wide verandah by caned rocking chairs overlooking the private lake. Amber shale in the lake bottom purifies the water. Enormous gray boulders lining the shore form perfect crevices for little boys to risk breaking an arm or shattering a kneecap. Aluminum canoes thump moored against the wharf, with ka-whomp, ka-whomp resounding from the modern world. Above and beyond, a pileated woodpecker, Woody Woodpecker size, knocks off pieces of thick chestnut bark in chunks the size of shoe heels, hammering away in a thumping staccato, pile-driving her sharp beak to intercept trunk-burrowing ants.

My room without a private balcony was in the more modest wing of the resort the Smileys leased to a boy's school during the Great Depression. Must have been a desperate situation to allow students on the grounds if they were like the guys I knew in Texas private schools. One morning, I caught a whiff of the smell of dormitories of old. Later, however, outdoors I located a muskrat's nest upwind from the open hallway, wafting in the powerful pungency of young males.

Sitting on the big open porch or retreating indoors to a soft velour-covered sofa in front of the fireplace by the stairwell saved 65 dollars a day by forsaking a private balcony. Each of the six floors had built-in bookshelves, plus a reading room filled with books on the first floor to further assuage the hardship of no balcony. Television existed on the ground floor, but I never heard the speaker sound or caught a flash from the screen.

Take warning, however; balconies or no balconies, rooms don't have TVs or air conditioning. Wines, spirits, and beer may be purchased at meals. Folks in need of late-hour diversion may choose listening to the grandfather clock chime in the big ballroom, or move outdoors to hear the lake water lapping on the shores. Movies are shown every night in a theater. Dances are held during holidays. Ice skating on an enclosed rink up the hillside offers winter diversion, as does cross-country skiing. As mentioned, lecturers and performers provide evening programs.

The days passed walking in autumn sun illuminating green to red-gold boughs drooping over the paths. At breakfast, the leaves floated across the big picture windows, framing a background of tall conifers fading into hazy mountain slopes speckled with white clearings. At night, a five-course dinner was served to ladies and gentlemen dressed for the affair. Bless ol' Wayne for finding a record of man's gentility frozen in time.

November 7, 2002