THE ROCKAWAY I KNEW

A serialized autobiographical novel

By Matthew Bashie

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: TAKE THE BUS AND LEAVE THE
DRIVING TO RUSS

...and the crowd ran! Streaming down Crest Road towards the beach!! A group of over one hundred people - mostly wearing bathing attire and carrying picnic baskets and beach chairs. They ran faster and faster! Now the group was breaking up. While most of crowd was concentrated on the east side of the small private road, many were running in the street. The goal: The 20th Street boardwalk ramp and the entrance to the beach.

My mom was a "beach lover." Every chance she had, she and her small group of "invited" friends would take a blanket and a few containers of fresh peaches, apples, pears, and plums and spend a day on the beautiful white beach. I really don't remember my mother going in for a swim - although her female companions often availed themselves of the watery privilege. That was a major advantage of living so close to the water - you could invite family and friends over for a day of sun and surf - easy entertainment!

Through one of her acquaintances, mother met a couple of teenage girls who had enough free time on their hands to be able to enjoy more than a single day at the beach and after a month or so of seeing these kids on a regular basis, my parent was comfortable enough with them to invite them to use our apartment in Wavecrest Gardens, a 14-building complex built directly facing the ocean in the lower Far Rockaway area of Queens. This was to be a convenience where they could use the bathroom facilities and could change into bathing suits. After a while, these girls became (informally) part of our family.

(Read more)

Go to Archives to read the previously published chapters.

In Memoriam

Dick McGuire

1926 - 2010

Hall of Fame Basketball star Dick McGuire grew up in a house on Beach 108th Street in Rockaway Park. He played the "Rockaway Game" .

Click on this link below to read this revealing article about Dick McGuire by Corey Kilgannon just published in the New York Times.

Go to NYT Article

Click on image to enlarge
Above is the sheet music cover to Zip Coon, a song that Ed Berlin mentions in his article currently running on this website. The melody to the song is the familiar Turkey in the Straw. Along with Jim Crow, Zip Coon was a fictional character popularized in the late 1820s and early 1830s through minstrel shows. Zip Coon was introduced and made famous by white minstrel singer George Washington Dixon, and imbedded a stereotype that would endure well into the twentieth century.
I Remember the Rockaways
 
Legends of the Rockaways
by: Stevie S. Stevens

In this fascinating article by Stevie S. Stevens we get to see how vacationers on a limited budget at the turn of the 20th century were able to spend their summers in the Rockaways. William E. Auer, was an important contributor to history of the Rockaways. He built one of the first tent colonies in 1901. Later, he owned and managed two hotels, Kiddie Park and other major Rockaway concessions.We are very grateful to Dorothy and Eddie Sullivan for recently contributing a truly historic collection of photos and materials to Rockaway Memories. Dorothy Sullivan is the granddaughter of William E. Auer.

Read Article

Our Wonderful Edgemere Bungalow
by: Stevie S. Stevens

What was it like to live in an Edgemere bungalow nearly 100 years ago? Stevie S. Stevens brilliantly describes the care and pride of the young couple who lived there back then. They had documented their experiences in this newly discovered album of 27 photographs. Through the magic of photo-editing we were able to restore much of the detail that was seemingly lost as the images had badly faded over time.

Go to Story

Letters from our Readers

A letter to Rockaway Memories dated February 6, 2010:

Bud Wertheim (FRHS, 1945)

Hello Marty,

You are doing a great job with the Rockaway web site. So many memories are distilled from the images and stories you are reproducing. Wonderful!

I was not around to have my picture taken for the 1945 yearbook as I ran away from home and joined the Navy in 1944. I am including a photo of me taken at the time the yearbook photos were taken. Perhaps you can slip it in my yearbook. It's colorized, one I took and had tinted to send to my parents. I was in Oahu, Hawaii at the time and it was the first my parents had heard of me since I disappeared from home. I was signed up for a 'minority cruise' and the signatures of my parents on my application form were done by me. I was always good at calligraphy and could sign their names better than they could. The Navy didn't ask too many questions. I could breathe, jump up and down, so passed the physical and off I went.

Keep up the great job...
Earl "Bud" Wertheim, class of '45, now Professor Emeritus (in art)
email: bud@budsyard.com
website: http://www.budsyard.com/

A letter to Rockaway Memories dated February 6, 2010:

I just viewed your website and I think it's marvelous! I was born in St. Joseph's hospital in 1953. My parents moved to 1215 Neilson St. (at the corner of Central Ave) in 1943. They came to the Rockaways during the summers of their childhoods to escape the heat of the Bronx. I have vivid memories of Roches Beach Club and, when it closed, the subsequent Spartan Day Camp, owned by Edith Kruvand, where I spent the summers of my childhood. Spartan eventually moved to Atlantic Beach, where Edith ran it along with her son, Mike.

I remember the Pix, the Strand and the Columbia theaters, the King George, the Sugar Bowl, Father's, Victoria Bakery, Ginos, Elfenbein's Bakery, Mortons Army Navy store. I remember my brother taking me to one of the theaters to see Jerry Lewis LIVE. I was about 5 yrs old and I was so excited I couldn't stop giggling.

I remember PS 39 and being in the first wave students at the brand new PS 197. Our apartment building was the 2nd one built in the Rockaways and it was over "Doc" Schwartz's Drug Store, across from the Shaaray Tefila synogogue and Hebrew school.

I lived in Far Rockaway for the first 36 years of my life and still maintain friendships with several of the people I grew up with.

My husband, an East Side kid, can't understand the strong bond of love we Rockaway Rats have for our home town. To me, it was like spending summers in Malibu lying on the beach, listening to the Beach Boys. How lucky we were to be able to spend hot summer nights playing at the concessions on the boardwalk and eating Jerry's knishes!! How great was it to have Playland so close!

Thank you so much for this wonderful gift and the time and effort you have put in to this fabulous website.

Elissa (Morgenstern) Dellosso (FRHS, 1971)

 
Music of the Rockaways
 

A couple of weeks ago I received several emails from fellow FRHS grad, Ed Berlin, class of 1954. Along with some rare Rockaway postcards, Ed also attached the sheet music for three songs, each with "Rockaway" in its title. One song dated back to 1840. The other two were published in 1871 and 1915. I was now obsessively intrigued as to as to what these songs sounded like. However, my piano and sight reading skills were certainly not up to the task of playing them from the sheet music. A frustrating internet search did not turn up any existing recordings. Somehow, I had the notion that there was a program out there that could scan sheet music and turn it into a computer file that could actually play the music. Eureka! I found such a program (Smartscore) and was able to download it to my computer at a reasonable cost of $50.

In the interim, Ed and I had been exchanging emails. I soon discovered that Ed is a musicologist and one of the formost experts in his specialty, Ragtime. With all the chutzpah I could muster, I asked Ed if he would write an article for the website about these Rockaway songs. Without reluctance he agreed. Unfortunately for Ed, he did not know then that this task would now subject him to listening and correcting countless versions of these songs, which were riddled with errors, that I subsequently emailed him. The computer program did not accurately reproduce the music from the scan. And, I was still feverishly trying to figure out how to edit out all the mistakes.

Thanks both to Ed's patience and scholarship, we are now pleased to present this history and musical interlude from Rockaway's past. M.N.

Read Article

Rockaway Postcards

(View Dean Georges Postcard Collection)

FRHS ALUMNI PHOTOS

We have just added the Dolphin Yearbook photos for the Class of 1982.

A special plea to anyone who has a 1983 Dolphin. Please contact us immediately so we can scan the photos and post them on line. We will return it promptly and pay all mailing costs

Go to FRHS Alumni Page

Photos From Our Readers
Looking south at Mott and Central. The "King George" was a coffee house which replaced Cushman's Bakery in the Smith Building. Across the street, the "John's Bargain Store" is now in the first floor storefront of what was Neve Furniture. This photo was taken around 1970.

Thanks to Michelle Jaeger (FRHS, 1988) for allowing us to post this great snapshot of this famous intersection of Mott and Central Avenues. To see an enlarged version of the above along with additional photos from Michelle's collection of Far Rockaway during the 1970s click here

 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.