Have you ever lost anything? I don’t know about you, but to me it is the most unsettling feeling. Do you promise money to Rabi Meir Baal Haneis or say Amar Rebbi Binyamin? Let’s hear from the finders
Did your family ever stay in — or visit someone in — a Catskill Mountains bungalow colony in upstate New York, more fondly known to New Yorkers as “the country”? When I was a little girl back in the 1960s, my family would vacation there in the summers. It was such a popular vacation destination — we were among 500,000 vacationers, and there were at least 500 bungalow colonies. Although there are far fewer bungalow colonies in the Catskills today, can you imagine how many lost items can turn up in a bungalow colony when thousands of vacationers stay there during the summer?
I spoke to the owner of one such bungalow colony that rents bungalows to 60 families each summer. Although a letter is sent out before the summer season begging people to label their belongings, about 100 lost items are found by the end of the season. The bungalow is happy to return the items, says the owner, but it must be able to identify whose belongings they are. If there is no name marked on the lost item, it gets given away.
Things that they no longer need, or things that have been rained on and muddied that people just don’t want anymore. Years ago, when people no longer needed something, they would try to give it away. Now they just leave it here. Once, at the end of the summer, we sent a load of abandoned towels found in the pool area to Eretz Yisrael after bleaching them, because when their owners were called, they said they didn’t want them.
We also find lots of bathing suits, bed linen, beach towels, and umbrellas. Some have names in them, others don’t.
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