Yankee Magazine, July 1996 In the 1940s a Connecticut car dealer named George Bisacca came to the Berkshires and bought a down-at-the heels boy’s school. The school was housed in a one-glamorous mansion surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods and rolling fields. He returned to Connecticut and told his wife, Ruth, we’re going to open a resort.” The war was over, and he had an idea: a singles resort. After a Saturday Evening Post story about Eastover, titled “Where Working Girls Frolic,” the phones never stopped ringing. George’s rule that you had to stay at least a week meant there was time for romance to flourish. Marriages followed – and children. Couples wanted to come back with their families. So about 20 years ago Eastover began its family weeks. Which is where we came in. We arrived on a Friday during a family weekend, when some 360 moms, dads, and kids were swirling around the grounds. It was as though we had stumbled upon the world’s most elaborate children’s birthday party or had been transported back in time to a fraternity party circa 1970. Perhaps it was both at once, a jumble of motion and sounds as everyone simply played the game called Eastover. Over here an intense game of water volleyball; over there a softball game; down yonder golf balls few off the driving-range tees; tennis, horseshoes, Wiffleball, archery. Suddenly the loudspeaker blares: “Watersliding begins on the front lawn in five minutes!” and bathing-suit-clad children run to the wet and soapy plastic coated knoll, ready to spiral and spin to the bottom. Though George died in 1983, the world he envisioned remains. His Sears, Roebuck prefab cottages are still in use. The outdoor pool, the softball field (George pitched until his midseventies), and many of the motel units were built by George. Every evening the nightclub still draws a crowd. The accommodations in the mansion remain basic and unadorned, because Eastover was never intended as a stay-in-the room resort. George loved parades, and every year he entered floats in the Pittsfield Fireman’s Muster. The train that younger children clamber over and into was once George’s float entry. Then there’s the matter of the buffalo and the Civil War. George started a buffalo herd about 30 years ago. After breakfast, kids hop aboard a tractor-drawn wagon and ride to where the buffalo roam. George was an avid collector of Civil War weaponry. Wanting to pass along his enthusiasms to his guests, he’d herd everyone to a low-lying pasture and let them fire away. His son-in-law, Bob McNinch, carries on his Civil War passion. My children still talk about the dine of the Gatling gun and the live cannon firing, which set a pile of rubble ablaze. Though there are staff-supervised children’s programs for two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, we found that many children simply used the resort Huck Finn style, lighting out on their own within the spacious freedom of some 400 acres. The dining room stays open, with soda and ice machines dispensing endless cups of soft drinks. Meals match the shirttail-out, sneakered style of Eastover. Pancakes and French toast and eggs for breakfast along with cereals and juices and bagels; lots of burgers and salads and hot dogs for lunch; and barbecued chicken and steamed clams buffet picnics in a pine grove in the evenings. Eastover seems especially ideal for children who come with friends. On our weekend more than 160 firefighters and their families were there and their kids did everything together, which made it a bit tricky for unattached children to make new buddies.
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