Rockaway - After the Summer Rush

A memoir by Stevie S. Stevens

Sometimes it seems like just yesterday; other times it seems like a lifetime ago. Could it be that I did not experience this? Perhaps it is something I read about in a book - a paperback that entertained me some fifty years ago. Did this really happen? Is this the Rockaway Beach I remember?

I lived in the Rockaways back in the 1950s - my family owned a home. I went to the local schools - my first job was on the boardwalk in early 1960. I learned how to drive a car - initially by taking lessons from my father on "closed" parking lots which had once been major hotel properties so many years before and I remember my first solo drive on Seagirt Boulevard, which really scared the heck out of me when I was only eighteen. My first "real" girlfriend lived on Beach 26th Street - a few blocks south of the Wavecrest train station. I double dated with her and her younger sister a few times - and recently I discovered through the local newspaper (The Wave) that the younger sister passed away this year. Of course I was distraught to hear of the loss but even more, I was surprised that the family had continued to live on in the Far Rockaway area - even though the neighborhood had changed so drastically over the past several decades.

The Rockaway I knew and loved was not the summer seasonal resort - with all its congestion and hoopla, I was a full-time resident and I often thought I did not really "fit in" with the summer gaiety. Those summer visitors were only renters - and I felt I owned the place. At least I would stake claim to it long after those transients had departed - the emptiness belonged to me - and of course, to all the others who didn't make that hasty retreat back to somewhere after each Labor Day weekend.

As a child, I enjoyed those mild summer nights - playing at the multitude of boardwalk concessions - at least as long as the few dollars I had in my pocket would hold out. I enjoyed mingling with the throngs of strangers - everyone seemed so happy to be there; to be alive. But I was alone in the crowd - I really did not belong; anyway, that's the way it really did seem to me. Those people were on vacation - this was merely a diversion in their daily lives. To me, this was my home.

I was not on holiday. This was the boardwalk of my life; a wooden walkway engraved into my mind as part and parcel of what made up and constituted the real me. This was no passing fancy - this was total reality for me, folks!

On occasion, I made summer friends. I guess all of or perhaps most of the kids my age did that. I would see a friendly face, strike up a conversation, and then for sixty or so days, I had a new "best" friend with whom I would explore life's mysteries. Unfortunately I could not count on these children for more than those few vacation months and often at the end of the season, they would not even remember to seek me out to wish me a fond farewell or to supply a gracious goodbye.

Briefly, I worked the tail-end of one summer at a skee-ball establishment. I was eighteen (the age you had to be to be licensed to work in that endeavor -you had to have what was called a "Common-Show Attendant" license to make change and handle those colored tickets that were awarded for scoring points.) That season a boy of eleven "adopted" me and decided he wanted to "marry" me. His parents were out in the Rockaways for a full-summer vacation and that boy hung around me (at the concession, of course) for weeks until I contacted his parents and they slowly but surely explained to him his intentions were a bit misguided. I laugh now because at my young age I thought that was so funny but looking back, I am truly flattered the boy thought so highly of me. As a teenager, those things really didn't matter to me so much - especially considering the innocence of the times.

Of course I remember the Wednesday night fireworks - the crowds flocking to the boardwalk immediately before the display and then the mass exodus off the boardwalk after the show was completed. The wonderful food concessions that sold things I had never before experienced nor have I ever since. The real honest-to-gosh Italian Ices and Jerry's cherry-cheese knishes, the ice cream that always tasted home-made, and the thrill of winning a large stuffed animal for my girlfriend at a stand - the one where you had to toss a brown wooden hoop over the neck of an empty Coca-Cola bottle.

Next Page >