THE ROCKAWAY I KNEW
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.
One of the young women - I will call her "Ann" because that was her name - was especially friendly and outgoing. She was then probably about ten years older than I was - over time, we are now probably the same age. (You "know" how women are!) Ann was one of fourteen children. Being an only child, it was difficult for me to relate to this. Imagine sharing one set of parents with thirteen siblings. Wow! Ann would tell us stories about life in her Springfield Gardens home, when her mother made cakes, she would have to hide them because if she didn't there would be nothing left by the time supper came around. She related stories about the wearing of hand-me-downs and how holidays came and went without enough toys and "things" to give to the children. I absolutely could not identify.
Ann's father was a bus driver for the Jamaica Bus Lines company and often his route was driving to the Far Rockaway location. The official bus stop for the last/first stop of the Far Rockaway "run" was the southeast corner of Crest Road and Seagirt Boulevard. Almost all of my childhood, I can remember looking out of our apartment living room window and seeing the red and white Jamaica bus sitting idly at the spot - waiting for passengers to board. Often times, my mom would give me books, food stuffs, stationery sets, gifts she had received but did not want, and I would "run" down to the bus stop and give them to Russ - that was the name of the driver (of certain shifts) who also happened to be Ann's father. I would board the, except for the lone driver, empty bus and give the man materials which he would gratefully accept and "stow" under the driver's seat. After one or two weeks, Russ would automatically recognize me.
There were two main bus lines in the Rockaway area at that time. The Green Bus Line Company (with a depot on Beach 44th Street) rode the distance of Seagirt Boulevard into and through Beach Channel Drive - as well as maintaining a fleet of vehicles on both Edgemere Avenue and Rockaway Beach Bouelvard. The Jamaica Bus Company only provided service as far as Far Rockaway - the first and last stops being on Seagirt Boulevard.
The few times I needed to take the bus into the main village, I would board on Seagirt and put my fifteen cents into the meter. I would usually "step off' at the local public library on Mott Avenue - the largest terminal in the area at that time. However, if I wished to take the bus into Jamaica itself - the last stop being on Hillside Avenue, I was expected to deposit thirty-five cents into the till and often I would get a green-colored transfer - which would be collected from me somewhere during the ride on Rockaway Boulevard.
Once Russ got to know me, I no longer had to pay the fare. When I got on, he would place his hand over the open slot of the meter and motion me into the bus, saying that I had already paid. It was nice to have friends like that!
I guess he could have lost his job if someone had found out what he was doing. Certainly as a child, I had no idea of the consequences of his generous act. I did not abuse the privilege and more often than not, Russ was not "on duty" so I paid the small amount of change for the convenient ride.
So? Why were the people running?? Let me explain what happened.
Crest Road, the small two-block street that runs south to north through the Wavecrest Gardens "project" was a private street; essentially it was not open to any traffic unless you were a tenant of the apartment complex. Originally, when the buildings opened in 1950, metal "tags" were issued to tenants to be displayed on their automobiles - proclaiming that "this car" was legally parked on the private road. The metal plates sort of looked like the kind of children's name plates that they hang on their bicycles - and in fact, I actually DID see some of the kids using them in just that way. The problem with the tags is that the renters could take the tag off one car and place it on another - or they could "loan" it to friends who wanted to park their cars near the beach on a hot summer weekend.
Once a year, the management would "close" Crest
Road to all traffic. They would notify the tenants in advance and then
place barricades at the entrances to the road and post private policemen
to enforce the edict. This restriction took place for a complete twenty-four
hour period and during that time, no one could drive a car onto or out
of Crest Road. For that brief period of time, you would see most of the
cars parked on the median strip which separated the two sides of the Seagirt
Boulevard superhighway - my dad parked our 1949 Studebaker the same way.
As the years advanced, the apartment complex hired additional security
guards for the summer to insure that the Wavecrest residents would be
able to park on "our" street - especially during hot summer
weekends and holidays - when it was really rough to find a space. They
also began to issue "stickers" which would identify a car as
"Permit - Wavecrest Parking" and the guards would religiously
check that the sticker was actually pasted onto the windshield and not
taped on so that it could be moved from car to car.
An alternative to "street parking" was the renting of a garage space -under a building-set terrace. For an additional fifteen dollars each month, you could get a permanently assigned parking spot but my folks didn't have the money for that. My dad felt that our family buggy was too old to warrant the additional expense - and he also felt that the walk from the garage would have been a burden for him so he did without - and "scrounged" for street parking on busy summer afternoons when he returned home from work.
Because our street was a private street, Jamaica Bus was constantly informed that it was not appropriate for them to use Crest Road as a depository for the hoards of people coming in from other areas to use "our" beach - a "request" which was constantly ignored by bus company management. On those hot summer weekend afternoons, bus load after bus load of transients from many inland areas would seek the relief that a thirty-five cent bus ride would provide them. People would take the bus from Jamaica and then at the final stop, they would depart and "try and get to the nearest beach" - which just happened to be Beach 20th Street. So, being aware of all of this, the management of the apartment complex had their private police force watch for the buses and then "hold the people back" - physically if necessary! The crowds were literally "herded" one block east -to Beach 19th Street which was then a public street that would provide the public with access to the Roche's areas.
The "short-cut" was Crest Road and once the general beach-going public became aware of this, it became sort of a game - the people got off the bus and ran down Crest Road "for dear life" towards the beach. As residents, we also knew of this and after awhile, no body really paid attention to this "circus act" anymore. However, I have to admit that observing the scampering crowds that very first time back in 1953 - it was quite a sight to see - most memorable!
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I always love hearing from my fans and friends. M. B.