Elaine Freed Lindenblatt - Stop at the Red Apple : the restaurant on Route 17

The Restaurant on Route 17

Elaine Freed Lindenblatt

Photos , Chap. 33, are from the collection of Gregory W. Buff and his daughter, Laura Buff, and reprinted by permission.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2014 Elaine Freed Lindenblatt

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lindenblatt, Elaine Freed.

Stop at the Red Apple : the restaurant on Route 17 / Elaine Freed Lindenblatt.

pages cm. (Excelsior editions)

ISBN 978-1-4384-5368-2 (paperback : alkaline paper)

1. Red Apple Rest (Restaurant : Tuxedo, N.Y.)History. 2. Lindenblatt, Elaine FreedChildhood and youth. 3. Lindenblatt, Elaine FreedFamily. 4. RestaurateursNew York (State)TuxedoBiography. 5. JewsNew York (State)TuxedoBiography. 6. Fathers and daughtersNew York (State)TuxedoBiography. 7. Red Apple Rest (Restaurant : Tuxedo, N.Y.)EmployeesHistory. 8. Tuxedo (N.Y.)Biography. 9. Tuxedo (N.Y.)Social life and customs. 10. Catskill Mountains Region (N.Y.)Social life and customs. I. Title.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my father, Reuben Freed, a great restaurant man

Herbert Freed

By Alan Goodman

By Morton L. Janklow

By Suzanne Lindenblatt

By Bob Barlow

Part One

Gray skies and rain. An appropriate backdrop for my destination, as I set out for the half-hour drive. Force of habit, I flick on the traffic and weather updates. Congestion on the Hutchinson Parkway, fog in the five boroughs. Then the news briefs: demonstrators at Ground Zero mosque, another hate crime in Staten Island, new credit card rules all indications that time is moving forward. But today I go against the grain. I go back.

I near the exit of the New York State Thruway. Im counting on my morning coffee to see me throughthough, as the car veers onto Route 17 north, I feel queasy. Yard Sale Today a sign along the road reads. That would be a welcome diversionbut this isnt the day for browsing. At least not for tchotchkes. In Sloatsburg I pass a turnoff for Route 17 southit occurs to me I could still turn around and head home. After the old four-mile sign, around the curve into Tuxedo and heres my school, with the new gym dedicated to Coach. So many memories locked within its walls, if only I could get at them.

Now the final stretch up the highwayand the roadside utility poles tell me Im getting close. Past Duck Cedar Innno two-mile or one-mile sign any more the cutoff to 17A and Sterling Forest at the top of the hill the small red and white sign, peeling and ignored. And Im there.

A huge decrepit hulk of a building confronts me. My god . The once clean white faade of the restaurant is a vision of neglect. The big Red Apple Rest letters above the outdoor restrooms are chipped to near-obscurity. As I get out of the car, the ballpoint pen Im holding slashes a line across my arm, as if to say Null and Void . I start at the southern end of the stand, the window frames and roof corroded, the paint and undercoating long gone. Whatever once were doors, vents, passageways are beyond recognition. The backyard, always a hub of activity with the upstairs office, staff dining table, storage cellar, entrances to the kitchen and stand, candy room, pie refrigerator, the comings and goings of delivery trucks, is now reduced to a heap of refuse. Roof parts hanging precariously and weeds overgrown outside the bolted gate tell the story. The only intact item is a utility meter on a pole connected to some high wires nearby, a travesty on its disuse.

The place is not in disrepair, it is in terminal demise. And yet, if the right person were to come along, someone with visionto say nothing of moneymaybe they still could. We have within the family, in the next generation, two trained chefs, a short-order cook, an investment consultant, an architect, a financial coach, a few accountants, a real estate developer. As well as two psychotherapists, which is what I need to even be thinking of it.

The rain drizzles down on me. I move under the overhang of the back dining room. Part of the addition put on in 1960, it was Daddys pride and joy. I peek through the slats covering the windows, the view obscured by dirt and haze. The chairs are piled high on tables, like a warehouse. Funny, the small trees scattered in the window beds outside are surviving okay, proving that nature does transcend human folly.

A ladder sits in the entryway to this addition, with some equipment on it. Apparently a repair-in-process abandoned. And an empty chair. Who is that chair for, I wonder. One of us who waits in vain, clinging to a pipe dream amid the shambles? To my right, the parking lot, once packed with rows of chartered buses, echoes the empty silence.

Visible through the windows to the main dining roomon a wooden divider that encloses the checkout areais a sign Welcome to Red with an apple underneath. About time somebody noticed my arrival. Beyond, the arc of the food counter, menu boards still in place. Its a reprieve that I cant make out the food items listedtheir unfamiliar names and prices would only disturb my memories. I spot the corner niche, its table gone, that was always a good bet for a private conversation.

I turn the corner to the front sidewalk, and a lone cigarette butt stares up at me. A vestige of the time when nearly everybody smokedand I didnt get a sore throat being near tobacco. From this vantage point the original coat hooks are still intact along the side wallno time or inclination for customers to check their coat. (Later on, with the advent of air-conditioning, people were wont to linger longer over their food.)

The rest of the main dining room is all out of place, a storage hodgepodge of tables piled one on another, serving carts, garbage cans, open ceiling panels with loose wires hanging, the floor covered with debris. And wheres the table to the side of the registers, where the cashiers ate? Under a plastic-flower latticework, installed by the new regime, hangs the Rest Rooms sign. I realize I could use one. Ironic, we had so many stalls, inside and outand not a one when I need it.

A lone car cruises along the sidewalk where lines of customers once waited to get inside. A man and woman peer out of the window. I wonder who they are: would-be customers, somebody ascertaining if what theyd heard about the place is true, maybe a couple revisiting their nostalgic past? While Im at it, I wonder who I am too. I used to be Elaine Freed, but today Im not so sure.