The Derelict Belt

On my way down to New Jersey to take care of business there, I pulled off and up to this place, where I got out to stand and stare. This was the Kutchingkord Hotel, the heart of the old Borst Belt, looking at the ruins now, you can barely even tell. I came here once when I was four, way back in the mid eighties, even then, amidst its decline, it left an impression on me. They had a daytime kids program, back then I thought it so fun, though now I see it kept us busy, so our parents could soak the sun. I remember the restaurants, and the cool covers on the each dish, they put them atop fine Kosher meals, and I’m not even Jewish! But now it’s just a concrete pad, a weathered hole once was the pool, there’s broken seats from the nightclub where comedians played the fool. Fences still up on the tennis court, now cracked and without nets, the pool-house is standing roofless, haven’t brought the ball there yet. Over there is the old ski slope, all two hundred vertical feet, maybe not the Matterhorn, but once good enough for families. Surrounding it all is tall grass on what was a grand golf course, twenty-seven holes and sprawling, nobody plays it any more. It saddens me to see it so, but the trend is nothing new, these are not the first resorts that the Catskills have burned through. Once in the nineteenth century, higher up in the rolling hills, the Mountain House and Kaaterskill tourists once proudly filled. Now there are just displays there, telling hikers of how it was, that thought just saddens me more, and the reason is because I know next time I’ll see one, explaining that on this spot here, a place once called the Borst Belt welcomed guests for so many years.