It's a Nice-A Place

This week was the week every year where my family and I would load into the brown Ford Fairmont and head to Eva's Farm, a family resort in Purling, NY, where you got three meals a day, the occasional inter-resort softball game in the afternoon (I was always too young/too uncoordinated to play...my dad played sometimes, though, including the afternoon where he knocked himself clear out by backing into one of the trees in the outfield), and fun activities at night (including the always highly anticipated shuffleboard tournament). Plus, there was Donkey Kong and Qbert in the rec hall, where the kids would run to after finishing their meals, stacks of quarters burning holes in their hands. I never saw Disneyland, never came close to Disney World, but had about five hundred times more fun at Eva's Farm. Eva's is largely abandoned and overcome by weeds now, though one of the houses was renovated and another looks to be in the midst of a touch-up. Its resort days are long gone, but I still make people drive by it when we're upstate so I can bore them with old stories. No one's complained yet, so I'm gonna keep at it.

We always went up with the same bunch of people from around New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, so every third weekend in July was like a family reunion. And this week, thanks to Facebook, it's a virtual family reunion, as one of our old posse started an Eva's Farm group. Memories have been shared, pictures have been posted, and childhoods are being revisited. It's Facebook at its best, rather than mindless quizzes and virtual poking.

As I was reading the messages in the group, I saw someone post about the Eva's jukebox, which only lasted a few years and didn't contain much of great worth, save Night Ranger's "Sister Christian," Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me," and the Jacksons and Mick Jagger's "State of Shock." The riff from the last has been in my head since I joined the group, or it was until I remembered the jukebox at Donnie's Green Lantern, which was maybe slightly better (though not nearly as good as the one at Bobbie Jean's in downtown Cairo, a short drive down the hill, or even the one at Van's, which featured ELO's "Rock and Roll Is King," which I loved because it was the theme song of the Rock and Roll Express). Donnie's was the bar across the street from Eva's, and we'd all often head over there at night. They had Marble Madness, served some good crinkle-cut french fries, and made a mean Shirley Temple.

But, anyway, the jukebox had a song that I probably played every time I went there. And I forgot about it until I started thinking about Eva's and Donnie's and those long-gone summers. So, since it's now in my head, why not put it in yours? I present Joe Dolce's "Shaddap You Face."



Here's to Eva's, Donnie's, and being a kid.