In the very same region of upstate New York where, just a few years earlier, the summer of love was in full, psychedelic bloom, Matt Ziselman experienced his own summer of love. Well, minus the love. And the music. And, the most prevalent drug at the time–at least in Matt’s world–was probably Calamine lotion.
SUNBURNED AND CIRCUMCISED is a funny, poignant coming-of-age story chronicling the eight weeks Matt’s family spent at the Highland Park Bungalow Colony in New York’s Catskills Mountains. Picture The Wonder Years, but with generous amounts of Jewish guilt tossed in and you get the idea.
Going from the mean (okay, they were more mild than mean), stickball playing, Mr. Softee eating, bicycle riding streets of 1972 Brooklyn to the hinterland of upstate New York was a big deal. Matt’s mom told him they were going to “the mountains.” Matt pictured soaring Alpine peaks and Julie Andrews twirling in meadows while hitting high C’s. Turns out, Matt’s mom’s definition of the word “mountain” was, shall we say, wrong! Enter The Catskills.
It was a summer filled with morning reveille, courtesy of a badly scratched 45 record and long, seemingly aimless hikes that did little to counter the term “Wandering Jew.” There was a painful run-in with a highly irate–bordering on anti-Semitic–swarm of hornets; an end-of-summer Color War as intense as any Israeli offensive; and enough swimming to promote gill growth. There were chilly mornings spent searching for salamanders; parched afternoons spent rounding the bases on a field that was more dirt than diamond; and evening skies so full of fireflies and stars that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. But, most of all, it was a summer of family, friendship and–whether Matt realized it or not at the time–his first, awkward, hesitant steps towards growing up.
