ROCKAWAY

 

Mary Ellen Raab kicked off many memories with her Rockaway revisited blog. I moved to Emerald Isle, NC in 1996 and discovered that there was a small beach amusement area in town with a water slide, mini golf and bumper cars. To my surprise, I noticed that the signage for this complex was none other than a Rockaway “Joker” Clown like the one I have posted. I became friendly with a carpenter who had a business relationship with the owner of this complex and he told me that this owner indeed came from New York and was involved in the carnival business. He understood that the sign  came from Rockaway as did the bumper cars. It went down hill from there. My friend had a very low opinion of this guy and regretted his association with him. I laughed. I told him that this made it even more believable that the sign came from Rockaway. This area was cleaned up several years ago and the sign along with the bumper cars are gone.

Like Mary Ellen, Uncle Eddie Cullinan took us to Rockaway one summer and it was for several days. I assume it was with my brother Pat and my cousin Johnny but I don’t clearly remember. We stayed at the Fennessey’s Bar. I don’t know who in the Fennessey family owned it but I clearly remember sitting in the bar drinking “Shirley Temples”, ginger ale with a marischino cherry. The bar was located on a corner down the street from another bar that I think became McNulty’s. McNulty’s was a well known hangout of my college years and beyond. We stayed upstairs and actually got to the beach and Playland as well. No small feat considering the magnet that bars were in those days.

A little internet work turned up a reference to Fennessey’s in a Pete Hamill work called “The Cities of New York”. Hamill reminisces about going to Rockaway to drink cold beer and eat pigs feet at Fennessey’s, Gildeas, the Sligo House, McGuire’s and the Breakers, all bars whose names I remember. I found little else regarding the bar but this satisfies me that it was indeed Fennessey’s that we went to. Of course, when I was a teenager my mother and father bought their Breezy Point house and I have been in and out of Rockaway most of my life, to include many of its bars. A good friend of mine just sold his families bar, Rogers Hotel located on 116th Street, to a couple of industrious Irishman who have a successful Irish pub near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. They have plans to rejuvenate it and that would be a welcome shot in the arm for the neighborhood.

Our usual dealings with Rockaway were day trips and not exotic stay overs like our Fennessey’s vacation. My father and mother would take us to Rockaway in my father’s car and as we crossed the Cross Bay Blvd. Bridge you could clearly smell the salt air and feel the temperature drop. We had our bathing suits on and our rolled up towels with underwear under our arms, just like Mary Ellen said and we couldn’t wait to fight the waves and shells as we ran into the water. A blanket was set up as our anchor spot for the day and we hit the water immediately. We literally came out of the water for lunch and immediately went back in. My mother had a big thermos cooler with a spout and it was filled with lemonade and ice. The lemonade was made from frozen cans and she had little paper cups to dispense it. It was almost as good as the Shirley Temples. Cheese sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly were usually the fuel for the day. Sand permeated everything and no one escaped getting burned.

At the end of the day with that burned skin that was waffled from being in the water for five or six hours and having shed a wet bathing suit from behind a beach towel, the back of the Buick was paradise for the ride home. Rockaway is almost always a pleasant discussion with people of my generation and we all have a fondness for it in our memories.