As a kid in the early fifties, I often found myself by the Mill Pond.
In the summer, many of us youngsters navigated large, model sailboats there.
In the winter, we looked for the large red ball painted on the white sign. This meant skating was safe on the pond.
Nick Sica’s lunch wagon was another story. We always wondered if the rumor of his system for testing the heat of the grill was true. However, whatever the season, one could not help seeing, and wondering about, that big odd house on the hill next to the pond…the house on Stromboli Hill.
Pleasant Avenue is the road that climbs up and over Stromboli Hill. In centuries past, it was well-traveled, since it was the main route to Shore Road, Manhasset Isle and Manorhaven.
The Mill Pond did not exist back then. The water there was actually a section of Manhasset Bay and was called Dodge’s Inlet. This was appropriate, s
ince the Dodge family’s homestead was at the head of the inlet.
Eventually, the inlet was filled in where it met the bay and a section of road was built to connect sections that had been separated by water. A grist mill was built to take advantage of the new tidal action under the road between the bay and the new Mill Pond.
The route over Stromboli fell into disuse. Vehicles traveled up and down Pleasant Avenue from Shore Road to reach the houses on the west side, but travel from the head of the Mill Pond on the east side was sparse. That side of the hill had no houses. Halfway up from that direction, one saw a double wide dirt road on the right (near the present condominium called Mill Pond Acres) that led up to an old wooden office building. It was part of a vast sand pit that stretched from there north to Cow Neck Road, near the Sousa school.
In the summer of 1962, there were new shopping centers and housing off Shore Road, north of Pleasant Avenue. The top and east side of the hill were still wooded and bordered by remaining sand banks. There was a drive up to that house on top of the hill. I parked my ’58 Ford on a strip of sand bordering a post and wire fence. Beyond that point stretched waves of sand. I crossed Pleasant Avenue to the large house.
To the left of the short walk to the front door was a driveway that led to a small barn. I could see a rooster making love to an old shoe in the drive. There was not a hen in sight.
Port Washington was known for its good roads, even before the era of asphalt. The secret was the left-over shells from the clam and oyster businesses. Smashed shells made for sturdy and dust-free roadbeds for the horses and early automobiles. There before me, in that old driveway, was the only still existing example of that bygone procedure.
I passed a couple of old men seated at round tables on the open porch. They were deep into a game of checkers. The inside was kind of dark, except near the bar. Seated at one end was a grizzly-looking man wearing a black eye patch. There was another worn-out gent at the other end of the bar, next to a bird cage with a black cat in it. Yes, the cat was in the cage. Why? Because the parrot was flying around free!
My imagination conjured up images of sub, subbasements under my feet, with subterranean tunnels snaking to Manhasset Bay. There, in the dead of night, the ill-gotten booty would be carried from ships, through the tunnels and into the house on Stromboli Hill.
I sat down on a bar stool. At first, I thought the bartender was absent. Then I saw a dark mat moving about. Was this another loose cat?
Suddenly, a man arose from a milking stool and asked what I needed. It was Tony DeMar, the owner. “I’d like a beer,” I said. He poured the liquid from the tap into a wine glass of ever decreasing glass circles.
“That’ll be 10 cents,” he said. My mind raced. Even for 1962, this price was unheard of. Just because I could, I ordered 10 glasses of beer. Tony took the dollar in front of me.
“I could use a pack of cigarettes also,” I said.
He informed me he only had one brand and reached under the bar for a carton. Now my father told me about a brand that he and his boyhood friends would find at construction sites. Sometimes it was an empty pack; sometimes a few butts remained. I never actually saw this brand anywhere in my life…until now. There, looking like the Sun record label, was a carton of Sweet Caporals!
I sipped my beers, smoked my strong smokes and, soon enough, I headed for the men’s room. There I was treated to a rather spooky view through the window. It was getting a little misty as I glanced across a grassy field to gravestones. This was the Pleasant Avenue Burial Grounds, dating to the nineteenth century.
Back at my seat, I glanced out of the window to my right. The lights of Manhasset Bay were coming on below and that new bridge was aglow—the Throgg’s Neck Bridge. I turned to the jukebox behind me for some music. It was full of 78 rpm records, none past l958. That took care of my nickels.
Tony was bemoaning the loss of “Hippo Hill” in the sand banks across the street. “They just gobbled it up,” he said.
He sounded like those who felt the same about the loss of “Billy Goat Mountain” in the sand pits across the road from Hempstead Harbor’s Bar Beach. Then he told me that his brick barbecue pit in the back could be used by anyone wanting to see the fireworks on Manhasset Bay on July Fourth.
That’s where they shot them off in the 50’s and 60’s. There was a white sand peninsula at Tom’s Point on Manhasset Isle. The finale was the row of white sparks streaming down from many tubes atop a high rope. This was called “the waterfall.”
You couldn’t do that today…you’d set the apartment houses on fire. “No fee to use the place, just buy your beer from me,” Tony added.
I finally left this time warp on the hill wondering if I could possibly get Rod Serling’s phone number. Now, this magical place only exists in my memory.
The building and grounds currently make up the Happy Montessori School. Don’t worry. It’s surrounded by high fences to prevent the youngsters from falling down the steep drop of the hill. I wonder if any of the kids found a sealed-up tunnel entrance in a subbasement?
“Harry Hepcat’s Stories of the 50s” CD can be ordered by clicking Hepcat Music Store at www.harryhepcat.com, or go to www.i-Tunes.com and type in Harry Hepcat. The one hour DVD documentary on teen life in Port in the 50s (Teen Beat) is also available at the Hepcat Music Store. Harry’s TV show is on Cablevision channel 20 Saturdays at midnight (repeated Friday afternoons 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.)
