Postcard from the past
the indoor pool at the Laurels
Photo Credit: Robert Altman Photography

I wrote in an earlier post that

I never went on a real vacation with my own father. My dad always combined business with vacation. He would arrange to run the candy store concession at some Ellenville New York resort which allowed his family to stay in rooms for next to nothing for a whole summer. I can't tell you how many Jewish girls I met! Other years he would do likewise in Sackett Lake or some other Catskill resort.

1954: I was 9 years old the first time I ever went fishing. We were in Sackett Lake that summer. My father would close his ladies' shop in Bayonne, N.J. for two summer months and run the concession stand at the Laurels Hotel and Country Club near Monticello, N.Y.

Not knowing anything about fishing, I took a small branch and tied a small string to its business end, connected a small hook to the end of the string and dunked it into the lake from the dock. No bait. As soon as I felt a small jiggle on the string, I yanked it up quicky to find a small catfish on the other end. I did this a few times until I figured that there was not much more to learn about fishing. I threw the catfish back in because I didn't know what else to do with them.

My brother and I loved these summers at different hotels. They weren't just vacations away from school but also from working in our father's store after school. Over the years we went to different resorts until 1965 when I left for Israel to study.

I've never returned to Sackett Lake and there's no going back now either: Sullivan County took over the property in 1995 for non-payment of real estate taxes and sold 300 acres with lakefront property for $1.05 million to a Clifton, N.J. development company in 1999.

S.M. a reader of mine, knowing that I have nearly zero knowledge about fishing, sent me these 13 fishing questions. See how many you can get right; amazingly, I scored a perfect 13.

All the correct answers were "D". Anything less than 13 points indicates that you are either a candidate for new glasses or that acute fishing fever has finally overcome your good judgement.

If you did not get a perfect 13, here are two bonus questions to help you score:

This has been a Thursday 13 post [# 22] and is updated on certain Thursdays.

Here are other bloggers who netted a Thursday 13 post:
Third World County: 13 Things to Hate About ATT/Cingular
Chicken Scratch: 13 pairs of contradictory proverbs
One Gal's Musings: 13 important "either/or’s.”
Perri Nelson's Website: 13 Random Photographs
Mommyba's Journey: 13 Places I'd Like to Visit
Too Many Ideas: 13 posts from the 500 posts