The Polish in Me bubbled out in May when I wrote about a great spot in my memories, a resort in the Catskill Mountains my father Frank reveled in taking our family.
I poked around the recesses of my gray matter from more than four decades ago to bring back that time when I was a teen from Long Island. Where exactly did we go? What exactly was the name of the joint? I did remember family dinners and music and a pool and a waitress.
My sister sent me an old family picture.
I poked around on Google. My childhood friend Mike Carr told me he was pretty sure the name of the place was The Valley View House.
I found other pictures on Google.
Tuesday night, out of the blue, I received this email:
Dear Mark,
My name is Cynthia Tegnander, I am a granddaughter of the people, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Bekarciak, who owned the Valley View. It was great to see the old photos. To get you up to date, my grandparents owned the hotel for 45 years. In 1969, my family, the Winskis moved to Kenoza Lake to help my grandparents.
We owned the hotel after my grandparents, then my parents rented it as a drug rehabilitation center, then they ultimately sold it to a Greek gentleman. It is still owned by that gentleman as far as I know. I believe he rents it to a religious organization.
I know a lot of Polish Americans enjoyed many a summer there. You got the right impression, it was a Dirty Dancing kind of place minus the dirty part. People who visited with us did so for many years. I as a granddaughter worked as a waitress, office girl and cocktail
waitress as the years went by. It was a very exciting place to grow up but we did work hard …
Hope all of your memories of Valley View were pleasant ones.
Cynthia Tegnander
And now they just became even more pleasant. Thank you, Cynthia, for making the picture about my father’s Polish slice of heaven in the Catskills even sharper.
Here’s the link for The Polish in Me story.
Here’s the link for the It’s the Valley View House story.
I spent some time there when I was around 12 years old and my sister had a job there at the time.
I remember how exciting it was for me to hang out with the older kids who worked there. (My sister was 16) I remember seeing the rooms where they slept and meeting one of my sister’s co-workers, a Winski.
My aunt Sophie Krukowski knew the owner which is how my sister got the job.
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It was a very nice place, Carol. Thanks for sharing your memories.
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I have fond memories of staying there when I was younger. The name of the owners is familiar to me. I remember he used to pick us up from the bus stop when we went there.
I heard that other family members worked there.
Also he was involved in much of the construction line when the indoor pool and recreation area was built.
The fishing was very good the lake had bass and pickerel. It was great as when you stayed you could just walk to the lake and fish.
I wish there were more places like this but the world keeps changing.
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Thank you for sharing your memories, Gerald!
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Social media is an amazing thing.
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It is indeed, Cat. It makes the world one neighborhood.
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I think you writing about the place this ladies grandparents and parents owned would have been very special to her.
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I hope she liked it, Rachel. 🙂
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I am absolutely sure she did Mark.
Josh has been watching Odell Beckham Jr’s catch from the weekend – amazing!
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It was amazing. I couldn’t do with three hands what he did with one! Good eyes, Josh!
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Mark .. How sweet it is when those holes in our memory bank are filled in. And, how grand to hear from someone who can help you make those connections. I wish I had a few more photos, letters and notes from my childhood so that I could do the same.
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Yes, if only we knew then what we’d want to know now, Judy!
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I am sure you are glad to have been behind the camera so you can tease your sisters! I find old photos fascinating and I love the way your parents look, Mark!
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It was a good photo to take, Robin. My parents were only 20 and 19 years older than I am.
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I loved that post when you posted it, and I loved the vintage photos when you followed up. So this post is very exciting! Did she just find this on your blog and randomly write you? How cool! 😀
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I got her email out of the blue. Somebody must have told her about the blog. Diana suggests I ask her how she heard of me, and I think that’s a good idea.
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I think so too. No matter how, it’s very cool!
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huh 🙂 I remember reading your original story Mark. How cool is it that the owner’s granddaughter wrote to you?!
Diana xo
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I wonder how my story eventually made its way to her? If I could ever trace the path, that would be a fun post, no?
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It sure would!
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did you ask her how she found it?
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That is an excellent nudge in the right direction for me to start this project, Diana. Thank you. 🙂
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Mark, that is awesome! Way cool.
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Thank you, PJ. It is great!
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That is amazing! I love “back in the day stuff”.
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Yes, It is fun to look back and remember, Dora. Thanks!
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Aw. This is amazing, Chum. Tearful moment for sure…. I enjoy your memories. xx
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I;m glad I can still remember them, Aud. 🙂
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♡
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What a great connection Mark. What wonderful memories you must have. I would love to see more of those vacation pictures. 🙂
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That’s all I have! My sis is keeper of the photos, Colleen. 🙂
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Perhaps we can persuade her to scan some and send some. 😉
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She has. Nof of this particular location though. This is it of the Valley View. 😦
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Aw. I wonder how many OTHER families have pictures where you guys were in the background. Pre-photo bombing days. 🙂
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Background pre photo bombing. Tough nut to crack there, Colleen. 🙂
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;-D I bet there are families wondering who that other family is that they used to see all of the time. 🙂
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nice! Gotta love the blogoshpere 🙂
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I do indeed, Liz. The reach boggles. 🙂
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Boggle was a fun game–do you play?
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Yes, I did when Elisabeth was growing up, it was a staple of daddy-daughter fun. Good catch, Liz. I wasn’t thinking of that, but it was a fun game. 🙂
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You know that’s one of my favorite posts. See, there is still goodness in people! And “Polish” is one of those words you have to read contextually to say it correctly. Oy! Oh, look, I learned some Polish today: Good night = Dobranoc.
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Good studying, Kerbey. I am much impressed. You put some polish on this comment. 🙂
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That is really neat Mark. Great of her to drop you a note and it is likely that your worlds touched but you didn’t know it at the time. We think of ourselves as paying attention and aware and yet decades later we find out that two worlds went right by each other without even noticing. So cool.
Great Post Mark.
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Yes, it is likely that somehow we were in each other’s field of vision back then. The hotel grounds weren’t that large and my father brought us there for a week a couple summers in a row. I was a teen always on the lookout. I should use this premise as a flash fiction story. If I ever would write a flash fiction story. Thanks, Paul, as always, for your great comment, my friend.
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Did you ever go to the Catskill Game Farm? Some of my earliest memories are from that place. They had a train ride that would get “robbed” by cowboys with bandanas over their faces. I must have been 3 or so, and I still remember how much that terrified me.
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I sure did go to the Catskill Game Farm when I was a little one, Snoozer. And, yes. Terrified. Even downstate kids didn’t want the train to get robbed by cowboys in bandanas.
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how wonderful to hear from her, so rarely do we ever get the chance to know what happened to something or someone once we have left – (and i LOVE the pics)
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Cynthia took the time to fill in the gaps to my stories from May. I feel lucky. Memories can be sharpened 45 years later, by a kind person you’ve never met. But … perhaps I did, when I was 14 years old? Thanks, Beth. 🙂
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What a delightful surprise, and how very considerate and generous of Cynthia. I can imagine this would have made your day; it would have done mine.
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Yes, Hariod. That Cynthia would take the time to send me this warm note remembering her time at this place that made its mark on so many, well, the world is better for me today.
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How incredible is that?! Small big world.
I love old photos like these. They carry so much weight in them.
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It is a fresh feeling to discover a reply like that months later. The Internet works! Thanks, Belinda, over there on your part of our small big world. 🙂
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Oh it does work – all sorts of funny things have a way of coming out into the light 😀
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Sometimes I think the internet is Pandora’s Box. Someone opened the lid and now all the black filth is pouring out. Stuff that will distort my daughter’s views. ISIS decapitations. etc. But then I stumble across fantastic stuff like this. It wouldn’t have happened without the internet. It’s not all so bad, is it? I should reconsider my views.
Off to read the Polish story. Something tells me it’s going to hit close to home. I made sure my daughters are strangers to “Beer Barrel Polka” and “Who Stole the Kishka?”
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…*aren’t* strangers…
That makes a big difference in meaning. Bloody autocorrect.
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Yeah, the Polish way of growing up knew it took a village, Mark. A musical, eating, drinking, dancing village. I have to remember the good stuff as well as the stuff that makes me cringe. Much like you.
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