As a kid in Brooklyn, going to the beach meant Coney Island. We left there in 1951 for West Babylon in Suffolk County when my dad got a job in the kitchen of Republic Aviation in Farmingdale, Long Island.
In my sophomore year of high school, I managed to buy a 1947 Chevrolet convertible for $25 that I tricked out as a kind of beach buggy. The Robert Moses Causeway was only a couple of years old, and the long bridge made beaches that once required a ferry ride suddenly accessible to any vehicle, however humble.
