The Nevele Country Club - Ellenville, NY

The Nevele Country Club in Ellenville, NY is a bit of paradise on earth with its breathtaking view. Actually the hotel was built on a narrow valley which makes it even lovelier.

That is the Nevele's nine-story tower which houses all their guests.

The Nevele's nice little tower.

Nevele dishes: pink-red for dairy (breakfast & lunch) blue for meat (dinner). 

Winter activities as well as summer could be done at the Nevele. 

Nevele's main swimming pool. 

the valley is really beautiful.

Nevele's ground seen from a plane; Nevele's man-made lake. 

The Stardust Room was Nevele's night-club. I don't think I've ever been there.

This photo must have been taken in the early 1960s.

the road going up to Ellenville, NY circa November.

Billboard's Top Ten on 15 November 1975

1.  Island girl - Elton John

2.  Lyin' eyes - The Eagles

3.  Fly, Robin fly - Silver Connection

4.  Miracles - Jefferson Starship

5.  That's the way I like it - K.C. & the Sunshine Band

6. Heat wave - Linda Ronstadt

 7.  Who loves you? - Four Seasons

8.  Feelings - Morris Albert

9.  Low rider - War

10. Sky high - Jigsaw 

By November 1975, I had settled in at the Forrest House, one of the many former guests' houses they had at the Nevele Country Club for housing their staff who lived in the premisses all-year round. We lived individually in comfortable rooms and usually worked only three days a week. That was heaven to me!

We, busboys and waiters usully worked Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday. We were off from Sunday evening to the next Friday evening. Oh, what a feeling!

At Forrest House we were mostly Latin-americans and I became friends with two bus-boys: Humberto, a Peruvian half-Inca and Juan Pablo Londoño, a Colombian from European extraction. Humberto was the nicest boy possible. He taught me how to ice-skate and I learned it the very first time I took to the ice-rink. They also had a skiing slope at the Nevele but I was warned by other staff that I should not even think about skiing because if I happened to break a leg I would be finished! Health costs in the USA are prohibitive and besides I would not be able to work as hard as we usually did.

Myself at Juan Pablo Londono's room at Forrest House where we all lived. January 1976.

Having a Budweiser in my underwear at next-door neighbour Juan Plabo's.

I had all the time in the world at my hands and had the chance to read books but mostly listen to New York City's FM stations. I found out we could connect our radios on the TV-cable people had to watch TV from New York. The signal was not 100% right but good enough for me to listen to WPIX, WPLJ, WXLO, WCBS etc. I loved listening to New York stations. Without a cable it was impossible to listen to anything but a real bad AM signal from WABC. I didn't have a TV set and sometimes I watched TV at Humberto's room but we talked so much that it was impossible to pay any attention to the movies or musical shows.

I remember one particular instance when we watched a musical programme where they pitted blonde Olivia Newton-John against brunette Linda Ronstadt. I was a secret admirer of Miss Rondstadt and I soon realized Humberto rooted for the blonde Australian singer. It was just like fans of different football teams fighting... 

Myself and Humberto Flores at Pablo Londoño's room. 

Humberto rooted for Olivia Newton-John while I was all for Linda Rondstadt.

Juan Pablo Londoño was an avid tennis player. He had an older brother who was a waiter. They were from Colombia like the majority of the waiting staff. 

sooner than I realized it was winter. 1975-1976 Winter in Ellenville, NY.

Look Mum! With two hands buried in the snow and with no overcoat on! on the slopes of Nevele's hillocks in Ellenville, NY.

Myself & Shadow... a stray dog that used to live at the Nevele... he would stay outside in the snow for the whole winter... poor dog!

Shadow and me... in the snow... it is probably January 1976.

Me and my Shadow... 

Myself on the snowy golf course with the legendary Nevele tower in the background.

Forrest House next to Nevele's water tank was our house. Where we the staff (mostly busboys) slept and bode our time during the Winter months in which we worked only 2-and-a-half days a week. 

I had bought a Nikon camera from a Jewish waiter at the end of Summer 1975 at Kutscher's. He said he had bought a brand new camera and was disposing of his old one. I ended up paying too much for it. I was naive and paid the price he asked without any bargaining... I had a lot to learn yet. Anyway, I had a good camera even though it developed fungus in the lens a few years later.

Every bus-boy was attached to a waiter and they would become a team, a 'fixture'. The second week-end I worked at the Nevele I was 'grabbed' by Victor, a middle-aged Hondurean mulatto waiter who was obviously gay. I can't recall Victor's surname no matter how I rack my brain. He was not a bad sort of fellow but he was deep into the American way of sucking up to the rich & powerful which I particularly dislided. I wish I had a photo of Victor. He was dark, growing fatter by the day, had kinky hair and was going bald which he disguised by rolling the hair that grew at the sides onto his head pate. Victor was a movie-buff and used to love talking about Lana Turner and all those 1950s Hollywood stars! We became sort of friends but I was irked by the need Victor had to put me down in order to enhance his own position. His best friend was a Polish-Jewish waiter I don't remember the name. Victor was very obsequious to Beverly and Marilyn two local Gentile real-blonde waitresses who worked during summer. He wanted really bad to be 'accepted' into white-people's circle.

One day, during mid-Spring I was approached by Herman, another middle-aged Polish-Jewish waiter who wanted to 'poach' me from Victor. As I was sore with the Hondurean I took his offer and moved on to his station. Victor was really shocked by my attitude, but after a few weeks we were friends again. He got himself another Brazilian bus-boy called Delmo. I actually liked Victor and not having to work with him was really good because I didn't have to put up with his histrionics.

Then, a week before Memorial Day when the dining-room world is turned topsy-turvy and everyone gets ready to make the most money possible of the approaching 12 weeks, I was simply dumped by Herman who was not to be trusted from the start. Well, I should have known better when he took me away from Victor... now I was getting dumped for another Brazilian bus-boy who had just arrived. Herman was married to a Brazilian middle-aged chamber-maid from Minas Gerais who must have called his attention to the new boy from Minas. He was a regular fellow. Even though he took my job away I was not sore with him but with old Scrooge who didn't even flinch when he saw me face-to-face in the dining room.

I was actually demoted or 'exiled' to the kid's section of the Nevele's dining room! I was really downcast at first but a few days later I realized this whole 'demotion' business had been a blessing in disguise. You see, working with teen-agers was much more fun, we worked shorter hours because kids don't linger forever after their meals. They don't drink endless cups of coffee or tea and, better still, kids arrived earlier and left as soon as they finished their meal. Kids never drank coffee or tea. They drank a lot of iced-tea... but we were prepared for that and as they arrived earlier the kitchen was not cluttered with neurotic waiters and busboys killing each other over their place in the queue to get soup. Talking about soup... kids skipped the damned soup altogether. 

The story goes on at the next post which will be titled :  Summer of 1976.

Jeffery Miller on an early spring day in 1976.

my dearest friend Jeffery Miller.

This the Mineiro bus-boy who took my job. He stands at the stairs that led to our Forrest House.

The fellow on the left is his mate who probably worked  in some other country-club not too far away. Look at the flares! It was 1976!

Myself on the roof of Forrest Lodge House our house on the Nevele's ground in Spring 1976.

I took the picture in the spring of 1976: this is Saint John's Memorial Church on 40 Market St., Ellenville, NY. You see, I worked at the Nevele Country Club and in the spring I used to walk to town to visit the Public Library, eat at MacDonald's on Main St. or shop at Woolworth's. I used to walk all the way down the Nevele Road until it blended with Main St... then I would turn into Market St. and a few more blocks and I was in town... that's when I took this picture. It looks 'bigger' than usual because I had a Nikon with zoom lens so everything I photographed looked 'big'...Congratulations to Mary Wilhelm Fallon...you're right.

Saint John's Memorial Episcopal Church on 40 Market Street, in Ellenville, N.Y. in 2021. 

squirrels galore at Nevele's grounds.

inside Nevele's kitchen (after it was abandoned).