Our Town: A tale of a suburban town

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Our Town: A tale of a suburban town
A mixture of talent, ethnicity and beauty at the fair

 

The way to learn about the character of a town in Italy is to go to the town piazza any summer evening and hang out. Too bad for us in America that we don’t have town piazzas, but once a year we approximate it by having a street fair. The shops remain open, no cars are allowed in and people walk about in a relaxed fashion. Today was street fair day in Williston Park and with bright sunny skies and a temperature around 75, the entire town came out to say hi.

So with camera on my shoulder and pen and pad in hand, my intent was to wander about the fair, pick up tidbits of information and convert my impressions into a readable column. And here it is.

First, I see a man seated at a table in front of Spuntino Pizzeria who asked me: “Are you the guy who writes for the Williston Times?” I smiled and said yes. He told me he was there to support his daughter’s friend, Cattie Egan who was this young folk singer standing in front of Spuntino’s tuning her guitar. I asked the nice man if he lived in Williston Park, but he said he was from Albertson. For some reason I asked him if he was originally from Bayside and he and his wife looked at me with wide eyes and asked: “Hey, are you a psychic? We used to live in Bayside 25 years ago.”

Nearly anyone who lives in or near Williston Park has probably at one point emigrated from either Queens or Brooklyn, just like me. As youngsters, me, my brother and sister were raised on the mean streets of Bayside, endured the nuns of St Kevin’s Grammar School and couldn’t have been happier.  But then one fatal day, my father took us on a trip into the wilds of Nassau County and a place call Massapequa Park. This place still had dirt roads, which were not good for stick ball. He showed us a plot of land with a home under construction and told us that this would soon be our new home.

“But what about our nice little apartment in Bayside, Dad? We don’t want to leave Bayside. We like it there.” To which my mother said: “But, Tommy, you’ll love it there. Our kitchen will have a double door, I will keep the top of the door open and will be able to watch you play in the yard.” And I thought to myself, I don’t want my mother watching me play stoop ball. What in the world is the fun in that? Well, soon enough our family embarked on this inevitable migration from the means streets of Queens or Brooklyn to the pastoral bliss of the suburbs.

This migratory process is so common that it reminds me of the Academy Award-winning documentary “The March of the Penguins,” where at the age of 5 when the Emperor Penguins of Antarctica are able to breed, they leave the ocean and take an arduous trip inland to engage in courtship and lay an egg and try to keep the little darling alive through the brutally cold winter. But in the case of our moving to Massapequa Park, there was not courtship, breeding or returning to the ocean. We just stayed in the suburbs forever.

This theme of transplants from Queens occurred over and over throughout the day. Tom Egan of Spuntino turned out to be the folk singer’s father and he told me he had moved from Queens. And many of the folks I saw and spoke to were Asians or Hispanics, all of whom were seeking the better schools and greener pastures of Nassau County.

And then there were the teenagers. There was a trio of girls who were decked out in what they told me were Y2K Cybercore fashion, which is a throwback look from the year 2000 when women first came to terms with their power. Who am I to argue with three adorable, articulate and verbally astute teens?

I ran into Aidan, the owner of Mantra Framing, and further up the street I see a Sisters of Mary booth from St. Aidan’s. Manning the booth is none other than Lisa Reali, who is owner of Reali New York, the luxury sportswear fashion house. Years ago I was one of her “ambassadors of fashion” since I am a sports guy. Her fashion house is going strong and she told me that her uncle had finished a screen play called “Penny Candy” about a family who lived in Brooklyn and was transplanted to Nassau County. Interesting serendipity.

I made my way down the street, passed by the Rotary booth, submitted my name into a raffle for the cool-looking, aqua blue colored bike.

Farther down the street, I heard the pure sounds of some seriously talented Spanish flamenco musicians in front of Sangria 71. I do not know who these artists were, but they were definitely the real deal.

Which brings us full circle. Queens is the most diverse county in America with 139 different cultures packed with plenty of Asians, Hispanics, Russians and more. And the most ambitious of these soon have their eyes set on Nassau County and towns just like Manhasset, Williston Park, Albertson, Great Neck, New Hyde Park, Roslyn and the like. Queens undergoes this brain drain of talent and Nassau County become the recipients of all this marvelous ability and beauty and IQ and decency.

What I saw at the street fair was so much decency and diversity and talent and family goodness. You can say what you want about America, but the world wants to come to America and, more specifically, the world wants to live in Nassau County.

Sure, the teenagers will flex muscle, make fashion statements, get educated at Ivy League colleges and be on their way. But let it be understood that, just like the place in Antarctica where the mother and father penguins sacrificed to keep the little one alive, it is the suburban towns in places like Nassau County that provided all this safety and comfort that children need before they embark.
And that’s my story.

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