Coney Island

World famous "Nathans" about 1950

        Most everyone on planet earth has at least heard of Coney Island. A good percentage of the people of earth have visited the world's most famous beach. Well we were blessed to live about a forty-five minute train ride from Coney Island and got to go there several times a year every summer. Our Aunt, Uncle and Cousins lived only about two miles from the beach, but I'll save the story of those guys for another post.
        Unlike today, a trip to the beach for us in the 50s was a bit more than just tossing a cooler some blankets and towels and the kids in the car and taking off. First of all, coolers were made of steel back then and weighed a ton even before you put anything in it. And ice! We had two tiny ice trays in our tiny fridge that made about twelve ice cubes each at a time. Do the math! We had to make ice cubes for about a day to make enough for the cooler.
       It was a beautiful warm, sunny saturday morning. Mom got up early to get ready for our trip to the beach. She made about ten or twelve bologna sandwiches (actually they were half-sandwiches, one slice of bread and one slice of bologna) and a bowl of macaroni salad. She made a gallon of Cool-Ade and cut up a couple of apples. Mom put everything into the cooler and got us kids ready.
        With the cooler between them, Dad and Mom led the way down Cleveland Street to Pitkin Avenue where we climbed up the two long flights of stairs to the train station above. Raymond, Diane and I carried the blankets and towels. We rode the Pitkin Avenue train (which was actually the Fulton Street train) to a point where we transferred to the Coney Island train. NOTE: Some of the actual lines and stations don't exist anymore or have changed so I haven't been able to track our exact train route.
         When we finally got off the train we still had several long blocks to walk before we could even get to the boardwalk, much less the beach itself.  When we finally got to the boardwalk, we found a bench, stripped down to our bathing suits, put our street clothes in a paper shopping bag and proceeded to try to find a piece of sand. As you can see from this picture, that wasn't going to be an easy task. Ultimately, we did find a little patch of sand to park our blankets on.

OK!  Where's my blanket?

        Now, going from the blanket to the water was pretty easy. (except for the burning sand) Finding the blanket again was a whole other story. What you would have to do is find a landmark on the boardwalk; say a certain shop or arcade or something; visually judge the distance from the blanket to your landmark, then as you walk towards the water, you constantly checked your landmark so the blanket would always be somewhere between you and the landmark. Believe it or not, none of us ever got lost. Of course, our dad almost always came down to the water to watch us, which is probably how we never got lost.
        Now as for Raymond and I, we were always wandering off. The water was fun but it got boring after a while. We would walk up and down the boardwalk, stop at all the arcades and watch people try to knock down "cupie dolls" with baseballs, throw darts at balloons, shoot moving targets with "22" rifles and all kinds of other games. There must have been a hundred different game arcades. Then of course there were all the food stands; if it could be eaten, someone there sold it. But our favorite place was under the boardwalk.
        In another post I talked about how we kids made our spending money. Well, if you're real patient, you can find money under the boardwalk. About a million people (slight exaggeration here) walk on the board walk every day. Needless to say, once in a while, someone would reach in their pocket for something and drop a dime or a nickel or a quarter through the cracks between the boards. Ray and I would slowly walk up and down and back and forth running our toes through the sand, and on a good day we would find some change.
        Well, after lunch and a couple more dips in the ocean, it was time to pack up. Everyone would grab something and head for the boardwalk. We'd find an empty bench where we would shake the sand out of the blankets and towels. Mom and Dad would hold a blanket around each of us while we changed into our street clothes. Then the long trek back to the train and the long ride home.
        Boy, I loved the summertime in Brooklyn in the 50s.
Don