Back to Parksville

I was devastated. I was nearly 15 and had my first job; my performance appeared to be abysmal. Our tiny summer haunt, Parksville, with its village packed with traffic, was only two blocks long, but it was loaded with Jewish-owned stores and almost exclusively Jewish patrons. It was home to Frosty’s Luncheonette, and I had been hired by Dan Frost, our neighbor across Fifth Avenue (although, strangely, there never were any other streets with numerical names) to work behind the counter. He never trained me. I was to learn by watching and doing.

The season in Parksville, New York, a tiny village in the Catskill Mountains, began on July 4 and ended on Labor Day. Those amazing summers at our family-owned kuch alein, the Bauman House, were always glorious and memorable. While I am now firmly a senior citizen, age 86, often literally forgetting what I had for dinner, I remember in great detail incidents from those days, where I grew from earliest infancy until I became a bona-fide adult and got married at age 20.

But not that first day as an employee at Frosty’s. I remember it well. That was not wonderful at all.

To begin, let me explain that my offense had nothing to do with my personal observance of kashrut. I knew enough to pass on an order even if it was a BLT with a chaser of a milkshake, which we called a malted. I was not the rabbinical police. I was the lowest rung of employee, trying my best to do what I was told.

My crime, according to my boss, called Danny by all, was simple. I did not recycle the paper plate that I cleared away from someone’s hamburger, a plate that still carried some grease, crumbs, and stains. Mind you, we were not talking about the environment here. We were talking about recycling (a word that was to become more in vogue as the decades passed) a soiled paper plate by putting a new hamburger or BLT on it, as if the plate was new and unused.

Instead, casually and shockingly, I removed the plate and tossed it into the garbage. Little did I know that this was not the procedure at Frosty’s. He almost fainted in fury when he saw this abuse. He screamed quietly at me — a phenomenon that I absolutely witnessed — with such venom that I perceived that the entire store must have heard him. In fact, no one did and I, being a quick study, never repeated that action again. So what if there were germs? Weren’t there germs everywhere? And as Danny said at the time, no one would ever know! The new burger or sandwich would quickly create its own stains. Presto! The plate was fresh and clean, and I learned to deal with it, keeping my job for the entire season.

The little village was unique. When I reminisce now, all these long years later, I still find it remarkable that the assortment of stores was so unpredictable. Why, for instance, were there so many luncheonettes in such a short space? There was Jerry and Lil’s, where my kid sister worked for many years following my short stint at Frosty’s. It was strictly for foodies, never selling even a newspaper or candy bar.

There was Smitty’s, my favorite as a kid, since they had shelves of popular games, and every now and then some family member, usually Pop, my grandfather, could be persuaded to spend a fortune and buy me one. They also had souvenirs that people actually bought, not because they had any value as a remembrance or were made with a particular skill but because they were inscribed by someone, somewhere else, with Parksville, New York, on the outside of the little faux leather zipper containers, and were pure impulse buying when you wanted the world to see that you had actually been to Parksville, just as if you had been to the Eiffel Tower or London Bridge. A dubious claim to fame!

There was the Drugstore, which became the symbol of the ghost town that Parksville eventually became. It still lives on online. Do a search for Parksville and see what comes up first! It proudly bore a huge sign for Breyer’s Ice Cream, sold all the typical drugstore items and filled prescriptions, while boasting a long counter where its sundaes and sodas were popular. It was also the depot for the Shortline Bus Company, which daily delivered car-less passengers, guests, and staff from the depths of Brooklyn and the Bronx to their corner benches, the heart of downtown Parksville, whence they were picked up and whisked to their choice of hotel.

Really, how many such luncheonette establishments did one tiny town need? Yet all stayed in business, and in its prime, village parking was a challenge, with hordes of people heading for snacks in one or another of the stores, now moribund and bereft.

The village also had three taverns. Three! All were owned by Jews but never had Jewish patrons. Their customers came from the many hills surrounding the town where the real locals lived, those who were electricians and plumbers and handymen and farmers, those who had laid down their roots long before the early 20th-century arrival of the Jews, who are largely gone a century later.

There were two kosher butchers. Mom shopped at Kaplan’s, which also had a schochet working behind the store.She would, unbelievably to me, select a living chicken and by dinner time it was already a delicious soup. I remember watching in horror as the poor victim pranced away from that execution for several seconds after the shochet’s knife slaughtered her. These days I prefer my chicken cut into parts and wrapped in plastic, bearing no obvious resemblance to its Parksville ancestors.

The village also was home to Fried’s Hardware Store, two groceries, a dry goods store for replacement socks and underwear, and a United States Post Office. Our shul lay hidden on a cul de sac. Two of my cousins became bar mitzvah there.

All these places now live and breathe only in my memory, existing as the ghosts of my past, their owners buried in the Parksville Hebrew Cemetery a mile away from the village. But if they are only ghosts, why do I annually make a pilgrimage to visit, to pay homage and patronage, to walk the quiet roads and see the deserted stores, minus their bluster and bustle? It seems that I am compelled to go back again and again. Such is life!

The past is prelude, and this place remains a beloved part of me.

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of 11. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com

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