Once Upon a Time... In Upstate New York

“The past is a foreign country” as L.P. Hartley famously wrote in his 1953 novel The Go-Between. Yet sometimes we are impelled to visit this unfamiliar land even though the memories invoked are no longer crystal clear. The past can indeed be a realm of shadows and haze, yet these silhouette images can reveal truths. And it’s often these half-buried truths that comprise the most vivid stories with which we make some sort of sense of our lives.

I’m not a sentimental person by nature. That the past is important to me is obvious from my musical taste and my obsession with hard-and-fast facts pertaining to events gone by. I try to view my life in as authentic a light as possible, no matter the uncomfortable emotions examination might invoke. I don’t sugarcoat my earlier life, particularly not my childhood. Sometimes the less said about it all the better. (Besides, it’s only fair that you save the messiest stuff for your therapist.)

The recent death of Peter Yarrow, the last remaining member of the popular folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, did bring back early memories of my life in the early 1960s, and I’m overjoyed that they were pleasant ones. But first a bit of cultural history.

Once upon a long-gone summer in upstate New York there were bungalow colonies. While fathers would stay in New York City working, the rest of the family would be sent off to a private upstate community, usually not more than two hours outside of the city limits, comprised of individual living spaces — the bungalows — a pool and lake, a play ground and tennis courts, and a communal recreation building. The kids would go to day camp, the mothers would do what mothers did, and the fathers would visit on the weekends. For those who could afford it, and it couldn’t have been all that expensive if we did it, bungalow colonies were the places to go for Jewish families during the Postwar Baby Boomer period of the late 40’s through the early 60’s.

I mention religious faith because, though basically secular in nature, these colonies attracted inner city Jews. All were welcome — I distinctly remember a Gentile family living next to us during one summer in one of the three or four different colonies we attended — but it seemed that the vast majority of the populace was Jewish. Nobody made a big deal about it — at least that’s how I remember it — but there was a general feeling that the same people who surrounded you a bit south had joined you on your jaunt up north. It was all very familiar and consciously comforting.

That my most pleasant memory of those early summers involves music should be no surprise. I imagine the year was 1962 or ‘63; I was either five or six. The Beatles were just around the corner. What was filling the airwaves, besides all the indelible pop music of the pre-rock era was folk music. Now I’m not talking about Pete Seeger or any of the other foundational figures of the period — I’d even bet that few were even that familiar with the work of their fellow landsman Bob Dylan. What was heard were the mellifluous harmonies of Peter, Paul and Mary, the hit-making trio that brought folk music to the masses.

And now some of the masses were upstate. As I remember, on weekend nights at this particular bungalow colony (the first we attended? At least it’s the first I remember) we would all gather in the communal “rec hall” and sing folk music standards like, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” and “If I Had a Hammer.” Was it an a cappella event? Did someone play guitar and lead us in song? Did we song along to P,P,M recordings? Not only do I not remember those details, I don’t want to find out the particulars. This time they don’t really matter.

For what was most significant about this early memory is the warmth and unity engendered by the communal singing. That the songs spoke of social change was probably lost to me. What I took away from it all was how song could fashion a sense of community. That music itself was a force bigger than the individual.

And that was a notion that changed my life.