Summer Fun — Italian American Style

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Port Washington NY

First I would like to thank my friend Dr. Ed Iannuccilli for the piece he recently wrote about “What did summer mean?” That gave me the idea to write about some of my memories. I will admit that many of these are nt unique to Italian American’s, but hey you need a good title. That’s me with the house with my brother and my cousins Louise and Larry. I don’t remember too much about the place in Port Washington, but it did seem like it took forever to get there from College Point.

The Games

Right around the corner from me was PS 129, which was the center of activity for most of the summer. There was a huge schoolyard with a softball diamond ( albeit concrete ), another area for stickball, a stoop for stoop ball, and a large wall where we would play Ace, King, Queen. Which was handball against the wall. The Ace would serve, and upon losing the serve would move down the line. There was also a version called bottoms up, where he loser had to bend over while others tried to hit him in the butt with the rubber ball. For the adventurous you could scale the wall and get into the locked schoolyard. We also would play box ball, and of course tag and hide and go seek.

I remember looking forward to the Memorial Day parade, the unofficial start of summer, where most of the town turned out. At least us kids.

Another great summer pastime was Adventurers Inn. An amusement park within walking distance. Or waiting for the Bungalow Bar, Good Humor or Mr. Softee truck to come around. Imagine a banana split for 35 cents.

Jones Beach

One of the best things we did in the summer was the almost weekly trip to Jones Beach. My mom and my cousins aunt would pack up the ( non air conditioned cars ) with kids, umbrellas blankets and food and head of to the Beach.

Now a bit about Jones Beach. It has some of the biggest parking lots you will ever see and the walk to the beach can take some time if you get there late. And the walk to the water is almost as long. They did have some great ice cream where you unrolled the ice cream and dropped it into the cone.

Now, being Italian, we did not arrive with PBJ and baloney sandwiches. My aunts would whip up eggplant and sausage and peppers to make sandwiches on the beach. One day there was a pop up thunderstorm and we had to run around to save the food!

My best friend on these sojourns was my cousin’s cousin Denise. We always had to ride in the same car, I think as we were the only ones in our age group, but we best friends too. Eventually Denise moved from Corona to right next door to me in College Point. For many years our summers were spent together, usually waiting for the newest Beatles 45 or album.

Back Yard Fun

We were lucky as my dad put in an above ground pool in the early 1960’s. Being a photographer for the NY Daily news we would often have photos like this one in the newspaper.

Another great perk were the free tickets to the Mets and World’s fair. Later on, dad was doing work for 7 up and we got free tickets to concerts in Forest Hills to see the Who, the Rolling Stones, Arlo Gutherie and more.

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