This story is a continuation from two weeks ago. Read the first part in the October 29 issue of the Journal.

When we arrived in the village, my son Daniel turned to me and asked if it was at all familiar. “No” was my response. I wondered what happened to Aron’s Auto Place. I was happy to see a new bookstore with a lovely restaurant. Several doors down, where Bessie’s Ice Cream Parlor once stood, was an unfamiliar store. I recognized the library and the beautiful fountain in the middle of the square. But where was The Wayside Inn?

We drove past the Shadowland Theater, where the Borscht Belt Film Festival was about to begin. When I was growing up, my friends and I went every Friday evening and Sunday afternoon except during basketball season to see double feature films at the Shadowland and Norbury Theaters. There was always a cowboy film followed by the main feature. The coming attractions were the most fun. During basketball season our group of friends went to the basketball games to cheer for the Blue Devils.

Passing what used to be Levine’s Pharmacy, I thought about our daily lunches when I was growing up: tuna fish sandwiches and for dessert a Fifth Avenue bar that we ate as we walked back to school. Rudd’s Department Store was gone. Eckstein’s Candy Store was gone. But down the block was a sign, “Cohen’s Bakery.” It was the bakery where my family bought all of their bread.

As we walked into the bakery, both familiar and unfamiliar aromas greeted us. I learned that the bakery had been sold to a Latino family who inherited all the original owner’s recipes. What I smelled was the blending of Latino foods with the rye and pumpernickel breads of my past. We had breakfast in their adjacent cafe, a cafe new to me. Sitting there, I examined the people eating their breakfast. The diners were a diverse group, a different population from the one I had known when the Cohen family owned five hotels in the area. At that time, it seemed that mostly white people inhabited the town. Black people were relegated to a section across the railroad tracks on Route 52. I knew this because our beloved chambermaid Sally reported all the comings and goings of her Black neighbors.

My friend Leslie Alston was the only Black student in a class of eighty-four. When the junior prom was announced, he asked me to be his date. I already had two other invitations, one from Herbie Golden and another from Gary Etter. But I knew that my real reason for saying “no” was fear. I was afraid that my peers would see me as a “red commie.”

I knew that my mother’s cousin Ben, owner of The Nevele, son of Joe, grandson of Charles, was upset with her for accepting guests of color. It disturbed him to see “the colored” walking on the road by the Slutsky hotels. I wanted to belong. It took years before I forgave myself for saying no to my friend.

These thoughts ran through my head as I sat with my son in Cohen’s bakery eating my huevos rancheros. I welcome the changes. But I miss the familiarity.

I found it sad to see no familiar face. I realized that most people, family and friends, are gone. I knew I could not go home again. My memories were on overload.

We finished our meal, left the village of Ellenville, and headed to my old home, two miles south on an old country road past the cemetery, down Buds Hill, past the old Steinberg chicken farm. At the corner we made a left onto Arrowhead Road. This was the road that I walked home on after field and hockey practice. At the corner on the left is a house that once had a large dog in its yard. He terrified me, growling fiercely as I’d run by.

We drove over the little bridge above the Sandburg Creek and past the long-vanished Arrowhead lawn. There is grass, but not a shred of evidence of the beautiful hydrangeas, the Tudor building my uncle Yudel built, or our cottage. The road leading to the Evergreen Manor had disappeared.

Daniel and I parked in front of the yellow gates to the entrance of the Nevele. There it was, in its decaying grandeur. I remembered when the tall white roundish building was built. I remembered when I babysat for Lillian Ragenbogen, the sister of Ben and Julius, owners of the Nevele.

As we walked around the edges of the hotel, several people stopped their cars to get out and look around. I particularly remember two groups. One was an Orthodox family with three children. They had heard about the area and its Jewish hotels. It was a sightseeing trip, and this was a piece of history. The other visitors were a couple who felt nostalgic. The husband had been a waiter at the Nevele where he had met his wife.

The hotel that had been the Fallsview was now Honor’s Haven Resort.

The path between the Nevele and the Fallsview that led to the Nevele Falls was either hidden from view or covered over with brush. The waterfalls were my favorite place in the whole world. The road that led to the Evergreen Manor was completely gone and there was nothing left but grass and trees where my home once stood. The topography was strange, different from my memory.

Searching for the creek where I learned to swim, I found a lone apple tree. It was my old friend. I used to sit in its shade and in autumn pick its apples. There it was, still standing, greening apples hanging from its limbs. I was thrilled. At last, I found a piece of my past. It was there at that spot that I developed a lifelong love for the fruit, where I figured out how to eat the sour apples with worms sticking their heads out, where I learned to eat around the worms and spit out the tough skin.

It was time to leave. We had an appointment with my cousin George Slutsky. I hadn’t seen him in over 50 years. I learned that he had turned 100. It was a wonderful visit. By its end I had a renewed a connection with him. How wonderful to sit in his living room and reminisce. And how difficult to say goodbye. Would I see him again?

My son and I headed out of Ellenville taking Route 209 toward Kingston. I said a silent goodbye to the village and to all my relatives buried in the Wawarsing cemetery. My memories of the past flooded me. No more Bessie’s ice cream parlor. No more Wayside Inn. But now there stands the Borscht Belt Museum, a tribute to a history that I have been part of. Leaning my head against the seat, I watched the scenery as we drove past Accord.

The bonds of the first generation of Slutsky brothers frayed with the next generations. But two of my best friends growing up were Slutsky cousins: Bea Slutsky, daughter of Max and Henrietta from The Evergreen Manor, and Robbie, daughter of Ben and Marion from the Nevele.

In the eighth-grade, Ben and Marion tried to break up our friendship. I was moved from Miss Kirby’s homeroom class. It was a traumatic experience, one that had a deep emotional effect upon me. When Ben picked me up in his long black Cadillac while I was walking home from school, he complained about my mother’s policies. He wanted me to pressure her to stop the practice of accepting people of color as guests. It was deeply unpleasant to me. He never stopped pushing me to pressure my mother. He always started his diatribe by saying, “You know I love your mother, my cousin, but she is trying to destroy our neighborhood.”

My mother never gave in to Ben’s pressure. But many years many years later, when I was an adult and married, my mother sold the Arrowhead Lodge to the Nevele for $65,000. It was turned it into a dormitory for Nevele staff.

These thoughts run through my mind as my son and I drive further from Ellenville. I am surprised that such emotions are still aroused after so many years. I am grateful and at the same time feel some of the injustice I suffered during those times. It was the height of McCarthyism. It was a scary time for me, and Ben from the Nevele made it all the more difficult. My mother remained steadfast in her practice of equality for all. She continued to invite Paul Robeson to perform in the face of death threats. Only after the hotel was sold did she take a deep breath. Then she could enjoy motherhood and grandmotherhood.

I rouse myself from my reflections and look out the window. I silently acknowledge how difficult it was to grow up in a hotel and also appreciate many of the wonders of growing up when and where I did. I am only sorry that my mother, when selling the Arrowhead to the Nevele, didn’t hold on to our cottage. I would have been able to keep the connection to Ellenville and the family. I would have been able to maintain my connection to the land that my grandfather bought to establish “The Shady Rest.”

Once in a while, when I think of some incidents in my past, I still can feel a stab of sadness. But overall, I am grateful for having lived where and when I did. I feel love for my family, for my friends, for the school, for the mountains behind the soccer field, and for the village of Ellenville.

This story is a generous contribution from Lita Slutsky Newman Moses, a former resident of Ellenville, who submitted this as a part of her recently published book, The Red Hotel: Tribute to a Lost World, which can be seen and purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1958659177?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback