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maximizing rotting Catskill motels
Thursday, June 7 2012
Jessika, one of my old friends from Charlottesville, would be coming up to the Catskills this weekend to attend some sort of family thing with her husband Aaron (they got married in April). It would be Jessika's first visit to Hurley, where I've been living for over nine and a half years. I'd told her she should bring her dogs, but she'd said that would only be possible if they stayed with us for the weekend. So of course I'd said yes.
Before they arrived, I decided we needed more cheap beer (and there was also some post office and bank business to attend to), but when I drove down to Hurley I found that Route 209 had been closed down near the Hurley exit. Evidently there had been a serious accident. This wouldn't have affected me except that all the cars from 209 where being routed down Hurley Avenue. I've never seen it carrying so much traffic.
This evening a little after six Jessika and Aaron arrived in Aaron's boxy white Scion, having driven much of the way on Route 209 so as to maximize their exposure to rotting Catskill motels. The dogs were Edgar (a shy Boston-Terrier-Chihuahua mix) and Ramona (whom I've met several times before, though I'd forgotten about her long enough to okay Gretchen's suggestion of "Ramona" as a name for our most recent dog).
I gave Jessika and Aaron a tour of the whole house, as well as the brownhouse and the greenhouse (it helps that there's a large window on the brownhouse). Later we walked all the way back to the Canary Falls with all of the dogs except Sally.
For dinner we went out to the Kingston Indian Restaurant in Uptown and brought a bunch of beers. Aaron likes cheap macrobrews (he'd bought a 12 pack of Modelos) because he wants to be able to drink them continuously once he starts drinking. Our dinner was mostly vegan, though Aaron ordered a side of "meat samosas" so he could season his food with "suffering." (That's how Gretchen would phrase it.) We were the only people in the restaurant, though when we arrived it was 9:30pm, and it's not just any place where you can go that late with your own beer and eat a quality meal.
After dinner, we went to the Stockade Bar (which is labeled with a simple "S" over the door, reminding Jessika a little of the preciousness of modern Charlottesville). The Stockade Bar looks a little like a Charlottesville bar inside as well, though in the past there had been just enough of a bathroom fragrance in there to remind you that you hadn't left the Hudson Valley rust belt. Tonight that smell was muted but still noticeable. For a Thursday night the place seemed to have a lot of customers, who had taken up every available space at the bar but left the booths empty. These people looked to be mostly in their early 30s, with a few older guys there combatting Hudson Valley loneliness. One of these had an enormous gut, the precise visual embodiment of how my gut was feeling (stuffed as it was with oily Indian food). We all ordered specialty drinks off the drink menu, but we were all a bit too sleepy to appreciate them. Still, I thought Aaron was doing surprisingly well; he'd done all the driving, and after I drive that distance I usually go immediately to bed.
Jessika had been kind of unclear about what her and Aarons' plans would be for the night, but they ended up spending it in the larger of our two guest rooms.
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