Rockaway

 Rockaway

 

It looked like Saturday, August 10 would be a beautiful day for a trip to the beach. Although it had been somewhat overcast with some light showers the day before, the forecast called for cloudless skies, temperatures near 80°, and virtually no possibility of rain. It promised to be a perfect day at the ocean. 

That morning at 6:00 a.m., knowing they were going to the beach, a place they knew only from brightly illustrated storybooks, Angel and Eddy appeared with great anticipation at Julia’s bedside. They were fully dressed in brand-new bathing suits, bright T-shirts, baseball caps and sunglasses.

“Mommy, wake up . . . Mommy, wake up!” they repeatedly chanted as she opened her eyes.

Because Julia had once again overindulged with special apple juice the night before, she felt somewhat hungover and suffered a mild headache, but nonetheless quickly rose to prepare Amanda for the expected arrival of Mrs. Thompson, who had told her she’d be there at seven to pick up the baby.  When Mrs. Thompson arrived as scheduled they all left together and headed toward Montrose Avenue and their planned meeting spot at the top of the stairs leading down into the LL train station.  

Mrs. Thompson insisted on walking with them all the way there.  “Drina, it’s not necessary for you to go out of the way like that” Julia pleaded a few times as they walked.  

“There’s been a change in plans,” Mrs. Thompson announced with a slightly mischievous tone.

“I told the others to meet you in front of the Stella Di Sicilia Bakery near the station on Montrose, because I’m gonna treat you all to some Italian pastries before you get on that train. If Pop can buy you hot dogs for lunch, then certainly I can treat you to a little something special for breakfast!”

When they arrived at the bakery, Sylvia and Tyrone were already there, sitting together on a decorative wrought-iron bench near the shop’s entrance. Tyrone and Sylvia rose from the bench and told the boys to be seated instead. After Sylvia warmly embraced Julia, she began to fuss over Amanda, who remained quiet and strapped into her baby carriage.

Tyrone went into the bakery with his mother as Julia’s attention focused on her two apparently very impatient little boys sitting on the bench, both rapidly swinging their legs back and forth.

“When are we going to the beach?” Angel asked, his voice clearly revealing his disappointment with the turn of events.

Julia frowned slightly and held her right index finger to her lips, silently warning him not to embarrass her and to be quiet.

Within minutes, Mrs. Thompson and Tyrone emerged from the bakery. She had in her hands a white pastry box tied with string. Tyrone carried a cardboard tray holding three steaming paper coffee cups and two small cartons of cold orange juice.

As they all remained in place in front of the bakery, Mrs. Thompson released the string and opened the box with excitement. Looking at the boys with great enthusiasm and wide-open eyes, and at the same time moving slightly back and forth as if doing a kind of dance, she proclaimed, “You boys are gonna love these treats!”

She handed each of them a gigantic pignoli cookie and said there were still two more cookies in the box for them. She handed the box off to Sylvia, revealing to her and Julia the three large cannoli she had gotten for the “three older kids,” as she called them that morning. The boys were given the orange juices and the others the coffees.

As soon as everyone had received the treats she bought, Mrs. Thompson bid them all a sweet farewell and took hold of the handles of the baby carriage. Pushing it, she made her way down Montrose Avenue toward home, but not before telling them to have a wonderful day and not to forget how much she loved them all.

They remained in front of the bakery for another ten minutes. Then, after all the pastries were eaten and the orange juice and coffee were gone, they gathered up their beach bags and headed up the street a few yards to the entrance to the subway.

As Angel took Tyrone’s right hand with his left for the walk to the station, he shouted as if singing, “Hip hip hooray . . . hip hip hooray!”

Eddy, holding Angel’s right hand, joined the chorus. “Hip hip hooray!” he cheered as well.

As they walked, with the boys chanting in the background, Julia asked Tyrone why Monica wasn’t there.

“Oh, she’s coming,” he said. He explained that they thought it would be much easier for her to take the J train closer to where she lived in Bed-Stuy. She would then, like them, get off at Eastern Parkway, meet up with the group, and they could all transfer together to the A train for the second leg of their journey to the beach.

“Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” Julia responded.

Entering the LL station, they climbed down a first set of steps to the mezzanine level, then arrived at the token booth. Mr. Thompson had given Sylvia the task of holding the wallet for the day. In those days, the price of a token good for a one-way subway ride to just about any possible destination within the system, was thirty-five cents.  

The thirty-cent fare had risen to thirty-five cents just two years earlier, and many New Yorkers had been outraged at the price hike. There was already talk the fare might have to be raised again in the near future, giving many straphangers yet another reason to complain about the Transit Authority.

Sylvia reminded Julia that “kids under six ride free,” then added, “But even though Angel’s already six, he’s so little I don’t think we need to get tokens for him either, right?”

Julia told Sylvia she normally never got a token for him. “I always tell him to walk under the turnstile and wait for me right there on the other side,” she added.

Sylvia calculated how many tokens they would need for the whole day.

Let’s see. The boys don’t have to pay. The three of us each need four tokens for the whole round trip because of that extra fare they rob from us for going out to the Rockaways. That makes twelve. Then I need another four for Monica when she joins us at Eastern Parkway. I gotta make sure I remember to give her an extra token to replace the one she used to get on the J at Kosciuszko Street. This is all gonna cost five dollars and sixty cents.

She told the token clerk she needed sixteen tokens and pushed six one-dollar bills through the slot at the base of the booth’s window.

The clerk quickly gathered the six bills and placed them in the cash drawer, then counted out sixteen tokens and forty cents in change. He dropped the tokens into the slot’s metal tray, each one clanging against its metal base, followed by the change. Sylvia gathered everything up and handed one token each to Tyrone and Julia. She would hold on to the remaining tokens and distribute them when the time came to use them.

After the “older kids” had passed through the clanking turnstile, the boys, who were quite accustomed to the routines of the station, ran ahead and excitedly hopped down the stairway leading to the platform used for Canarsie-bound trains. Julia, clumsily holding onto two bags filled with towels and other beach supplies, quickly followed them.

Once they arrived at their chosen spot on the platform, they began to wait. And they waited, and waited, and waited.

After a long time in silence, during which the mysterious sounds of dripping water somewhere in the station only seemed to get louder with each passing moment, Angel dolefully asked, “I guess we’re never gonna make it to the beach, are we, Mommy?”

“Don’t fret, sweetheart,” she answered. “The train will be here before we know it.”

Soon after those reassuring words, the whistling and rattling of an approaching train could be heard from somewhere within the darkness of the tunnel at the end of the platform.

“Hip hip hooray!” Angel cheered with joyful anticipation of the soon-to-appear LL train.

Once on the train, and sensing the boys’ impatient anticipation of things to come, Tyrone started to quiz them about the scratchy, often-inaudible announcements heard from the speakers as the doors closed at each station and the train continued on.

“THIS IS THE CANARSIE-BOUND LL TRAIN. THE NEXT STOP IS . . .”

“What station is next?” he asked after each announcement as the train pulled away.

The boys, having been on the LL many times with their mom, guessed the name of each station correctly. They first passed Morgan, then Jefferson, then DeKalb, then Myrtle–Wyckoff, then Halsey, and then Wilson.

To keep their attention as they identified the name of each approaching station, Tyrone tried to say something about each of the neighborhoods they were passing. If he couldn’t think of anything, he just made it up.

“Did you know there used to be a huge chocolate factory next to the DeKalb Street station, and they would give away free candy to little kids, but only on Fridays after they got out of school? The factory closed a long time ago, but everybody still remembers it.”

Of course, Sylvia and Julia understood the fibs, but they simply smiled and lovingly glanced toward Tyrone each time, maintaining their roles as silent co-conspirators.

“What’s really creepy about the station at Wilson Avenue?” he asked them.

Both boys quickly answered in unison, “The cemetery!”

“You are right,” Tyrone responded. “And do you know, on Halloween they say you can see ghosts walking around there when you pass by on the train at nighttime?”

The boys’ eyes grew wide with wonder, and perhaps a little bit of terror, as they looked through the windows and saw the cemetery below.

They then passed through Bushwick–Aberdeen before arriving at their stop at Eastern Parkway only twenty minutes after they departed Montrose Avenue.

After exiting the LL at Eastern Parkway, they made their way through a labyrinth of hallways and long stairways. The huge station complex served as a junction point for several train lines. Because the “older kids” had passed through there many times before, they managed the confusing route with little difficulty. The boys were simply amazed by the adventure as they were carefully led through the sprawling expanse of passageways and onto the next platform. They soon met Monica waiting near the end of the Broadway–East New York A train platform as planned.

Now all together, they waited again, this time for the A train. It would carry them out to Broad Channel, where they would have to transfer to the E Rockaway shuttle for the final leg of their journey to Beach 98th Street–Playland.

Fortunately, the A train arrived only a few minutes after they joined Monica.

“Hip hip hooray!” Angel shouted once again as the doors opened and they stepped aboard.

As they boarded the train, luck was on their side because they immediately found seats together on the benches along the windows on either side of the car. That was precisely why they had agreed to meet and wait near the very end of the Broadway–East New York platform. Depending on the train line and the location of station exits, there were often fewer people and more available seats in the cars at either end of a long subway train.

Everything seemed to be going as planned!