Clueless in Rollingwood

Clueless in Rollingwood

7 year old me

In the summer of 1956, between first and second grade, my parents moved our family from Levittown to a neighborhood called Rollingwood located in Huntington Station. Well, it was actually Melville, but Melville did not have a post office at that time so we were lumped in with Huntington Station. The area had once been called West Hills and its most famous citizen was Walt Whitman. Anyway, Rollingwood is a very nice suburban development. Don't take my word for it - you can ask them yourself. It is in the township of Huntington which meant it was officially on the North Shore (considered the upper crust side of the Island). The neighborhood itself was built on the east side of the highest hill on all of Long Island. My parents bought a house that was on a street at the bottom of that hill. Our backyard bordered Walt Whitman Road which was the main road running north and south into the town of Huntington at the time. On the other side of Walt Whitman Road was a small store, we all called it “Nick's”, that mostly sold newspapers, tobacco products, and candy. We were not supposed to go there. For one, we were not supposed to cross Walt Whitman Road by ourselves, and two, some of his clientele were of the undesirable persuasion, or so we were told. Beyond Nick's was farm land. So we were on the cheap side of the cheapest street in a nice neighborhood that was on the cheap side of the ritzy North Shore township of Huntington. Yes, we were living the life. The development had no sidewalks to make it more country like. This, I was told, was a selling point. Another selling point was it had lots of mature trees because the developer left as many existing trees up as possible. Of course another big selling point was the hill. The builder was also kind enough to only sell to white folks (we were not aware of this when we moved in). My innocent mother found out when she eventually inquired as to why and how the neighborhood turned out to be all white. It was explained to her that when they took applications for homes, they took them from everyone but they filed all applications by people who they deemed not right for the neighborhood in the trash can. Who needs “redlining”? – Ah the 50's, the good old days when America was great!?

In the fall of '56 I was seven years old, living in a new town, and starting 2^nd grade in a new school (for me) called Birchwood. Birchwood was a few miles away. They were building a new grade school closer to my neighborhood but it was not going to be ready until the following school year. Birchwood was so overloaded that they had to run split shifts that year. Half the kids attended school in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. My 2^nd grade teacher's name was Miss Messy. Sounded promising. She was nice enough but she didn't really live up to her name. At that time they used to take a school class picture every year. At some point they stopped doing that maybe because they started taking individual pictures. The only full class picture I still have is the one from Miss Messy's class. In the picture all but five of the boys are wearing ties. One of the five is me. I am dressed the most casual of anyone in the class. Three of the other tie-less boys were kids I knew who lived in Rollingwood too but they all lived a few blocks away. I don't know if we had any discussion or not about wearing ties, but I do know I did not like to dress up. I would avoid telling my mother when picture day was. I don't have a lot of my school pictures but the ones I do have I am not wearing a tie. I think the only time I wore a tie for a school picture was for my senior high school yearbook picture.

In my 2^nd grade class I liked a girl named Linda. She was considered the best looking girl in the class, at least by the boys, and a lot of the boys liked her. She came up to me to talk a couple of times and told me she liked me but I was too shy to do anything about it. It didn't help that we were at the stage where it was considered uncool (according to the “boy code”) to be nice to or play with girls. So not wanting to look bad in front of my new classmates I failed to reciprocate and that was the end of that. Big deal, I was young and surely many more opportunities would present themselves in future school years. As it happened that turned out to be the one and only time the consensus prettiest girl in the class would decide I was the one for her, but there were other opportunities right in my own neighborhood.

Me: 2nd boy standing to the right of the teacher - Linda: 3rd desk in 1st full (left) row

My new neighborhood always had more girls than boys but when we first moved in a boy named Mike lived across the street. He was a year older than me and next door to him lived 2 more two boys, Doug and Jeff. Doug was a few years older but Jeff was my age. There initially was another family with two boys. One was a couple of years older and the other was a couple of years younger but they moved right after we moved in, replaced by a family with two girls. All the kids in the rest of the houses on the block anywhere near my age were girls. Then Mike's family across the street moved away the next year. That left Jeff's family and they too would move a couple of years after that leaving me as the oldest and only boy on the block anywhere near my age.

After losing both Mike and Jeff I found Jimmy whose family had just moved into a new house around the corner across West Hills Road. I met Jimmy when I got into a dirt-bomb fight in the open field next to his new house. I don't remember who the others were but they were mostly from the next development over. I'm not sure how I got involved but what young boy passes up a dirt-bomb fight? There was a big mound of dirt in the middle of the lot that we were all trying to use for cover. We eventually switched to playing king of the hill using that mound. Jimmy and I ended up joining forces and dominating the hill. We were now friends for life, or at least through high school. Through Jimmy I met two more boys Russ and Pat. They were brothers and lived on the corner of the next street over, Nursery Road. They were the only two boys around my age on that block. The four of us played sports together year-round throughout my grade school years. Although at school I did make some additional friends in the neighborhood, they all lived a few blocks away. This was before kids came with cell phones. In the 50's when we wanted to play with someone we'd just go over to their house and knock on the door. Three blocks was a long walk to see if maybe someone was home. Consequently Jimmy was my main guy, at least until I met Joe who lived further up West Hills Road.

Rollingwood was very social. The adults were all young and veterans of WWII who were all settling down and raising families, hence there were lots of kids. The parents all got to know each other and socialized together. They had bridge clubs, cocktail and dinner parties, golf for the dads, coffee clatches for the moms. July 4^th BBQ's, and trips to the beach were also regular block/neighborhood activities. We knew everyone and we, the kids, ran through everyone's property like it was our own. When everyone got together there would be lots of kids to hang out with and do things with. As I previously noted, all the kids in the Rollingwood neighborhood near me and around my age were girls. Initially this was not ideal for me but as the years went by I began to appreciate it. I was the most eligible and popular boy around. OK, I was the only boy around, but still, I got lots of attention even if I didn't know quite what to do with it. It had been so easy when I was 5. In Levittown there was just the one girl (Margie) around my age. Margie was my next door neighbor. We got together and hugged and kissed on multiple occasions but in good old Rollingwood I never got to first base even though there were like five girls around my age just for me. Of course Junior High eventually happened and with that our world began to expand beyond our little neighborhood. Just as those girls were becoming a lot more interesting to me I became a lot less interesting to them as they discovered there were plenty more “fish in the sea”. Well, at least I was a somebody for a few years. I've been watching “Stranger Things” and what I've learned is that even “nerds” have it more together than I did....