THE ROCKAWAY I KNEW
By Matthew Bashie
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - JUST A SON OF THE BEACH
Standing all alone at the end of the world - the ghosts of sun worshipers flitter about, their voices, their laughter, the bright eager faces of little children - all gone now - swept away by the simple turn of a calendar page and the oncoming brisk winds and colder weather.
And that is the way it always is - at the end of the summer season! The throngs of beach goers have deserted the sands and now it is only the permanent seaside residents who remain behind. We have reclaimed our beach, we have our ocean back once again. How bleak! How frightening! How wonderful!!
It was late September in 1953. The day before, we had experienced a mild hurricane which brought with it some rather high tides - water high enough to flood the basements of the Wavecrest apartment buildings that were closest to the shore. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, Far Rockaway is the most southern section of the NYC borough of Queens - bordered on the east by Nassau County.
My friend and I were doing a bit of exploring. It had been a lovely two-month school vacation and now we had the advantage of an additional "day off" so we decided to "take in the sights" and see what havoc the hurricane had delivered to the lovely resort town in which we resided. An especially tempting "treat" was a small temporary "lake" created by the high tides. This small body of water was trapped on the north side of the boardwalk and it reminded us of shades of "Tom Sawyer" and finding a large plank of wood provided us with a self-made raft.
We had taken lunch with us for we knew that we would not be coming back home for quite awhile and after Labor Day, there are no open concessions or fast food shacks in which one can "grab a bite" to eat. So, knowing that, we were clever enough to pack provisions to last us through the mid day meal.
We commandeered the flat plank, loaded all of our gear (our boxed lunch) and "shoved off' for adventures unknown. The "adventure" unknown was a thirty-foot ride from one small section of the "now flooded" beach to the other - which happened to contain a restaurant and bath house - now shut down and boarded up for the approaching winter.
Well - the two of us never having been much for entering through a front door, the fact that the place was padlocked for the season was not much of a deterrent and within a few minutes we had found a way to enter into the wooden-framed structure. Simply put, in effect, we broke in! Now call us what you will, criminals at worst, adventurers at best, we were just two boys looking for something different and unusual with which to occupy our free time and the idea of exploring this "now closed" building was extremely appealing to both of us.
Once inside, we parked our box of goodies on a table and began searching our way through this maze of interest. In my adult life, I now recognize the place we were "visiting" on that Tuesday morning back over fifty years ago as once having been "Kaiser's Bathhouse & Restaurant" - a finery of the time of the early 1910s and 20s which eventually became part of the Ostend Beach Properties. The building was once part of a larger group of structures erected and maintained as accommodations for some of the most prestigious hotels and inns of the area. Most of the famed and landmark buildings had long been demolished - either by fire or by workmen's machinery and over time very little had manage to survive. What remained after all these many decades sat by the ocean front in a small two-beach section known as "Roche's and Ostend" beaches.
Once inside, we discovered that the place was much more attractive and inviting inside than would ever have been imagined from looking at the rotting and ratty exterior. It was obvious to us that at one time, the place had really been quite nice. Although due to a lack of proper maintenance most of what we saw of the once-famous summerhouse on that day was only a shadow of its former glory. The fixtures, wood-paneled walls, wallpaper, flooring, while still neat and clean and most serviceable were extremely "dated" and long since "out of style". It was like stepping through a "magic mirror" and going back some fifty years in time.
We saw rows and rows of neat day lockers, changing rooms, clean toilet facilities (however the water and electric had been turned off- we DID check that!). There were several steam rooms - and those appeared to be probably the most modern convenience that the place had to offer. There were also one or two "Sauna Baths" - obviously an even more recent addition. We were there (illegally) only to observe and so not wanting to leave an "X" to mark the spot, we took nothing, damaged nothing, and for the most part, we left everything just the way we found it. We just wanted to see! In retrospect, it is a shame that I was not bright enough to pack a camera that day to record what we saw. But what can you expect from a ten year old who was practicing the art of "breaking and entering."
After a tour of what lasted about an hour, my friend and I decided to have lunch. We retraced our steps and found the large restaurant at the south side of the structure - the room in which we had made our initial appearance. We took a table near the center main window and sat and ate and looked out at the ocean - our ocean! No one was in sight. We were, in our minds, all alone in the world.
I don't remember what we did with our discards after we ate. I know that we did not leave anything sitting on the table. We might have found an inside garbage can to deposit our litter. We made believe that we were "guests" of the establishment. We sat and used "funny voices" and pretended like we lived a life of luxury, and that this was just a day like every other. I know that we saw a large kitchen but I don't think that we entered it to check it out. I think by that time, we were all "explored" out and decided to leave. Perhaps we felt that the longer we hung around inside, the better chance we had of getting caught. In any event, shortly after we ate, we exited the building the same way we had entered - through a dining room window. I think we even closed up the window after we left. We were conscientious felons.
Back on the raft - and casting away from "Ostend Island" - we arrived on home ground in a "lengthy" trip of five or so minutes - ever the wiser and proud that we were the "masters of our universe and all that we surveyed."
Two summers later, while sitting on the beach with my
mom and her friends, we noticed a large amount of black smoke rising from
a section a block or so east and then people started shouting and running
towards Roche's beach - the Ostend Bathhouse was afire! I couldn't help
as I sat there on the beach blanket watching the place burn of thinking
back to that perfect morning only a few years earlier when my friend Ralph
and I had the place "all to ourselves." Now it was on fire and
would soon be gone forever. What had lasted for almost sixty years would
be completely destroyed in sixty minutes. Life is so unfair!
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