Mishpacha contributors share accounts of those special summers disconnected from the grind

Location: The Catskill Mountains

Years: The 1960s

“Ninety miles away!” my husband announced jubilantly as we neared South Fallsburg, this year’s venue for our annual summer family getaway.

I spot the Borscht Belt historical marker boasting the more than 500 resorts, 50,000 bungalows, and 1,000 rooming houses established between the 1920s and early 70s by Jewish entrepreneurs in response to the exclusion of the Jewish community from existing establishments. And I am whisked back in time, to when my family and I would vacation here, in the 60s.

Indeed, vacationing in “The Mountains” in upstate New York is in my blood. As a child, I would sit in the car with my parents and two older sisters, making the same trip every summer. We’d pass billboard upon billboard advertising just some of the hundreds of hotels, motels, and bungalow colonies in what is still fondly known as the Borscht Belt. At first sight of the mountain greenery, my father would shut off the air conditioning in our Pontiac Bonneville so we could roll down the windows to let in the clean, crisp country air. Excitement mounting (and ears popping), we’d head on to our summer hotel.