Labor Day and the Beach

Labor Day and the Beach

Jones Beach

Labor Day – It's the last holiday of the summer, was the last day of vacation before school started for me, and in New York, it's the last day the beaches are open for swimming. Growing up it was both a day I dreaded (because of school) and a day I looked forward to (because of the beach).

Labor Day weekend is when Kris and I moved into the house we now live in. That was 25 years ago. Our neighbor Judy hosted a welcoming breakfast with bagels that Sunday morning for us. All the neighbors came to meet us and to welcome us to the neighborhood. We held our own open house for both our friends, family, and our neighbors a few weeks later. Since that time we have annually had a Labor Day party on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend where we have invited friends, family and all our neighbors. Each year we had a few more attendees until the count leveled off to about 40 or so. Judy then joined us as a co-host. With our backyards right next to each other and both having gates into our driveway it made it convenient for attendees to hang out in either yard. Our attendance quickly grew to over 60 and then topped 80 the following year. We were not prepared. By the time I got to the food table that first year there was nothing left to eat. Since then the attendance has stayed in the 80 range somewhat fluctuating with the weather. Then Covid hit in 2020. Since then we have either not had the party or had it with just a few close friends. We have held over 20 large Labor Day parties celebrating our move to Curtis Park. I think it's safe to say the days of 80 guests are probably over as we are getting older but we may continue the tradition with a smaller crowd.

 

One of our Labor Day Parties

The Beach: I grew up on Long Island. Well, it is an Island assuming that your definition of an island is a body of land surrounded by water that's smaller than a continent. That's the common dictionary definition. Long Island meets those requirements and I assure you the locals believe it's an island. However, in 1985 our own Supreme Court declared it to be a peninsula. Evidently the criteria for becoming a Supreme Court Justice is a bit lower than we might think or hope. Six years later Thurgood Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. I, for one, didn't need further convincing....

Anyway, this is not a story about what is an island or our Supreme Court. It's a story a little bit about Labor Day and the beach. Whether you buy that Long Island is a peninsula or not, it has a ton of beaches including many white sand beaches on its south shore side. Growing up there, summertime meant going to the beach. We lived more in the middle of the Island. We were about 15 minutes from the North Shore beaches on the Sound where the water is calm and warmer than the ocean but the beaches were more a rocky coarse sand. We were also less than 30 minutes from the fine white sand ocean beaches with waves of the South Shore (Jones and Fire Island). As a young teenager my friends and I would try to go to the beach any day the weather was good. Sometimes our mothers drove us but often we would hitch to the Huntington town beaches. We mostly went to Crescent Beach. That was the beach kids our age hung out, at least at that time. The older (Jr and SR high school kids, and maybe college kids too) tended to hang out at West Neck beach, or at least that's where I remember my friends' older siblings went. Other beaches I remember are Crabmeadow, Hobart, which we called Sand City, and Asharoken. I know there were other town beaches but those are the ones that I mostly remember. On the weekends, if we were lucky our parents would take us to one of the ocean beaches on the south/ocean side of the Island. The main two for us were Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Park which we called Fire Island. I loved those beaches as I loved swimming and body surfing in the waves. Both beaches are on a big sand bar. Jones Beach is over 6 miles long and has or had, at least when I lived there, at least 10 designated beach areas with parking lots. My family's goal was to head out early enough to get into Beach #9 as it had the smallest parking lot and hence was the least crowded. Beach #9 would fill up by 9AM on the weekends. If #9 was filled we would head over to Beach #6 which had a larger parking area but it was still one of the smaller ones. Beaches #4 and #5 were right next to each other and had huge parking areas. Beach #4 was where the boardwalk was as well as the 2 pools.. You've likely seen Jones Beach in movies where there are wall to wall blankets and beach umbrellas covering the beach. Jones is the most popular beach for both Long Islanders and New York City dwellers.

  

Jones Beach Sand Bar Looking East    &   The Jones  Beach Water Tower 

Robert Moses Beach, aka Fire Island is smaller that Jones but still sizable. It has two large parking areas. The Fire Island sand bar is further east and it reaches a bit further into the ocean. As a result it tends to have larger waves. Occasionally the waves are so large that it closes for swimming. Fire Island had two advantages from my perspective. One was the bigger waves but more importantly it was in Suffolk county, the county that I lived in. That meant I could legally drive there once I turned 16. Where as I could not legally drive to Jones. In metropolitan New York you had to be 18 or older to drive. Suffolk county allowed you to get what was called a junior license at 16. That allowed you to drive in the county during the day light hours only. If you completed a drivers education course in your high school you could get a senior (regular) license at 17 but due to it's popularity it was only open to seniors.

Jones was the gold standard of beaches. Driving over the bridge to the sand bar you head towards a large traffic circle with the iconic water tower in the middle. The architectural model for that tower was the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica in Venice and is built in an Art Deco style. It's a functioning water tower and supplies water for the entire park. From there you decided between heading to the east or west end beaches. We almost always did the east end. Beach #4 is just to the right of the circle. Along with the boardwalk, it has a restaurant, a pitch and putt golf course, shuffle board courts, tennis courts, softball fields, a band stand for music and dancing in the evening and more, it even has an amphitheater for shows and concerts.

My family would go to the beach on weekends and holidays, particularly when there was a need to get away to unwind like after a bad incident, to talk through issues, and to celebrate achievements. Heck, my Dad and Mom decided to get married at the beach, although that was out at Montauk on the most east end of the island. (For those of you who are on the Supreme Court that's Long Island talk for Peninsula.)

We took our dates to the beach in the summer and to the Jones Beach boardwalk in the other seasons. The beach was always a special place for me and was part of the Long Island culture. We went to the beach after the prom. Well, we'd initially go to a club after the prom and after that we'd head out to the beach. Jones beach is where I had my first run in with the police after taking my date (Maryann) there at the end of a date. Fire Island is where Dottie and I went on a crisp December day for our first date after we hooked up at a party Dottie had invited me to after running into each other at a popular bar (Bourbon Barrel). Every friend I have brought home to Long Island I have taken to either Jones Beach or Fire Island.

So back to Labor Day. For those with short term memory issues it's the holiday I started talking about at the beginning of this story. For the rest of you I hope it's reassuring that I am returning to the topic I started with. Labor Day has been a special holiday weekend to me. Our neighborhood back in New York celebrated holidays together and on Labor Day we all went to Jones Beach for the day.. We all packed up bright and early to go to Jones Beach for the last day of summer (school would be starting the next day and the beaches would close). We all headed for Beach #6. This outing was my favorite neighborhood gathering and although I dreaded the beginning of the school year, I looked forward to the Labor Day Beach party, especially as I got a little older. There were five girls my age among my parents' friends in the neighborhood. There was Chris, Carol, Linda, Sandra, and Lynne. I was the only neighborhood boy their age! I don't remember anything of note happening. I was rather shy, but I fondly remember my anticipation of getting to spend the day at the beach with all those girls. Once there, we'd all set up together where coffee and pastries were shared among all the adults as us kids ran down to check out the waves. The ride home was always the official end of the summer with the start of a new school year just a few hours away.

While summer was my favorite season growing up, Fall is my favorite season now in Sacramento and Labor Day is now special because it marks the ending of summer and the coming of fall. My love for the beach has not changed. I've been to many beaches up and down on both the East and West Coasts, not to mention Hawaii, Okinawa and the Mediterranean (both France and Italy). I like them all but Jones Beach and Robert Moses will always be most special to me.