Features

Spring Break in the Catskills, Fully Clothed By SUSAN PARKER, Column

Tuesday March 29, 2005

Dateline New York, Spring Break, 2005: Now that I’m a coed, after a 31 year hiatus, I get to celebrate spring break with my fellow party-going students. I don’t remember spring break being a big deal when I was an undergraduate, or if we even had spring break, but then I don’t recall much about 1970 through ‘74.  

Back then I may have hitchhiked to and from Florida along not quite finished Interstate 95, gotten arrested in a small town in Georgia, and waited until dawn to be released. It could have happened, but it probably didn’t. More than likely I worked at a fast food joint during the holiday and returned to the dorm in my sticky polyester uniform smelling like the deep fryer and dreaming of mad chickens.  

So here I am in 2005 with a 10-day break from school and no vacation plan. I see a photograph in a newspaper of buxom, bikini-clad women laying on a white sand beach and read the caption that appears underneath. I learn that San Pedro Island, Texas is the most popular place in North America to celebrate spring break. Mmm, I don’t think so. I don’t have the body, the bucks, or the mindset to go to Texas so I do what I always do when it’s party time: I head for my parents house in New Jersey where I’ll get my pants beat off playing cutthroat Scrabble (who says I can’t spend spring break partially unclothed?), and, like my imagined jail time in Georgia, wait until dawn to escape. 

Alas, this year there is an exit route. I’m invited by my friend Taffy to spend part of the week at her cabin in the Catskills. Could there be any better way for a 53-year-old coed to celebrate spring break than to spend it fully-clothed, huddled around a fireplace in the dreary, depressive Catskills? I accept immediately, take the bus from Atlantic City to Manhattan, and settle in for the drive over the Tappan Zee and up 87.  

We get off the thruway at Woodstock where I’m reminded of another youthful humiliation: failure to show up for the concert, but who wouldn’t believe me if I said that I didn’t go because of traffic? My friends Mac and Susie use this excuse with their kids every time they mention their disappointment with their parents’ unhipness. “We were gonna go but the thruway shut down,” explains Mac. “No excuse,” shouts their daughter Amy. Cursed with uncool parents, she slinks off to Cancun for her spring break, the number nine most popular place to spend it I have read in the Times.  

Back in the Catskills Taffy and I play Trivial Pursuit (the ‘60s version), Texas Hold’em Poker, and cutthroat Scrabble. I take long walks in the snow-covered woods and bake chocolate chip cookies. Taffy says they’re the best cookies she has ever eaten but next time I should add oatmeal to the recipe. I remind her that they have oatmeal in them already. 

“Yes, of course,” she says, “and next time you should add walnuts too.” I tell her that she must be eating around the walnuts because they are included.  

“Perfect,” she says. “No,” I counter. “I forgot to put raisins into the batter.” “Forget it,” she says. “I don’t like raisins.” I decide right then to beat the imaginary hotpants off Taffy at Trivial Pursuit (winning question: What British quartet appeared on Ed Sullivan 18 times?), Texas Hold’Em (I’ll bluff my way into claiming the “ten million dollar” pot), and Scrabble (she doesn’t know I play once a month with the incredibly accomplished Scrabblettes of Berkeley). 

“You know,” says Taffy, ignoring the fact that I have just made BINGO for the second time in five marathon games, “the problem with these cookies is that they don’t have pot in them.” 

“I don’t think so,” I argue. “The problem with these cookies is that we’re eating them in the village of Fleichmanns when we should be laying half nude somewhere along the Florida coast.” 

“Been there, done that,” says Taffy, grabbing another cookie. “It’s your turn, and I raise you five million.”  

 

Spring Break Chocolate Chip  

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies 

 

 

1?2 cup butter 

1?2 cup brown sugar 

1?2 cup white sugar 

1 egg 

1?4 teaspoon baking soda 

1?4 teaspoon baking powder 

1?2 teaspoon vanilla 

1?2 cup flour 

1 cup old fashioned rolled oats 

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

3?4 cup walnut pieces 

3?4 cup raisins 

 

Cream butter with sugars. Beat in egg. Add vanilla and dry ingredients. Drop by tablespoon on foil covered 

cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.