Highslide JS

  
This was the village of Far Rockaway in 1918 - facing northbound on Central Avenue. Our vintage picture captures many of the important commercial buildings on the west side of the busy downtown shopping center during a crisp August morning. At the left side (south) we see the red-brick Healy Building, possibly the town's oldest edifice, built in 1889 and still standing today. The large and unusual-looking (should have been granted landmark status) Nebenzahl 's Department Store was torn down in the early 1980s, and at the far right side of the card, we can see the original Long Island Rail Road (and local trolley car) station located north of Mott Avenue. (click on image to enlarge)
 

"What fascinates me about life is that now and then the past rises up and declares itself."

Sue Grafton - best selling author of the Alphabet Series of fiction novels - 2009

 

Such was my great surprise when I received a telephone call the early part of this year. I did not recognize the caller's voice and even after she identified herself, it took me a few moments to research the corners of my mind to place the pieces of this mental puzzle together. Definitely a voice from my past - one of my former school teachers, someone with whom I had not communicated in well over half a century. Although she insisted she remembered me from those days of my sixth-grade education, I sincerely doubt that as fact. True, the woman did prepare a collage of pupil photographs of that June 1955 graduating class - but I honestly do not believe that I had engendered any real or meaningful encounters with her even way back then. My only possible claim to fame was my rather small frame which had landed me a front-row seat in her classroom. But for the most part, being merely an average student, I certainly did not stand out as exceptional - certainly no one special enough to be recalled from some fifty years ago.

Over the very nature of our awkward conversation, I soon realized that our link was a mutual friend - one of my high school teachers with whom I had shared membership in the same faculty back throughout the sixties and into the seventies. Our friend had mentioned that I was writing a series of articles on old Rockaway for a popular internet website and this former elementary school teacher of mine had a few memories of her own she wished to share with the world. The actual purpose of her phone call was to offer me a real-picture postcard of Far Rockaway - a keepsake she had stored away with her own childhood mementos. I happily provided my mailing address, she promised to promptly send along the old card. I was to call her back after I received her offering and at that time we would discuss the old photograph and she would supply color commentary from her own recollections having grown up in Far Rockaway during the turn of the century. Within two weeks the card had arrived and I returned her phone call to facilitate an exchange of ideas, to discuss this memento which she had nurtured for most of her life.

 
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