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A Child’s Islip: Wondrous Years Alan H Grant
It all began when I was seven – in 1937. We had left the tough streets and dark apartment house walls, in the East Bronx. Just getting to Islip was an exciting adventure. It took three trains from Penn Station: An electric train to Jamaica – a steam train to Babylon – and another steam train to Islip. We first lived in a bungalow on Athasca Road. It backed up onto a creek , only several hundred feet from the South Bay. What a change this was from the Bronx. We had no key to our front door. That first summer, I learned how to fish. In fact – self-taught. Using a discarded bamboo pole, twenty feet of string, a piece of cork and a stray fishing hook I found on the dock. Bait was easy. I would get up at five thirty each morning, while it was still dark, and by flashlight, dig earthworms with a kitchen spoon. Cutting each one in half made them wiggle more. Then, off to the dock. The tide came in around six AM. And with it, schools of baby bluefish. We called them Snappers. As fast as I could cast my line into the water – there was a slight nibble on the surface. Then the Snapper would ‘take’ and the cork would pull down ever so slightly from the surface. If I yanked back at that very instant, I had
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my first victory. Within ten or fifteen minutes I had so many catches – as fast as I could get my line back in the water. And rarely, did I ever lose that hapless earthworm. After that first day’s success, my mother would give me old newspapers to wrap my catches, and was able to drop off fresh fish each morning to several neighbors. I never got over the ‘kick’ at the precise moment when the fish was hooked. Coming back from the dock, I would walk around a number of big ugly black horseshoe crabs. Despite being barefoot and always curious - I steered clear. That barefoot summer went by so fast. My shoes went back on for the third grade. I went to the Islip High School, though despite its’ name – went all the way from kindergarten thru the twelfth grade. We moved the next year to a house on Winwood Court. It was a more solid structure with a basement – that meant more new chores for me. I would bank the furnace each night before going to bed. And by sixthirty the next morning, I would open the grate and shovel in several loads of coal. The house would take about two hours to feel warm, But we never had hot water before late morning. Washing up before school was done very quickly with cold water. Our house was about four blocks back from Main Street. There were no school buses – and our school was about two plus miles away. When there was a snowfall during the Winter, Main Street was plowed – but not any of the side streets. I remember being shorter than the piles of snow for at least another year. And the school never closed – no matter what the weather was. About half way to school, was my father’s stationary store. It sold newspapers, cigarettes, fishing gear and some toys. On Sunday mornings, I would fold together the seven or eight different sections of the New York Times. Probably a hundred papers had to ready for the customers, by nine o’clock.
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Other than radio, people would find out what was going on, by the many number of daily newspapers that would come out by train from New York City. There was the Daily News, The Daily Mirror, The Journal American, The Brooklyn Eagle, PM, the Times Herald and the ‘Queen’ of print – The New York Times. Now being in the fourth grade, I had a bigger job. The Long Island Railroad had a train stop about twelve blocks east of Main Street. I had gotten a four wheel American Flyer Wagon, that I pulled by hand. Twice each day, I would wheel it to the train station to pick up bundles of newspapers – dumped off the trains. There were no raised platforms, and the locomotives were huge coalfired machines. The town immediately west of Islip, about four miles away, was Bay Shore. When I put my ear to the ground next to one of the rails, I could actually feel the vibration of the train – as it left Bay Shore. And what excitement it was see and feel these monsters as they would grind to a halt in Islip. One day, I found a seat stub on the ground. I knew if I got on the train and stuck it into the top of a wicker seat, I could ride the train . That I started to do. Making it so easy, was that East Islip, was only three miles away. I hopped off with my stub – and caught the next train Heading back, about thirty minutes later. My freeloading lasted about a week, when a grey-headed conductor spotted me – and queried, “You don’t really have a ticket to ride – do you?” My answer was to own up, with, “But, I love to ride the trains.” “You are not supposed to do that. You are breaking the rules.” “But, I love to ride the trains.” No matter what he said – I gave back the same answer.
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Finally, probably being a kind grandfather to some rambunctious kid – he said, “OK, just between us. But - you can only ride one stop each day Understood?” And, so I did. What a great summer. My parents never knew about this misadventure. During July and August, there were band concerts on Thursday evenings in front of the town hall. There was an open pavilion for the players. The locals usually brought blankets to spread out in a circle. I, as well s my friends climbed up on the big World War I canon, to bounce around – and partially listen to the music. There was a public beach several miles south of town, accessed by a wavy tarred road. When it was hot outside, you could see shimmering waves drift upwards from the surface. The beach had small wooden changing enclosures – and outhouses because there was no indoor plumbing. One could swim within a rectangular enclosure, or go beyond into the bay. That first summer, my father would take me to the beach, and promised to teach.me how to swim. What he didn’t know is that I already knew. Where we had lived in the Bronx was just a few blocks from the East River. Aside from getting cooled off when the city firemen would open the hydrants, I would follow the other kids down to the river and watch how they would first take off all their clothes and jump in. After only watching for several days, I figured I could do that also – and floundered in an out. I was afraid to tell my father how I already knew how to swim. The fourth of July was exciting. There was a fireworks show in the sky over the beach. And the volunteer fire department always put on engine displays, hook and ladders, bells, whistles and sirens.
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There seemed to be no end to these visual feasts. A few blocks west of the train station, there was a small airport, where I would watch the action – mainly army planes flying in an out (a prelude to the coming war). On main street in front of our store, there were a variety of cars to watch going up and down the street - Desotos, Buicks, Dodges – and every now and then - an old model A Ford. And to top it off, at the bottom of main street, we still had a blacksmith shoing horses. He would heat up bars of iron with a bellows fire - then bending these red hot rods into shape and quenching them in cold water. Planes, trains, cars and horses – all there for the taking. What a marvelous mix. In 1940, it all came to an end when we moved from this small working class town to a new big city – traffic and all. What a difference! ….School busses, keys to the front door - And going barefoot during the summer months to save shoes for school year, was over.