Banger and Shvenga Lodges


In the summer of 1957 Patti Page had a hit song called, “Old Cape Cod” and it seemed to be sung and hummed by everyone for what felt like forever. It was made all the more popular because it was where Senator John F. Kennedy’s family had their summer compound.

I had just started work full time in the place where I would spend my entire work life. I had worked there the previous summer just to get the feel of the business and I liked it. I
had just come out of a funk after a disappointing romantic adventure and I wanted to get away, but all of my closest friends were either in the army or at reserve training camp or just unavailable. Somehow a friend of my cousin Arnold’s called me and offered to go away with me and share room and and auto expenses.. We would be “on the road” and go as we felt inclined to. This fellow was a young man named Ben. He was a short stocky guy who was pleasant and personable but a bit of a “bull thrower.” We met with Arnie over a pizza and beer and spoke about possible vacation plans.

We decided to throw our lot together and start out by going to Moodus Connecticut to a place called Banner Lodge, but known in young peoples circles known as Banger Lodge. It was said facetiously that if you can’t get “banged” there you could get your money back. Everyone who went there was either looking for romance (mostly the females) or to plain out get laid (mostly the males AND females). It was a place with a reputation for a lot of fornication going on.

I recently came across a picture of myself coming out of a swimming pool at that time and I saw that I really was slim, nice looking and at the peak of youth coming into manhood. I love that picture and it is a favorite of mine even thought his period of my life was not particular happy or wonderful.

We drove to Moodus on a nice summer day and listened to Patti Page singing on several radio stations about the glories of old “Cape Cod.”
Ben and I got our cabin, went to a socializing area and started perusing the new arrivals.
We met several girls who had come all the way from Detroit Michigan to Moodus to have a good time. We had dinner at the same table as them and then saw some kind of a show together.

The girls were cousins. Doris was quite chubby, tall and dark with long curly hair. She definitely was just meant for Ben; at least that’s what I told him. The other gal, Arlene was average height with a very nice figure but not at all pretty. Pretty wasn’t necessarily what I was there for. In retrospect we probably should have split up and gone to two different cabins as couples. Instead all four of us went back to the girls’ cabin.

Every so often I heard a body slam as rotund Doris turned over and body slammed Ben against the wall. I made out with Arlene for hours but didn’t expect things to go along that quickly and was not prepared to go all the way in a room full of people even though it was pitch dark.

I remember telling her what I did for a living and my company name and a few other details I was sorry about the next week. The Detroit tigers were both secretaries for an insurance firm and were planning to go to New York City the next week. While we were making out I sort of loosely promised to show her around the big city. I never gave her my phone number.
When the sun came up Ben and I went back to our own sleeping quarters to change and wash up for breakfast.

At the open breakfast dining room we sat at a table and one “garmento” type announced and guffawed that he heard two guys shacked up with two babes from Detroit and “din’t even ‘bang’ them.” I just looked down into my eggs and continued eating.

Ben went over to talk to a couple of fellows and then came back and broke the news to me. He had met up with a fellow who must have been “fond of sand dunes and salty air,
quaint little villages here and there “. Maybe he liked, “the taste of lobster stew, served by a window with an ocean view.” He was “sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.”


What ever, the S.O.B. left me high and dry to have all the expenses by myself. He was gone never to be seen or heard from again within a half hour. Maybe he heard the mythological Siren calling him from off the New England coastline and got washed up in a sail boat. I hope not.

I decided that I don’t want to get stuck with the girls from Detroit and that I would do a quick checkout and follow plan #2 which I had laid out for myself. At least something got laid out this trip even if it was only a plan.

I decided to head home and convince my friend Joel to head up to the Jewish Alps or Catskills area to a similar establishment called Shawanga Lodge. This place was nick- named by its Jewish clientele as Shevenga Lodge. Shevenga means pregnant, which did and can, happen at such a place where the purpose is similar to that which I pointed out about Banner Lodge. It was easy to sway Joel to go upstate with me and try our luck up there with a different bevy of unclaimed treasures who were for the most part a lot older and more experienced than we were.

When I called home my mother asked me,
“Who the heck is this Arlene person who keeps calling the house every four hours looking for you?”
I told my mother,
“Just tell her that I was called up for active service in my Army reserve unit and am being shipped overseas to Korea and to stop calling.”
Arlene was smarter than I gave her credit for and managed to get my home phone number.
I guess she got back to Motown eventually after realizing that I was her “Mr. Right.”


As the moon rose over a big outdoor dance arena at Shawanga Lodges people started dancing to the beat of Pablo Kaduchis and his Mambo Five or some other name like that. I danced a few dances and then went over to the prettiest girl /best dancer and asked her to dance. She looked at me straight in the eye and said.
“I saw you dancing and I would not dance with you” and turned on her heels away from me.
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I never forget a slight in my life and still use that as an example of hurt feelings as I am a very sensitive person.

Then I remembered the girls I left high and dry without so much as a goodbye in Connecticut and felt perhaps I got my comeuppance for being Mr. Cool or perhaps Chicken of The Sea.

Is there a lesson to be learned? I spent the rest of the evening talking to an “older girl” I spent some time with who kept smoking cigarettes and blowing smoke out of her nostrils. She was from Brooklyn as I was. She saw what happened to me and told me that it is never good to go over to the prettiest girl. A plainer girl will appreciate you much more than someone who thinks she is hot stuff. She was sincere and a nice person whose name was Millie. I have found her advice to be true to a certain extent. I think over the years I learned never to say anything hurtful to anyone if it can be avoided.

I never look back on my dating days as fun. They were all learning experiences which enabled me to appreciate what I have when I finally met and married my second wife.
But it is fun to recall these various anecdotes and relive them in my mind, before I get too old to dream.

Now for the rest of the story as Paul Harvey says. Lately I have been listening to Sirius radio while driving in my car and listening to an oldies station. Lo and behold, they have been playing Patti page singing, “Old Cape Cod.”


Recently we were at a dear friends’ house for dinner prior to attending a big high school reunion of our Brooklyn, N.Y. high school, held in Boynton Beach, Florida. Larry graduated six months ahead of me and I looked through his senior year book. I saw a face I remembered from Shawanga Lodge. It was that gal Millie who spoke nicely to me. She was just six months ahead of me in school! I am amazed that I recognized her since I met her almost five or six years after that picture was taken and now it is fifty four years later.

She was not at the reunion.