HURRICANES WHEN I WAS A KID

I have no personal memories of the September 21, 1938 hurricane except what I was told by grandma and grandpa.

Pop was at work in New York City so clearly the weather wasn’t too bad when he left to take the train to the city about 7 or 7:30 in the morning. In those days, with no TV and none of the excessive interest in weather that we have developed over the years, there was no warning that a storm was coming and no information about what to do or how long it would last, all things that we take for granted now.

Amityville was on the western side of the eye so the greatest damage was to the east. But I can assure you that the damage in and around our house was extensive. Pop spoke about 50 to 70 trees down in and around our yard. I’m not sure how much you remember about the old house, but there was nothing but woods to one side and two house spaces to the other, and the property was very deep over 350 feet.  By the time you guys got to see it there were three houses on the side with the big woods in two houses on the other side.

Mom always talked about the storm stopping and, since lights were out, she and I walked next door to go play with a friend, only to discover the rain and wind returning in earnest and scampering back to the house.  Historical records of the storm indicate that the eye was about 50 miles across. The center of the eye crossed Long Island about 20 miles east of Amityville at a town called Bayport, so mom and I were well within the eye wall.

Evidence of the passage of the eye across our house could be seen in the way trees were destroyed and knocked down.  Imagine the wind coming from one direction for a long time and then within minutes changing 180°. This is what happens when the eye wall passes over. The stress on the tree causes the trunks to break off 10 or 20 feet above ground just like you would break a matchstick.  For as long as I could remember there was a foot and a half diameter tree trunk right outside the breakfast nook window cut off flat about 10 or so feet above the ground. Damage like I have described only occurs when the eye wall passes over.

Mom and Dad had moved to the country in May of 1937 so they had only been in the house less than two years and had never experienced anything like the 1938 hurricane. In fact I can remember in Amityville’s old-timers talking about the hurricane years later and saying that they had no memory of anything like this going back to well into the 19^th century.  It is obvious that no storm since the 1938 hurricane has been as strong or caused as much damage. Just north of Amityville were several airfields, airfields that played a major role in building fighters for World War II. A wind meter at one of the airports registered 140 mph before it was destroyed by the wind.

Electric and phone were down for weeks. In my experience in later years when any storm came, big or small, the lights when out and the telephone went out since all the wires were above ground.

Pop spoke about looking out the office window is in lower Manhattan and seeing big waves crashing up on the waterfront. I have no idea how he and mom reconnected. But I also have no recollection of any great ‘story’ about that, so I guess Pop managed to get home somehow that evening.

You remember that the house was on the lake. In fact the house was on reclaimed land and the lake had been a great deal wider than it was when these houses were built. In almost every major storm the lake overflowed onto the street and our basement flooded. I can remember being told I couldn’t go downstairs to the basement because I couldn’t swim.

Since mom and dad were born and bred city people they did what city people do when confronted with country calamities, they got in the car and drove back to the city. We stayed for at least three weeks at my mother’s folks, grandma and grandpa Winckler. Pop must’ve spent a good deal of time going back and forth from the city to the house because there would have been a considerable amount of damage caused by the flooding as well as the downed trees, although no tree hit the house or the garage. In fact during the several hurricane storms that we experienced there no trees ever hit the house or garage.

You can get a lot of details  about the 1938 hurricane at a SUNY Suffolk CC website – www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/38hurricane.

Although Amityville took a real hit in 1938 the incredible damage was to the barrier islands and to the east of us. Hurricanes rotate in a counterclockwise motion and the highest wind speeds and therefore the greatest damage occurs between five o’clock and one o’clock if you look at the hurricane like a clock.

I can remember years later when we used to spend a good deal of our summer time over on Fire Island and Gilgo Beach that the damage from the storm was still readily apparent. I particularly remember an open air dance pavilion at Ocean Beach on Fire Island. The surge wave came through smashed the bottom of the pavilion into the bay and dropped the roof down on the foundation. It lay like that for years. We used to tread for clams barefoot, feeling with our toes to find a clam and then reaching down to pick it up. You couldn’t do that on the inland side of Fire Island is because of the glass, the silverware, and dishes and other assorted junk that had been washed into the bay by the ‘38 surge wave.

I do have vivid memories of the hurricane of 1944. It came over our house at night and mom and dad and I sat in the staircase in the middle of the house while trees crashed down around us. I don’t think we went back to grandma and grandpa’s in 1944 because, by then, mom and dad had supplied the house with hurricane lanterns and portable radios and we got water out of the lake to be boiled and to use in the toilets.  Carrying a bucket of lake water to the house was my job.

All the downed trees were a wonderland for us kids. This storm just keeled the trees over so there was a great big circular mat of roots maybe 10 feet in diameter with a great big hole dug out of the ground and the long trunk and branches and leaves laid out on the ground. What fun.  I’m sure the grownups were terrified because they were electric wires down everywhere and I can remember electric wire crews repairing the damage in our backyard and mom giving the man drinks of water.

I think the hurricane of 1938 downed a lot of the trees and caused so much damage that makes the 1944 hurricane a little less memorable historically. But looking at maps of the path of the hurricane it does appear that Amityville was on the east (worst) side of the eye.

We experienced another big hurricane in 1954 as well as any number of storms which just missed us but created a lot of wave action.  As young men we couldn’t wait to get over to the ocean to ride in the surf created by these big tropical storms. Now days the cops prevent you from going over there.  I remember 1954 for sure because I had just bought a 1949 Ford convertible with my summer work money and I was sure that a tree was going to smash through the canvas roof.  I tucked the car up beside the house to keep it safe, and it survived untouched.  Whew.

During the tropical storms, hurricanes and such, when we guys were older, we used to hire ourselves out to boat owners on a particular Canal off the Great South Bay. Our job was to keep the Lines taught or loosened as the surge waters came in, two or three of us on each side of the canal to keep the boats in the middle of the Canal. I remember getting $100 apiece for this work, an absolute fortune in those days. We would happily run through the backyards with water up to our chests rearranging the lines to keep the boats from drifting onto the land or smashing onto the sides of the Canal. We never lost a boat that I can remember.

 My kid memories recall hurricanes as joy and moments creating wonderlands for kids to play in. But as a grown up I worried each year about the Amityville house being destroyed after all the good luck we experienced in those earlier years.

GROWING UP IN AMITYVILLE: THE FRIENDLY VILLAGE ON THE GREAT SOUTH BAY

Before Amityville:

I was born in Brooklyn on the evening of October 19, 1934.  As Pop told it, Mom had a long day of labor and he had gone back to his Mother’s house to report and get a bite to eat.  Remember that in those days the husband sat in a waiting room far removed from the delivery process.  He thinks he was eating a Lamb sandwich about the time I was born.

Mom and Pop had been married on January 6^th, 1934, and lived in an apartment on 2015 Dorchester Road.  The apartment cost $50.00/month and had a doorman.  Pop had a several block walk from the subway, and he says that winter was the coldest he could recall.  He always arrived home frozen stiff.

All through the Great Depression Pop had a job working at the International Nickel Company [INCO], where he would remain for 42 years.  The offices were at 67 Wall Street in Manhattan.  Mom had taught parochial school, but had settled in as a stay-at-home young bride with a new baby.

Pop had graduated from Manual Training High School [later John Jay, but now closed] in 1924 and went to work for a bank.  As he told it, he wanted to go to the tennis matches at Forest Hills and asked for a day of – which was refused – so he quit.  One of his schoolmates, Bill Phillips worked at INCO and got Pop a job there as a carpenter, basically putting together display booths for industry shows.

None of what follows can be verified as I am putting together stories Pop and Mom told and things that were said to me by Aunt Dot and Uncle Bill.

Pop was the ‘runt’ of the litter.  He ran about 5’9” and 135 lbs on his best grownup day.  He was reputed to be about as tough as they come.  There are many stories about fistfights he got into.  “Being left handed,” he once told me, “was a great benefit.  Nobody was ready for a good left hand punch.”  He has a scar along the bottom of his chin and a tongue that sported a scar that was the result of his nearly biting the tip of it off in some sort of scrap.

It is probable that he worked for bootleggers during Prohibition.  Here are some vignettes – pieces of stories that I heard:

When Pop first met Mom – she was the girlfriend of one of his friends – they arranged to meet the following week at a party.  Pop was scheduled to work that day and would arrive late, but he gave her a warning.  He knew who was going to supply the liquor and he said that person was not trustworthy and Mom should not drink anything until Pop got there.  I assume he would have had ‘safe’ stuff.  Anyhow – she didn’t listen, drank some stuff and got really sick.  When Pop arrived she was head-down in the toilet.  I guess you could s ay – it was love at first warning.

He soon rose out of the carpenter job into working with the hotels and restaurants where meeting were held.  When I was a teenager Pop knew just about every manager in most NY hotels and a lot of restaurant people as well.  When we went to places we went in NYC Pop would always be greeted by the managers there – generally guys who were about pop’s age – so it easy to imagine that the whole bunch of them were young guys in their early twenties during Prohibition.

Pop used to talk about going to a speakeasy near the police station in Manhattan somewhere around center Street. One of the stories he told was about some young thug sitting in the restaurant who reached over and slapped his date. The owner of the restaurant/speakeasy, walked over to the guy and said something like, you’re out of here. I know your boss and if I hear anything happened to this young lady that will be the last thing you’ll ever do.

 The speakeasy was also popular with the hierarchy of the New York City Police Department in particular one guy named Valentine who was a very famous New York policeman eventually becoming chief. Mother used to tell a story of Mrs. Valentine eating off everybody’s meal.

 Moving To Amityville:

One of the boyhood friends was a guy named Dan Bradley. I knew him as uncle Dan and he had gone to Notre Dame and then medical school and move to Amityville to set up a medical practice. The result of Mom and Dad visiting Dan was that they too moved to 'the country,' so their young boy could grow up running through fields and enjoying country living.

Without a doubt growing up in Amityville was a remarkable experience. We moved there in May 1937. Then Long Island was a series of separate towns divided by a mile or two of nothing but open fields. Amityville had about 700 families living in one square mile everyone knew everyone else particularly if you went to the same church.

By the time we moved to Amityville mom had in ‘au pair’ to look after me. I don’t think it was very long before Mary wheeling me around in a baby carriage met Charlie’s ‘au pair,’ Veronica, pushing Charlie around. I do not remember any time not knowing Charlie.

We moved into a brick Tudor house on East Lake Dr., #22. It looked out on Avon Lake, and it must have been stressful for mom and dad to know that a little two-year-old had a lake just across the street. Neither of them could swim and neither of them weren't interested in learning. I think they used my city training to make sure that I would not cross a street or even walk on a street. One of the stories they would tell was Charlie and I walking together and Charlie stepping out into the street and me grabbing him and saying 'no street no street.'

The little house had three bedrooms, a bath and a half, a living room kitchen and dining room. Out back with a big yard, which Pop joyously planted with flowers and vegetables. I think he had always wanted to have a big garden and here his dream to reality. One of my memories of Pop and the garden was when tomatoes became ripe he would stick a salt shaker in his back pocket clean up tomato off with the hose and eat like an apple sprinkling salt here and there and then leaving the salt shaker on a post for the next tomato.

What we soon realized was that the house was built on reclaimed land, mostly sand. Clearly the lake had been shaped at some time prior to the building of the house sometime in 1927. During heavy rains, and hurricanes, which were plentiful in those early years, the basement would happily flood 2, 3, even 4 feet. Somehow the perils of a small ocean in the bottom of the house never particularly upset my parents, who would hire a guy to pump the water out. For years the basement had an inch or two a water in it almost on a permanent basis and pop brought in big timbers, by big I mean maybe 12 x 2 which served as sort of duck walks from the furnace to the shelves where things were stored.

Hurricanes

We experienced major hurricanes during our early years in Amityville. I don’t remember the hurricane of 1938, which was massive. It reshaped the shoreline on the Great South Bay and the barrier islands on the ocean and knocked down 18 trees on our property alone. The damage was so great and with no electric for weeks that we moved back into the city with Mom’s Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa Winckler. ot back I had a forest of down treets to play in and around.

The hurricane of 1938 struck us in the late morning of September 21^st. Pop had gone to work as if we were just experiencing a big rainstorm. In those days, you should know, there was no such thing as a weather report or even a weather service. This hurricane, which you can read about, struck the South Shore of Long Island as a total surprise. It plowed across the island smashed into eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island in full force. Amityville was on the left edge of the actual eye hurricane, and a weathervane at the local airport spun off after registering 125 mph.

The great story that Mom used to tell was that when the eye appeared over the house she thought the hurricane [or the storm she did and she wouldn’t have recognized it as a hurricane at that point], was over and I was sent out to play. Fortunately Mom realized her mistake soon enough to prevent me from being blown to New England.

Pop recalled looking out the office windows and seeing waves smashing up onto lower Manhattan. I do not know how Pop got home that night.

I do very clearly remember the hurricane of 1944, which struck at night. I remember sitting in the staircase with Mom and Pop listening to trees come down around us. Through all these hurricanes we never experienced any damage to the house. More trees down and more to play in and around.

We never experienced hurricanes of the magnitude of 1938 or 1944 again, but over the years hurricanes brushed by, mostly reduced in power. The hurricanes of 1938 and 1944 were huge because they never lost their power and roared across the island and into New England with wins exceeding 125 miles an hour and in some places topping 150 miles an hour. Sometime you want to Google the 1938 hurricane and see what a huge disaster it was.  No one in living memory had experienced storms of that magnitude. And since there was no weather service to issue warnings and since hurricanes were little understood the damage caused by these storms was immense.

The New England Hurricane of 1938 (or Great New England Hurricane or Long Island Express or simply The Great Hurricane of 1938) was the first major hurricane to strike New England since 1869. The storm formed near the coast of Africa in September of the 1938 Atlantic hurricane season, becoming a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane ^[1] on Long Island on September 21. The hurricane was estimated to have killed between 682 and 800 people,^[2] damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes, and caused property losses estimated at US$306 million ($ 4.72 billion in 2010).^[3] In 1951, damaged trees and buildings were still to be seen in the affected areas.^[4] To date it remains the most powerful, costliest and deadliest hurricane in New England history.

Great Hurricane of September, 1944--Is perhaps a forgotten storm in light of the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, and the Long Island Express of 1938. However, this was a memorable storm in its own right. Cape Henry in Virginia was hit with sustained winds of 134 mph, and gusts up to 150 mph. Meanwhile, in Norfolk, winds reached close to hurricane force while gusts went up to 90 mph. The powerful storm caused tremendous damage along the coast from North Carolina to New England with some 41,000 buildings damaged, and a death toll of 390 people. The storm cost some $100 million dollars in damage including $25 million in New Jersey alone, where some 300 homes were destroyed on Long Beach Island.

AMITYVILLE: VJ (Victory over Japan) DAY, AUGUST 14, 1945

World War II was a terrific time to be a little kid. Since we had no understanding of the terrors families experienced not knowing if their loved ones were alive or dead, or of fellow villagers dying in far off places, we were free to play war games and collect lead soldiers, sure in the knowledge that we would teach those dirty Germans and Japs a lesson. 

Every morning at breakfast Mom and I listened to the news programs on the radio. By now we are all familiar with the five or six hour time difference between the EAstern US and Western Europe, and that time difference meant that our morning news allowed us to hear what had happened in Europe that day. I can remember General Eisenhower's  broadcast announcing the D Day landings and the accounts of the surrender of the Germany (VE Day) in May, 1945. 

On the late afternoon, afternoon because these events were happening a day away in the Pacific, around 6 P.M. on Tuesday, August 14, 1945, the announcement of the Japanese surrender was broadcast. 

The daily life of a little kid is pretty much the same day-in-day-out.  The school year, weekend days, summer vacation all roll together and it is impossible to single out any one day.  I suspect this is the same for just about everyone.  The exception is, of course, on those days when something so terrible or so memorable happened that makes it impossible to forget.

From 5 to 6 P.M. I would have been listening to kid radio shows like Jack Armstrong, All American Boy, Uncle Don, and Captain Midnight, and others I have forgotten.  On that day they would have been interrupted by the news of the Japanese surrender.

Pop worked in New York City, along with the Dad’s of my friends –Charlie, and Eddie.  Like all Dads they commuted into the city on the Long Island Rail Road, leaving at 7 in the morning and returning about 7 in the evening.  Since the announcement was made at around 6 P.M. we believed that they would not have had the opportunity to hear the news before they boarded their trains to come home. Many commuters, Pop among them, drove back and forth to the station.  If the Moms drove, they waited at the station, kids in the back seat, to pick up their husbands and drive home for dinner.

Amityville was a village of just 700 families and our ‘downtown’ ran from the railroad tracks in the north south along Broadway to the Triangle Building near the schools  – about three blocks.  The stores I can remember are Christopher’s Stationary, two pharmacies – Phanamiller’s and Polaski’s -- a movie theater, Woolworth’s 5 and 10 cents store, Fisher’s Soda Fountain Shop, the Bank of Amityville, and Geneco’s Grocery.  Phanamiller’s phone number was Amityville 1! 

The exact center of town was where Union Avenue crossed Broadway, and magically became Greene Street.   Phanamiller’s and the Bank of Amityville were on the west corners and St. Martin’s was just down Union Street to the east.  Hanging over the center of the intersection was a traffic light – one of three in town – held in place by wires anchored to poles on each of the four corners.

Mom and I walked down to the railroad station to meet Pop as he drove home, in our light brown 1939 Dodge sedan, and give him the news.  To our amazement we found intersection of Broadway and Union Street jammed with cheering people. Not so surprising when yiou raelize that just about everypoonein our tyown was in some was connected personally to the war -- whether work at the airplane factories, loved ones in the service, or just doing their bit what with wartime rationing.

As the commuters drove up  from the railroad station parking lots to the light at the intersection everyone cheered.  If their family was waiting they jumped in the car and drove off, horn beeping for all it was worth.  Someone tossed a roll of toilet paper over the light – the paper-streaming out behind.  Soon, and many a toilet paper roll later, the light and the intersection was totally covered in the white paper.  Who started it, or where the rolls came from I do not know.  That is the most enduring memory I have of that day.

When Pop arrived, he picked us up and we ended the day having dinner down at the Unqua Corinthian Yacht Club.  Pop had saved some fireworks all through the war. They were in a glass coffee jar down in the basement.  He promised that when the war finally ended we would set them off.  I looked at that jar everyday during the four long years of the War. My long wait finally ended with a bang!

For me – just two months short of my Eleventh birthday it was a time for celebration.  We Won!

For the grownups the feeling was one of relief – its finally over [no exclamation point].

More pics of house-a-building

It doesn't seem like much has been done, but the interior has had all the wiring completed and the wall board and taping done. Must be something good inside because the doors are locked.

great-grandfather, “Grandpa”

William A. Wildman, dod 4/28/46. Aged 78 yrs

            born ca, 1868

            buried in St. John’s Cemetery, Queens, NY on 5/1/46

            grave #15, Section 24, range D

Grandpa Wildman was born somewhere in Wurtenburg, Germany,  shortly after the Prussians ‘unified’ Germany, but I don't know just where (why is another story).  Wurtenburg is in Southwest Germany, near the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.  The only story I remember Grandpa telling about his boyhood in Wurtenburg was about delivering milk on Christmas, and getting schnapps at every stop and coming home tipsy. Maybe Grandpa’s family might have been dairy folk, maybe it was just a job.  We’ll never know for sure.  Grandpa had an older brother who was drafted into the new German/Prussian Army and crippled in maneuvers.  Great-Grandmother Wildman vowed that she would never give another son to the Kaiser, so Grandpa was sent to the United States to live with an Uncle (his Mother’s brother) shortly after his thirteenth  birthday.  That would make it some where about 1881, or 1882.

We Americans think of  the act of emigrating  from Europe to the good old’ US of A as going to the promised land.  But you  need  to  think a moment from the perspective of the emigrant and the emigrant’s family;  a thirteen year old boy, leaving home, alone, to travel thousands of miles to a  new and strange place; a Mother that will never see her son again.  In Ireland they held what was  called an Emigrant’s Wake the night before the leaving.  Grandpa said  that he walked to Marsailles, France, to get a ship to New York, with gold coins sewed into his clothing by his Mother.

Grandpa arrived in New York City before Ellis Island was used as the arrival point.  The Ellis Island we know wasn’t opened until January 1, 1892.  Grandpa came through the Emigrant Landing Depot at what had been Castle Clinton, an old fort guarding the entrance to the Lower Manhattan harbor.  The City of New York bought the old fort in 1824 and renamed it Castle Garden.  It served as the city’s largest theater and celebration location.  The Marquis de LaFayette was honored here, when he toured the United States in 1824.  In 1833, President Jackson landed here.  The old fort was connected to the land by a long wooden cauaseway.  Jackson’s party crossed the wooden bridge, and just after Jackson reached solid land the bridge collapsed and dumped people into the water, which was only a couple of feet deep.   Jenny Lind sang there, on September 11, 1850,  when she began  her celebrated tour of the United States.  It is located at the foot of Manhattan, and is sometimes called the Aquarium.  It is now the Castle Clinton National Monument, at Battery Park.  Grandpa apprenticed as a baker with his Uncle.

The 1880s and the 1890s were tough times for the ’little guy’ in  America.  For sure, Grandpa was a little guy;  an immigrant, a journeyman baker with little or no education, speaking English with a heavy,  heavy accent.  Somewhere between going to live with his Uncle and the mid 1890s Grandpa lost his job in the Uncle’s bakery.  There had been an economic downturn, and the Uncle gave Grandpa’s job to one of his sons.  Grandpa vowed that he would have nothing to do with the Germans ever again!  I guess that that was two votes against the Germans, so the fact that the family becomes “Irish,” and not “German,” is an act of will, not an accident, and is yet another story.

107 Continues to Grow

Wow! A sheathed roof and windows. One of the first construction jobs I has while In was in college was sheathing houses in Long Island. A bunch of us got together a crew and hired out to the many building projects that were all over LI. My first job was lugging 4 x 8" plywood sheets up a ladder onto a roof. My hands were cut to ribbons that first day but I soon graduated to the nailer and wandered around roofs, without safety harness (they didn't exist in my day) that were pretty steep.

Here you can see a sheathed roof and windows. 

My Efforts At Trying To Take a Decent Picture

Being retired and having money to spare I am trying to become a photographer. All this started out when Granddaughter Ayla asked me to take pictures of her soccer team. Granddaughter's wishes are my commands - so I began. I must say, being totally unfamiliar with the expensive camera I bought and happily setting it to automatic I managed to get some pretty OK pictures of the kids on the teams. And. of course, the parents loved them. After all, there were their kids so what picture isn't terrific.

This winter I took a six week course in digital photography over at the Art Center in Troy. The Instructor, Kathy Wright (YTK) was brilliant.  She took pity on me and lavished a lot of attention on me.  I can now tell that I have been doing a lot of things wrong. I even took a Photoshop class which was murder - a completely different language, but it did show me that I have a long way to go to take just one good photo.

It is clear that I have been spoiled, taking pictures of the Coxsakie-Athens soccer team in the late afternoon Fall light. Things became a whole lot more difficult last week when I was trying to take picturesd of Granddaughter Olivia's game in the bright noonday light. It is important that I solve this as I have committed to go down to Orlando this July to photograph a soccer tournament. I can just imagine what the intensity of the light will be down there in mid-summer.

I can Photoshop these around, but theu still look  - well -

Grandma and Ayla at the Spotted Pig. 

Here are a couple of pictures showing the progress from a whole in the ground to the start of building the actual house. More to come.

When you are seven years old scoring a goal is pretty neat. Unfortunately, when you are seven years old and you get smacked in the mouth you end up on Mom's lap.

How I came to be Building a House

The thought of having an house built especially for me never entered my mind. Instead, I had become convinced that my nearly 80 years old legs and knees could no longer successfully manage my three story house so I set out looking for something all on one floor. So I reached out to Danny's sister, Christy, who is a very successful local real estate agent and set out looking for some thing in the local area.

Our search led us to a wreck of a house in Saratoga, a few places here in Albany, but she steered me towards some new building over in Rotterdam and in Guilderland. To my amazement, new built, bespoke houses were with in my financial grasp. I was pretty much set on something over in Guilderland, about 20 miles away, when I noticed that a new project was starting up just a quarter of a mile from where I live. My first thought was that it would be too expensive, as a similar project had houses in the $500,000 range. But, equipped with what Christie had shown me as we looked at bespoke houses I ventured in and to my utter delight that houses were in the same range as the ones I had thought of in Guilderland.