living the American dream

LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM; NOT ANY MORE

I was the TV character “Opie”.

In 1951 at the age of 10 we rented a bungalow in the Catskill mountains outside the town of Ellenville, N.Y. for those who don’t know where I was.

The bungalow community was on Briggs Highway [really a two-lane country road]. About a mile up the road was MacDowell’s farm where they had a very large lake on their property. They allowed people to fish for a fee.

However, they never charged my brother and me.

We walked down the road carrying our twig rods that we made ourselves. We went into the woods and picked out the best ones we could find. We got some fishing tackles [hooks] from a tackle shop and off we went. We would fish most of the day and I caught about 6 or 7 sunfish that you could put in the palm of your hand and proceeded to give them to my mother to cook dinner. I ate them but my brother didn’t for years he loved fishing but didn’t eat until later in life.

The second summer my father bought us real rods and reels. We fished a lot each summer but the second summer with the rods and reel wasn’t as productive as the first summer with the twig rods.

Next to the bungalows was a fancy hotel. Each night they had a different form of entertainment. One night each week they had bingo night. I would always go. If you won, you were paid in cash. One night I won $12 or $15.00. With the money I went to the fishing tackle store and bought a Daisy pump gun. I then became a hunter of frogs and snakes. I never shot birds.

I wandered through the wooded area for hours by myself. Once I found a baby turtle that I put in my shirt pocket as I wanted to eventually take back home to Brooklyn where we lived. Keeping him short lived at some point he fell out of my pocket. That was good for him.

I bring up these two memories of many more of my youth where I was unrestricted by my mother, I was never one to hold her coat tails. I was FREE during my summers in the Catskills for the 14 summers we spent there.

Unbeknownst to me I was living the American dream. Those days are gone.

Being in the sleeping bag business years ago I heard from fathers buying sleeping bags for their sons that has changed. Those sons now have sons who can’t get them away from their mechanical devices. If you take them into the woods at some point, they do not get reception.         

Living here in Grand Junction I am in the middle of some of the most beautiful mountains there is you can go to any of two dozen camping areas on any given weekend and not necessarily find more than one camper.

I get a lot of older guys coming in to buy a bag because they are heading to Alaska for a hunt. I get calls from older guys also going to Alaska for the same reason.

My reality is that I have been living the American dream. I have done what I wanted throughout my life. I was exposed to synthetic insulations early in my business career and I stuck with it. I stopped my business career for a year and half to sail, a joy in my life, I bought a 28-foot steel hull slope and sailed from N.Y. to the Bamas. Live aboard until I got tired of it. I then got back into the world of business refreshed and used my insulation knowledge to make sleeping bags.

The result is that I make the best in the world.

If that isn’t living the American dream, I do not know what is!

I think about the non-productive people that make claim to living the American dream but i say dream on. You probably know who i am referring too. 

The youth of America will no longer have the same opportunity.