Today, July 28, is an
important day in my family’s history.
Back in 1971, 50 years ago to this day, my family moved out of New York City to the wilds of Long Island.
We have stayed here for the past 50 years, having never ventured back into the Big Apple.
We have had connections to the city—my father worked as a licensed New York City medallion cab driver for more than 50 years, and we have his youngest sister, my aunt, who has lived there her entire life—but our core family left Queens on July 28, 1971, and never went back.
I worked in New York City for several years, my sister also worked there for a number of years, but as far as our residences, they have been on Long Island for the past 50 years, so I guess you can call us Long Islanders.
But the family—my parents—started life in Brooklyn.
My parents were both born there, and they married in 1956, when their own immediate families lived in in New York City: Brooklyn—my mother—and Queens—my father, whose family had moved from the Lower East Side of Manhattan a few years earlier.
My father also worked with my grandfather as a butcher with a store on Delancey Street, so my family’s roots were firmly in New York City.
My parents’ earliest days as a married couple were spent in Brooklyn, and when I came along, we were a Brooklyn trio, as I was born in Brooklyn, too.
But my parents wanted something more, and when I was a toddler, the three of us moved to Kew Gardens Hills, Queens.
My sister was born in Queens, and we lived in this neighborhood—a somewhat notorious neighborhood which spawned both the Kitty Genovese and Alice Crimmins cases, as well as the glue-sniffing craze of the early 1960s—until 1964, when again, my parents were looking for something better.
My parents applied for an apartment in a new development called Rochdale Village in South Jamaica, Queens, an entirely new development that was planned for the site of the old Jamaica Racetrack.
My parents were looking for something better, but the designers of this new neighborhood—including master developer Robert Moses—had other plans in mind, that of Rochdale Village being something of a utopian experience, a mainly white neighborhood smack dab in the middle of one of the longest-standing black neighborhoods in the Untied States.
The new development would bring schools and shopping to the often neglected area, and since it was a self-contained development—but without gates—it would bring a level of living among both blacks and whites that would be the standard for the United States.
(Ironically, we moved into the development on Tuesday July 28, 1964—yes, 57 years to the day—about a month after our building, building 9, opened. We had to wait a little while, because our apartment was flooded, believe it or not, so we could not move into the building when most people did, a month earlier in June.)
Yes, my description of Rochdale Village might appear to be heavy handed, but even the New York Times covered this area with that type of reverence, spouting how blacks and whites lived together in perfect harmony in the new community.
And we did just that. Nobody was better than anyone else in this community—the rolls of the development were culled from the rosters of the city’s many unions—and everyone was on an equal level there.
But with such a shiny veneer, there were problems in the development from the get go.
Many in the existing community did not want us there, there were problems with the non-use of minority construction workers at the site, and we were sort of the “black sheep” community in one of the most proud black areas in the country.
And the tinsel wore off after a few years, with the community becoming a battleground brought on by a lot of issues that were going on in New York City at that time, and nationally.
Drugs, the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., constant teacher strikes and general city/state/country unrest impacted our once Utopian community quite massively, and after about 1968, the place was never the same.
Safety was also a major factor, and the place had become unsafe, almost anarchistic.
The schools, and primarily I.S. 72, had become the center of the battleground, and various attacks on a daily basis had become such a norm that the principal of the school told attendees at one of the PTA meetings—both blacks and whites—that all good people should “move out” of the neighborhood for their own good.
And by the dawn of the 1970s, it was readily apparent that yes, the neighborhood had deteriorated to the point that it was often unsafe, and yes, families like mine were wary of living there anymore.
And yes, we became part of the great “White Flight” of the early 1970s. I am not ashamed to say it, because it was true.
Once again, my parents looked for something better for us, and they found it in a place where we couldn’t even pronounce the name … in a Long island neighborhood called Massapequa.
Honestly, the only reason that I had heard about Massapequa was that it was part of an episode of the “That Girl” TV series, where actress Ann Marie is sent on a job as a model. Her agent tells her where she has to go to meet up with the shoot, and when he told her it was in Massapequa, she asked, “What’s a Massapequa?”
And I asked the same question 50 years ago.
I remember the morning that we left New York City for good.
It was a Wednesday, a hot summer day, and I was sitting in the car as my father loaded the last of our belongings into the Checker cab that he owned, which could fit lots of stuff.
I looked at my building, Building 9, for the last time, and I saw someone that I knew hanging out in the front of the building, a person years later I would find out that sometime after, died of a drug overdose.
The radio was on, and as he got in the car and we drove away to our new home, Melanie’s “Brand New Key” played on the radio, a song that just a few weeks later would become a massive hit for the singer.
It is a song that addresses exactly what I was going through as we moved away—I did not want to leave, did not want to leave my friends, did not want to leave the place where I went from a little kid to a young teenager--and I will never forget driving out of the development while that song played on the radio.
Back in 1971, 50 years ago to this day, my family moved out of New York City to the wilds of Long Island.
We have stayed here for the past 50 years, having never ventured back into the Big Apple.
We have had connections to the city—my father worked as a licensed New York City medallion cab driver for more than 50 years, and we have his youngest sister, my aunt, who has lived there her entire life—but our core family left Queens on July 28, 1971, and never went back.
I worked in New York City for several years, my sister also worked there for a number of years, but as far as our residences, they have been on Long Island for the past 50 years, so I guess you can call us Long Islanders.
But the family—my parents—started life in Brooklyn.
My parents were both born there, and they married in 1956, when their own immediate families lived in in New York City: Brooklyn—my mother—and Queens—my father, whose family had moved from the Lower East Side of Manhattan a few years earlier.
My father also worked with my grandfather as a butcher with a store on Delancey Street, so my family’s roots were firmly in New York City.
My parents’ earliest days as a married couple were spent in Brooklyn, and when I came along, we were a Brooklyn trio, as I was born in Brooklyn, too.
But my parents wanted something more, and when I was a toddler, the three of us moved to Kew Gardens Hills, Queens.
My sister was born in Queens, and we lived in this neighborhood—a somewhat notorious neighborhood which spawned both the Kitty Genovese and Alice Crimmins cases, as well as the glue-sniffing craze of the early 1960s—until 1964, when again, my parents were looking for something better.
My parents applied for an apartment in a new development called Rochdale Village in South Jamaica, Queens, an entirely new development that was planned for the site of the old Jamaica Racetrack.
My parents were looking for something better, but the designers of this new neighborhood—including master developer Robert Moses—had other plans in mind, that of Rochdale Village being something of a utopian experience, a mainly white neighborhood smack dab in the middle of one of the longest-standing black neighborhoods in the Untied States.
The new development would bring schools and shopping to the often neglected area, and since it was a self-contained development—but without gates—it would bring a level of living among both blacks and whites that would be the standard for the United States.
(Ironically, we moved into the development on Tuesday July 28, 1964—yes, 57 years to the day—about a month after our building, building 9, opened. We had to wait a little while, because our apartment was flooded, believe it or not, so we could not move into the building when most people did, a month earlier in June.)
Yes, my description of Rochdale Village might appear to be heavy handed, but even the New York Times covered this area with that type of reverence, spouting how blacks and whites lived together in perfect harmony in the new community.
And we did just that. Nobody was better than anyone else in this community—the rolls of the development were culled from the rosters of the city’s many unions—and everyone was on an equal level there.
But with such a shiny veneer, there were problems in the development from the get go.
Many in the existing community did not want us there, there were problems with the non-use of minority construction workers at the site, and we were sort of the “black sheep” community in one of the most proud black areas in the country.
And the tinsel wore off after a few years, with the community becoming a battleground brought on by a lot of issues that were going on in New York City at that time, and nationally.
Drugs, the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., constant teacher strikes and general city/state/country unrest impacted our once Utopian community quite massively, and after about 1968, the place was never the same.
Safety was also a major factor, and the place had become unsafe, almost anarchistic.
The schools, and primarily I.S. 72, had become the center of the battleground, and various attacks on a daily basis had become such a norm that the principal of the school told attendees at one of the PTA meetings—both blacks and whites—that all good people should “move out” of the neighborhood for their own good.
And by the dawn of the 1970s, it was readily apparent that yes, the neighborhood had deteriorated to the point that it was often unsafe, and yes, families like mine were wary of living there anymore.
And yes, we became part of the great “White Flight” of the early 1970s. I am not ashamed to say it, because it was true.
Once again, my parents looked for something better for us, and they found it in a place where we couldn’t even pronounce the name … in a Long island neighborhood called Massapequa.
Honestly, the only reason that I had heard about Massapequa was that it was part of an episode of the “That Girl” TV series, where actress Ann Marie is sent on a job as a model. Her agent tells her where she has to go to meet up with the shoot, and when he told her it was in Massapequa, she asked, “What’s a Massapequa?”
And I asked the same question 50 years ago.
I remember the morning that we left New York City for good.
It was a Wednesday, a hot summer day, and I was sitting in the car as my father loaded the last of our belongings into the Checker cab that he owned, which could fit lots of stuff.
I looked at my building, Building 9, for the last time, and I saw someone that I knew hanging out in the front of the building, a person years later I would find out that sometime after, died of a drug overdose.
The radio was on, and as he got in the car and we drove away to our new home, Melanie’s “Brand New Key” played on the radio, a song that just a few weeks later would become a massive hit for the singer.
It is a song that addresses exactly what I was going through as we moved away—I did not want to leave, did not want to leave my friends, did not want to leave the place where I went from a little kid to a young teenager--and I will never forget driving out of the development while that song played on the radio.
But here I was, with a "brand new key" to get used to, and I don't know at the age of 14 if I ever really did.
We moved to our new home, and we had many challenges on Long island, too, including rampant anti-Semitism right in our own new neighborhood.
I remember that our menorah that we put up for our first celebration of Hanukkah there was knocked out of our window by a rock thrown by one of our own neighbors, and this behavior carried over throughout my high school years, even though there was a large population of Jews who lived in Massapequa at the time, including a number of people who themselves had moved from Rochdale Village at the same time I did.
Personally, I was always wary of my new community, and I never really assimilated as a high school kid to my new environs. I found myself spending almost every weekend back in Rochdale Village with my friends, in a place that even with all the strife, I felt comfortable in.
Heck, people thought I still lived in Rochdale Village at this time, but although both of my feet were not permanently out of the neighborhood, I visited my old haunts through 1976—and since then, I have never been back.
I have lived in Massapequa—now Massapequa Park—off and on for those 50 years, and have even raised my own family here.
So today is a sad day and a happy day, too, as I look back on the past half century as a somewhat reluctant Long islander.
I know that I never could move back to New York City ever again. Once you live on Long Island, it is difficult to go back.
And during the pandemic, so many New York City residents wanted to move out to the Island, for many of the same reasons—and many different reasons—that my parents decided to move out for good in 1971.
It is funny how things are so cyclical.
Right now, I am happy to be on the outside looking in, close enough to New York City to still feel the energy it delivers, yet far enough away to be able to diffuse the negative energy that the city also produces.
Personally, I cannot believe it is 50 years to the day that we left, and it might actually be 50 years to the minute that we left as I am writing this Rant.
It is difficult to fathom and to fully process this occasion, but I have tried to do it here in this entry.
I still have New York City blood in me, and I always will, but I am a full-fledged Long Islander now after 50 years here.
And yes, the two can co-exist.
We moved to our new home, and we had many challenges on Long island, too, including rampant anti-Semitism right in our own new neighborhood.
I remember that our menorah that we put up for our first celebration of Hanukkah there was knocked out of our window by a rock thrown by one of our own neighbors, and this behavior carried over throughout my high school years, even though there was a large population of Jews who lived in Massapequa at the time, including a number of people who themselves had moved from Rochdale Village at the same time I did.
Personally, I was always wary of my new community, and I never really assimilated as a high school kid to my new environs. I found myself spending almost every weekend back in Rochdale Village with my friends, in a place that even with all the strife, I felt comfortable in.
Heck, people thought I still lived in Rochdale Village at this time, but although both of my feet were not permanently out of the neighborhood, I visited my old haunts through 1976—and since then, I have never been back.
I have lived in Massapequa—now Massapequa Park—off and on for those 50 years, and have even raised my own family here.
So today is a sad day and a happy day, too, as I look back on the past half century as a somewhat reluctant Long islander.
I know that I never could move back to New York City ever again. Once you live on Long Island, it is difficult to go back.
And during the pandemic, so many New York City residents wanted to move out to the Island, for many of the same reasons—and many different reasons—that my parents decided to move out for good in 1971.
It is funny how things are so cyclical.
Right now, I am happy to be on the outside looking in, close enough to New York City to still feel the energy it delivers, yet far enough away to be able to diffuse the negative energy that the city also produces.
Personally, I cannot believe it is 50 years to the day that we left, and it might actually be 50 years to the minute that we left as I am writing this Rant.
It is difficult to fathom and to fully process this occasion, but I have tried to do it here in this entry.
I still have New York City blood in me, and I always will, but I am a full-fledged Long Islander now after 50 years here.
And yes, the two can co-exist.
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