THE ROCKAWAY I KNEW
By Matthew Bashie
CHAPTER FOUR: EXPLORING MY SURROUNDINGS
I was all alone in the world! I had two playgrounds, miles of boardwalk, a lovely white-sand beach, and my own ocean. Of course, I didn't actually own any of this - but to me, a little boy, it certainly DID seem that way at the time.
My family had just moved into this newly-built apartment complex in a suburb of Queens and I knew absolutely no one. There just had to be so many other children with whom I could play - but in the beginning, no one and nothing! Looking back, it is surprising that with all the hundreds of families living there and all the children who must have been available, I really saw very few kids my own age - at least for the first month or so.
I discovered that the boardwalk directly in front of our building ended only a short distance east. I later found out that the reason that the boardwalk ended so abruptly is that the two beaches east of "my beach" were private property and that the city could not or would not build a public boardwalk on a privately owned beach.
The 19th Street property I later learned was probably the most important street in the Rockaways for over fifty years! It had originally been an extension of a street called "Broadway" which had run northeast and connected many towns (now part of Nassau County) with a small island which had existed at one time off the southern coast of Far Rockaway. Beach 19th had once been a "hubbub" of summer activity with its own trolley car line and many large and famous hotels and restaurants but now i1 was reduced to a one-block long narrow street lined on the west side by a series of aging one-story concession stands and on the east by a run-down seafood house and health club.
Our apartment complex management gave original tenants a smaii white cardboard box with a paper handle which contained free coupons and discount offerings for a variety of things from those still operating the small shops on Beach 19th Street during the summer season. My parents gave me the "welcome-wagon box" and I went through it and I was the one in my family who used the coupons for the slices of free watermelon (which only cost .07) and free skee-ball experiences at those old and very run-down amusements. I remember the original stores that I saw on that block - a place that sold postcards, a store that sold fishing supplies, a double-shop that had loads of arcade games - you could put in a nickel and pretend that you were driving a car. There was a large open arcade closer to the end of the street on the west side that was home to a "scooter ride" - where kids could sit in little cars and while riding around on an oval track, they could "crash" into each other.
I also remember a merry-go-round on the east side of the street - close by to the end of the boardwalk and the ocean. You could tell just by looking at this area that it at one time had been important but now it was just a place of faded glory! In fact, by the end of the 1950s, everything would finally be demolished.
Once summer morning, walking eastbound on the boardwalk, I encountered an artist. A woman in her mid 30s was sitting on a beach chair on the boardwalk, facing north and was painting a picture on a canvas which was mounted on sort of a make-shift easel. She was painting the "north beach" view of the shore front - which included several Wavecrest apartment buildings and a one-story wooden structure that was home to the local day camp - Spartan's Daycamp. The summer facility extended from Beach 19th Street to Crest Road - interrupted by the apartments on the west and the concession strip on the east. She told me her name was Kathy and she was taking an art class in some sort of college. I stayed around for aboul a half an hour to watch her paint -1 still remember her reproducing the reddish roof of the Spartan Daycamp building with her oil paints. She must have been a very slow artist because it took her almost a month to finish thai single work and I would visit with her almost every day - but I did not stay too long. I had other "more important" things to do.
A friend of my mother's visited us and stayed with us that August and I remember that my dad found him a part-time job at the food concession at the beach end of Beach 19th Street. He worked as general maintenance and he also cooked hot dogs and hamburgers which were sold to the summer public. There was an open-air concrete-slab patio at the south side of the small eatery and I remember sitting there at a round table, under an umbrella, eating fries and sipping a coke from a wax paper cup.
As a "spectacular" finale to that summer of 1952,1 remember the merchants of Beach 19th Street hired "an act" to attract attention. They erected a high pole - probably six stories tall and then this "guy" who called himself "Captain Jack" climbed up to the top of that pole early one evening in August and did a series of tricks lasting about twenty minutes. For his reward, about eight hundred people DID show up to catch his performance. It was the first time (and the last time) that my parents and I actually did attend a local event together.
If you wish to contact me at any time, feel free to do so through this web site. I always love hearing from my fans and friends. M.B.
I always love hearing from my fans and friends. M. B.