Tour of Marsden, Day 6
There’s More to the Catskills Than Dirty Dancing
Hey there! Happy Monday! ...What, no love for the beginning
of the week? But we’re not toiling away in the workplace—we’re on a tour bus in
the Catskill Mountains, heading for the fictional town of Marsden, NY, where my
small-town rom com series takes place!
Don’t know much about the Catskills? Well, I can help you
out there. I’m a native (western) New Yorker and have spent most of my life
north of New York City and west of the Hudson. I was born in Rochester, I’ve
lived in the Finger Lakes and downstate near the Pennsylvania border, and I
went to college in the Catskills.
And I can tell you that there’s nothing more beautiful than
an autumn afternoon in that weathered mountain range in the middle of New York
State.
How about some Catskills trivia?
(Sources:
CatskillMountainKeeper.org, CatskillCenter.org, TheCatskillRegion.com,
Wikipedia.org)
·
The Catskills Mountains are 100 miles north of
New York City and the region extends from Albany in the east, down the Hudson
River, and westward into what’s known as the Leatherstocking Region. It’s made
up of 6,000 square miles, six counties, nearly 100 mountain peaks, and 700,000
acres of parkland (nearly half of which is designated as forever wild).
·
The area was once an inland sea.
·
The name has nothing to do with killing cats. In
Dutch, “kill” means creek, so it was known as Cat Creek, possibly because of
the mountain lions in the area at the time the Dutch explored it (1600s).
·
Howe Caverns is located in the Catskills.
·
The classic novel My Side of the Mountain is set there (Delhi, NY).
·
The Woodstock music festival took place in the
Catskill town of Bethel (no, not Woodstock, NY, but that’s a famous artists’
colony).
·
The first Christmas trees sold in New York City came
from the Catskills in 1851.
·
The Baseball Hall of Fame is located there
(Cooperstown, NY).
·
Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle is set in the Catskills.
·
New York City gets nearly half its water supply
from the region.
·
In the mid-20th century, part of the Catskills
was famously known as the Borscht Belt, an area filled with resorts and “summer
camps” that hosted families from New York City all season.
·
Movies set in the Catskills: Dirty Dancing (of course!), A Walk on the Moon (mmm...Viggo
Mortenson...), Woodstock (double of
course!), Manny & Lo, and the
documentary Stagedoor, just to name a
few. Scenes from Tootsie were shot
there, and several movies like You Can
Count on Me were set there but not filmed there.
Most important of all (koff): my Marsden series is set in
the Catskills! Although you won’t find Marsden on any map, there’s a little bit
of other towns in it...and a whole lot of the Catskill vibe.
Here’s an excerpt that’ll give you a feel for the place;
it’s when our heroine, Georgiana (George) Down, comes back to town after being
away for years:
~~~~~~~~~~
They crossed a side street, and
George did a double take at the sight of a picture of a garden spray-painted on
a brick wall. She glanced at Casey with a smile. “Banksy crossed the Atlantic
when nobody was looking?”
“What, the street art? Local
version. We call him Marsdy.”
“Who is it?”
“Nobody knows—haven’t caught
anybody in the act yet. And that’s some feat.”
“Keeping a secret around here?
You’re not kidding.” They hurried past a mime on the corner, avoiding catching
the person’s eye so they didn’t have to stop and watch the invisible box thing.
“When did you move back? Sera didn’t
tell me—well, why would she, you know? But I didn’t—I mean . . .”
“It’ll be two years in October.”
“She hasn’t mentioned you in two years? Not that we talk very often,
but . . .”
“I’ve been keeping a low
profile.”
“‘Working hard on the farm?’” It
seemed like everything came back to that.
“Yeah.” Before she could ask for
details, he went on, “And speaking of working, what was that Mrs. P said, about
a blog . . . ?”
“Girl’s gotta make a living.”
“Well, aren’t you wired—” Casey
paused as a cell phone chirped. “Yours?”
George stopped walking and
pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Nope. You?”
Casey was checking his. “Not
me.”
They stowed their phones and
started walking again, but their path seemed to be blocked more frequently, and
by individuals who were looking at them rather intently.
George whispered, “Do I have spinach
in my teeth?”
“When was the last time you ate
spinach?”
“Two thousand eleven?”
“When was the last time you
brushed your teeth? And please don’t say two thousand ten.”
“This morning.”
“All right, then.”
“Are you getting the feeling
we’re missing something?”
Casey looked grim, but he said,
“It’s nothing. Come on, we’re here.”
The hardware store looked
exactly the same as it always had—clapboard front, two plate-glass windows,
swinging sign overhead reading “Smithson’s Hardware” even though Tony Smithson,
the previous owner and proprietor, had died twenty-five years ago. Because it
was June, the window display featured a wheelbarrow, a Garden Weasel, bags of
fertilizer, a small stretch of picket fence, and a carpet of fake grass. Just
like every year. If you’d just woken up from a coma and didn’t have a calendar
handy, you could tell what month it was by checking the hardware store’s window
display.
Inside, it was as though time
had stood still. The dark wooden shelves were still twenty feet tall (it
seemed), the lights high and dim, the farthest recesses dark and dusty, the bins
of odds and ends and bits of metal parts, screws, nails, washers, and clamps
organized in such a way that only the employees could find anything. Probably,
George thought, to ensure job security. You couldn’t fire any of the old
fossils who’d manned the counter for decades; if you did, nobody would be able
to locate anything they needed.
And sure enough, there were the
three of them right now, in various states of apronage, two older gents with
eyeglasses flashing, reflecting the lights overhead, the third a bit younger,
with more hair and less stomach—the next generation, a future fossil. They all
watched Casey and George walk in and raised their hands in greeting.
“Welcome home, George,” the
senior fossil said, as George, still refusing Casey’s help with the stroller,
worked hard to navigate it around cardboard displays and bins of stuff on sale.
“Heard you were coming in.”
She stopped short, stunned.
“Thanks . . . ? Henry, how did you—”
He waggled a cell phone at her.
“Missy called.”
“Of course she did.”
“Help you with the plumbing
fixtures?”
Apparently Mrs. Preston had been
listening to their excuses—and had filled in the hardware store crew so they’d
be prepared. But Casey didn’t break his stride, just waved over his shoulder.
“We’re good, Henry. But thanks.”
George followed, pushing the
stroller between the tall shelves, the aged floorboards creaking under her
feet, to a far corner where a few faucet sets were on display.
She wrinkled her nose as she
examined their options. “Home Depot has, like, fifty different kitchen faucets
to choose from. Maybe we should—”
Casey shushed her. “Do you want
to get run out of town on a rail? Do not speak a big box name within the town
limits! Now get over here and pick one, city girl.”
“They all look the same.”
“Then it’ll be easier to
choose.”
George made a face at him and
pointed at the middle set. “That one, I guess.”
“If your sister doesn’t approve,
it’ll be on your head.”
“Isn’t it always?”
As they approached the counter
with the faucet and some other plumbing-related items Casey had grabbed along
the way, he ventured, “So how did you end up offering to be Amelia’s nanny,
anyway?”
“Didn’t, did she?” senior fossil
Henry said as he rang up their purchase. “Sera called and begged.”
“No, she didn’t,” argued the
junior fossil—Pete, if George remembered correctly—as he bagged each item after
Henry rang it up. “I heard she blackmailed George, threatened to reveal some
ancient family secret. She couldn’t refuse after that.”
“Guys. I’m right here.”
“So you know what I’m saying,”
junior fossil Pete said with a pointed look at her, as though he shared her
secret.
“Why don’t you set these geezers
straight, George?” Mike, the future fossil, suggested, resting his elbows on
the counter and giving her a wink. “Otherwise they’ll be arguing about it for
days.”
“Well, that’ll give them
something to talk about besides the weather, won’t it, Mike?”
And George smiled politely
before turning her attention to getting Amelia’s stroller back out the door.
“What’re you grinning at?” she
snapped at Casey as he held the door open for her, although she couldn’t hide
her amusement either.
He grasped the front of the
stroller to help ease it over the threshold. “You.”
“Well, that’s quite . . . blunt
of you.”
“You seem . . . different.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
She stopped short as Casey studied her. “What?”
“Just trying to figure out what
the recent version of Goose is like, that’s all.”
~~~~~~~~~~
If this bus isn’t traveling to the Catskills fast enough for
you, grab Down on Love, on sale for only 99 cents, all e-formats,
all month long, and dive right in! You might just fall in love with the
place.
Next stop, tomorrow (Tuesday, October 21): I’ll share some
Marsden secrets over at 1 Rad Reader (www.1rad-readerreviews.com)!
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